Up (movie)
Up is a 2009 psychological horror film created by Pixar. It focuses on a old man who is released from prison and sets off on adventure with his flying house along with a morbidly obese child. Starring Carl Fredricksen in his debut role and Charlie Sheen, it was released on April 4th 2009. The movie's tagline is "This April, we are gonna screw you UP".
Plot[edit]
Carl Fredricksen is a 64 year-old autistic man who mooned Donald Trump back in 2007. After a two year sentence to prison, he is finally released. He moves back to his old house in Florida, but retires from his job as a tropical musician. One day, he gets a morbidly obese kid called Russell knocking on his door. He is selling tacos around the neighborhood. Fredricksen buys 3 tacos with a Diet Coke, Doritos, an apple and a Snickers and tells Russell to fuck off. Russell gets offended and kicks him in the balls. This, however, causes a severe destruction of Fredricksen's digestive bladder and he is sent to the hospital. Russell also gets arrested for battery charges.
2 days later, Fredricksen is back home recovering his stomach and eating his taco meal, but Russell escapes from juvenile detention and is coming to murder him. To protect himself, Fredricksen ties up a bunch of balloons to his house and it soars into the air. The reason why he didn't just call 911 is never explained. The next day he lands in the middle of Phallic Falls, South America. This is where he and his late wife, Ellie, dreamed of going on a vacation. He falls out of the house but pulls the garden hose down with him to the ground. He uses it as a harness to drag the house to the beautiful cliffside of Phallic Falls. Along the the way he meets a delusional bird called Snipe that is known for it's high consumptions of cooking chocolate. It comes along with him on the journey.
Meanwhile, a laboratory run by dogs located under Phallic Falls is captured by Russell, who is now revealed to be a former leader of the CIA that went rogue. One of the dogs called Alpha teams up with Russell since he is impressed how a 10 year-old has both a criminal and government record. Russell tells Alpha to go out and kill Fredricksen by using one of his pubic hairs to track him down. Another dog called Dug sneaks out and travels to the coast. Dug swims to the Gulf of Mexico and takes an airplane to Washington, DC, where he informs the president about the incident. Dug is then partnered with Charles Muntz to stop Russell. They fly a blimp back to Phallic Falls, but when Muntz finds out Dug is bisexual, he pushes him off the blimp to his death. This however gets back at Muntz when the blimp is shot down by Russell.
Alpha finds Fredricksen, but when he is given some leftover beef, he leads Fredricksen to Russell's lair. By the arrival of Fredricksen, Russell has already slaughtered the other dogs, and even drops a rock on Alpha. Fredricksen tries to convince Russell that he's gone crazy, but Russell doesn't believe him. Russell is about to shoot Fredricksen, but Snipe eats him, thinking he is a Twinkie. That night, Fredricksen finally makes it to the cliffside, but finds out having a beautiful home is nothing compared to friendship, so he goes back to his hometown with Snipe.
Cast[edit]
- Carl Fredricksen as himself, a 64-year old autistic man that is grumpy over his arrest in 2007. Despite this, he has a soft spot for his house and tacos.
- Charlie Sheen as Russell Crowe, the main antagonist of the film. He is a morbidly obese Asian terrorist that left the CIA to commit theft and murder.
- Eddie Murphy as Charles Muntz, a member of the United States Military that owns a
pimpblimp. He tries to help out Dug, but ends up killing him. - Kermit The Frog as Dug, a bisexual dog. He is seen to be very optimistic until Russell terrorized the lab. He is seen as the movie's comic relief and has his own TV series.
- some bird as Snipe. Snipe has no reason in the movie except to eat Russell. Fredricksen should have just killed him when he first appeared. Idiot.
- Judi Dench as Alpha, Russell's sidekick. He teams up with Russell when he is impressed with his records, though many fans suggest he just liked him for his tacos.
Production[edit]
Up is based on the true story of Carl Fredricksen. Pixar was interested in his story and bought the rights to make a film adaption of it. Dreamworks made a ripoff of the film called 'What's Up?' and sued Pixar for "copying" them, but the charges were dropped. Not because Dreamworks was lying, but because everyone in the court agreed What's Up was crap compared to Pixar's movie. A trailer was released in November 2008 announcing the film and it's release date. To promote the film, Taco Bell created tacos inspired by Russell's recipe from the film, and they also came with an Up action figure. There were 8 to collect.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film was a major box office success, earning 40 million dollars on it's opening weekend. It made 890 million dollars domestically, and over 1.3 billion dollars worldwide on a 160 million dollar budget. This caused Pixar to consider a sequel, but Fredricksen went onto further work, so it was scrapped.
Critical reaction[edit]
The film received universal acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a score of 100% with a consensus of "With a supremely interesting cast and an edge-of-seat storyline, Up brings an emotional and dark treat". Audiences also loved it's breathtaking animation, intense score and twisted humor. According to Jack Black, the best scene in the movie is "when Snipe mistakes the old guy's shit for Haagen Dazs ice cream". The movie even grew a small fandom that create fanart and tributes. The only thing critized was it's ridiculous running time of 128 minutes.
Carl Fredricksen's personal life[edit]
Carl Fredricksen was born on April 4th, 1945 to a regular family. Unlike most children, he was born as an old man due to a physical disorder. The parents died early when they both ended up in a car crash. There is a theory that they intentionally crashed since they didn't want an old man for a baby, but Fredricksen has assured the public it was accidental. He has suffered obesity and depression since his early days.
Another conspiracy is people believe that his face predicted Grumpy Cat, but when asked Fredricksen replied with 'Who the Hell is Grumpy Cat?'
After Fredricksen received great feedback from his performance in Up, he decided to take up an acting role. He played as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings: The Early Bird Catches the Worm. Although the film was a box office success, the film got mixed reception. However he was seen as a decent enough character to keep the film good. He worked with a few other films, but quit and became a politician.
He has run for President twice, once in 2012 and again for 2016. His best-known political work was with his "Disco Yeti" campaign, where he tried to get Disney Imagineering to fix the Yeti AA in their attraction Buzz Lightyear's Game of Thrones. This movement failed though. He also revealed in 2013 that he was a brony.
On December 20th, 2015, he hung himself in his attic. Snipe reported the incident to the police and they rushed him to hospital. He recovered by December 23th, 2015, and is continuing his attempt to become the Big Butt of the U.S.A.
Spin-off TV series[edit]
Due to Up's popularity, Pixar created a spinoff adult comedy series about Dug's early days in the lab. It had one season of 20 episodes and aired late at night on ABC. It received mixed to positive reviews, whereas critics said it was just a dumb combination of gay jokes, fans of the original movie liked the return of their favorite character, Dug.
Horror films