October 16, 2009
PIXAR PRESENTS: UP 2, FALCON’S TALE FILM REVIEW In a follow-up to this summer’s charming smash hit Up, wherein a grumpy but lovable old man accidentally takes a chubby and somewhat ethnically confusing young Boy Scout on a wild adventure using a home-made helium flying device, is a made-for-TV two-day-long snooze-fest with all the charm of a dead junkie. I give it two resounding thumbs down. The main character, Falcon, with his debilitating A.D.D., doesn’t hold a candle to the adorable little fat kid in the original. He’s cute, kind of, but only in that way that kids in sitcoms are cute before they begin to annoy the audience and suddenly disappear after the first season. Though far and away the least lovable character in the picture is the father, Mr. Heene. He reminds one of the guy you lived next store to as a child who would suspiciously give your teenage sister rides to volleyball practice. Played by the guy from the UPS whiteboard commercials, Mr. Heene plays a minor roll in the film’s first act, when the action is focused primarily on the adventures of little Falcon floating across Colorado in his silver balloon, having adventures along the way while moronic local news anchors prove to the internet-viewing world exactly why they are going to be working in a market with the population of a WNBA game for the rest of their lives. Tensions are high (that count as a pun?) as the balloon begins to deflate. At this point, the entire world has already made fun of the fact that the kid’s name is Falcon and has sent a link to their friend who already was watching it anyway, and everybody in the country took a much needed 15 minute break from doing work. The local news network’s ‘expert’ predicted that the balloon was going to land “much sooner than we originally thought, maybe in an hour or two, if I had to guess”, and then, 5 minutes later, it landed. This is when things began to go down hill for me. Personally, I was hoping for a dead kid. Is that so wrong? It would be a lesson to those idiotic parents: don’t build makeshift weather balloons and then leave them unattended in the yard around your three young children. And perhaps to idiotic storm-chasing parents everywhere who now might consider splurging on the twenty bucks for a childproof lock on the door of the basket, you know, for starters. Plus, maybe don’t name your kid after a bird. But no, not only was there no dead kid, there was no kid! And for a while we all still had some hope that the kid was dead after all, had fallen out of the basket and into the trees or what have you, but just when you begin to loose interest, yet another plot twist: the kid was in his parents attic with snacks and toys. The rest of the plot is inconsequential. It turns out that Mr. Heene is a rambling maniac who is willing to stuff his son in a box for national media attention, underestimating that his son, Falcon, is an idiot, even by 6-year-old standards. And the story is further complicated by the fact that the whole thing was plot by President Obama to distract the nation from his Nobel Peace Prize, which itself was a payoff by David Letterman to officials in Oslo, and somehow, it all traces back to Michael Jackson’s doctor. I will never understand why Pixar abandoned its formula of charming computer animation and mix of lovable characters for this sprawling nonsense led by a cast of deplorable human waste. Perhaps they are trying to teach us a lesson about the new age of media: even though stories can travel faster than a speeding weather balloon, doesn’t make the people in them any less douchy.

PIXAR PRESENTS: UP 2, FALCON’S TALE

FILM REVIEW

In a follow-up to this summer’s charming smash hit Up, wherein a grumpy but lovable old man accidentally takes a chubby and somewhat ethnically confusing young Boy Scout on a wild adventure using a home-made helium flying device, is a made-for-TV two-day-long snooze-fest with all the charm of a dead junkie. I give it two resounding thumbs down.

The main character, Falcon, with his debilitating A.D.D., doesn’t hold a candle to the adorable little fat kid in the original. He’s cute, kind of, but only in that way that kids in sitcoms are cute before they begin to annoy the audience and suddenly disappear after the first season.

Though far and away the least lovable character in the picture is the father, Mr. Heene. He reminds one of the guy you lived next store to as a child who would suspiciously give your teenage sister rides to volleyball practice. Played by the guy from the UPS whiteboard commercials, Mr. Heene plays a minor roll in the film’s first act, when the action is focused primarily on the adventures of little Falcon floating across Colorado in his silver balloon, having adventures along the way while moronic local news anchors prove to the internet-viewing world exactly why they are going to be working in a market with the population of a WNBA game for the rest of their lives.

Tensions are high (that count as a pun?) as the balloon begins to deflate. At this point, the entire world has already made fun of the fact that the kid’s name is Falcon and has sent a link to their friend who already was watching it anyway, and everybody in the country took a much needed 15 minute break from doing work. The local news network’s ‘expert’ predicted that the balloon was going to land “much sooner than we originally thought, maybe in an hour or two, if I had to guess”, and then, 5 minutes later, it landed. This is when things began to go down hill for me.

Personally, I was hoping for a dead kid. Is that so wrong? It would be a lesson to those idiotic parents: don’t build makeshift weather balloons and then leave them unattended in the yard around your three young children. And perhaps to idiotic storm-chasing parents everywhere who now might consider splurging on the twenty bucks for a childproof lock on the door of the basket, you know, for starters. Plus, maybe don’t name your kid after a bird.

But no, not only was there no dead kid, there was no kid! And for a while we all still had some hope that the kid was dead after all, had fallen out of the basket and into the trees or what have you, but just when you begin to loose interest, yet another plot twist: the kid was in his parents attic with snacks and toys.

The rest of the plot is inconsequential. It turns out that Mr. Heene is a rambling maniac who is willing to stuff his son in a box for national media attention, underestimating that his son, Falcon, is an idiot, even by 6-year-old standards. And the story is further complicated by the fact that the whole thing was plot by President Obama to distract the nation from his Nobel Peace Prize, which itself was a payoff by David Letterman to officials in Oslo, and somehow, it all traces back to Michael Jackson’s doctor.

I will never understand why Pixar abandoned its formula of charming computer animation and mix of lovable characters for this sprawling nonsense led by a cast of deplorable human waste. Perhaps they are trying to teach us a lesson about the new age of media: even though stories can travel faster than a speeding weather balloon, doesn’t make the people in them any less douchy.

2:02pm  |   URL: http://todayinpictures.tumblr.com/post/214845663/pixar-presents-up-2-falcons-tale-film-review
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