Up
*I am reduced to hosting this image on my photobucket account because I still haven’t resolved my blog’s issue with Mozilla Firefox. Double ewe tee eff????
Once again my family dragged me to see another movie last weekend. Instead of a nerdular, sexist, futuristic drama, we went to see a family movie called Up. I always expect great things from Pixar and they didn’t fail to produce a heart-warming, squishy, family movie that is appropriate for children. I really loved the story, although it did fall for the token female bit, just like every other movie. The main character’s wife Ellie dies early on in the movie and we don’t get another female character until the boy discovers that the beautiful bird is a mom. “Kevin’s a girl!” he laughingly exclaimed. Why yes she is! Why there are girls everywhere but they aren’t good enough to be characters in a movie. But don’t worry kids, only uptight cranky feminists even notice little details like the erasure of half of the population. The rest of you normal people, the non-feminists, won’t notice a thing because male-as-default-standard is pervasive.
Ooops sorry, I lost my pretty little head just now. Where was I? TEE HEE HEE!!11 Oh yeah, I was reviewing a movie.
Up was pretty great. What I liked best about it was the fact that the hero protagonist was a cranky old man. I can’t for the life of me remember his name right now. I know I could use my google-foo to figure it out but it’s much more fun to refer to him as a cranky old man, so that is what I will do from now on. Every other movie has a hero protagonist that is young and dead sexy but not Up. We get treated to a cranky old man brandishing a walker supported by four tennis balls. The old man fight scenes were superb and magnificent. The plot was sufficiently complicated and interesting and they threw enough bones to the parents in the audience to keep us from losing interest.
By the way, let me interrupt this movie review to rant about society’s general fear and loathing of aging and the elderly. It’s a whole lot of bunk. I can’t wait to get old. I don’t care if my arm flaps drag on the sidewalk. I am going to be one of those old ladies that isn’t going to take any crap from anybody. If I feel like wearing ratty old sweat pants, then by gum I’m going to wear ratty old sweatpants. When I was a young teenager that the jerk-off young guys thought was sexy, I did not appreciate being hooted, hollered and leered at in public. I couldn’t wait to get old enough that the jerk-offs would never feel the urge to act that way towards me ever again and that sentiment has not changed. We should glorify all the elderly people and show them the respect they deserve instead of pretending they don’t exist. As for our collective obsession with youth, y’all can stuff it where the sun don’t shine. Throw away the Viagra and the Botox, you don’t need it. We need more movies with old people and interesting characters instead of always the same old white doods.
Back to the review. Up had talking dogs, the realization of a life-long dream and the creation of a brand-new family. It had all those things that make you go “AWWWWW” while the tears well up and you desperately look for a few kernels of popcorn to nibble on so that you’re kids don’t notice your over-emotionalness. (That is too a word. Look it up.)
Go and see Up. It’s totally worth the money.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Okay, I’ll go and see Up. Sounds like the kind of movie I enjoy way too much.
How do you ever expect to be queen of the universe if you:
1. Want women to be paid attention to for themselves instead of as window dressing for men – and want them around, too.
2. Respect the elderly.
What planet are you from? Take it back right now and there is still hope!
July 31st, 2009 at 1:34 am
his name is carl fredrickson