Category Archives: Cinematics

Cinematics

Pixar and the Price of Excellence

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I have a small child, so I was legally obligated to take her to see Cars 2 this weekend. By Friday, I’d already read a bunch of unflattering reviews. (I found the one in The Onion AV Club particularly ominous.) However, I’ve never been steered wrong by Pixar before. So I figured, if it wasn’t up to their usually exacting standards, it would at least be enjoyable.

If anything, the reviews I read had undersold the disappointment that awaited me. Cars 2 was terrible, and thanks to its trusted source, depressingly so. The true depths of my feelings were best expressed by A.O. Scott in The New York Times, discussing how former sidekick Tow Mater took center stage for this film : “I doubt anyone will protest much, but Pixar has now found its redneck Jar-Jar Binks. Such a proud moment.” Harsh words–I imagine one day Godwin’s Law will expand to include invocations of Jar-Jar Binks. However, they are sadly accurate.

When I complained about Cars 2 later on Twitter, a friend responded that they found it no worse than Madagascar. My initial response is to say, Pixar should be better than Madagascar. But then I also wonder if that’s entirely fair. I can’t think of an artist in any other medium–film, music, literature–who’s produced such great art for so long without slipping. Going back to the first Toy Story movie, Pixar’s been knocking it out of the park for almost two decades. Can I allow them one weak pop-up to the shortstop?

On the one hand, no, because movie tickets ain’t cheap. If I pay good money for something, I don’t think it’s unfair to expect it to be a quality product. So I guess the question is, how much quality is reasonable to expect. If I’ve come to expect a certain level of entertainment from Pixar, should I expect them to deliver at that level every time out, or at least close to it? Or is Pixar an unwitting victim of its own excellence?

Other computer animators have gotten closer to Pixar in terms of what they can do with medium. I saw Tangled last year and thought it came the closest so far to closing the gap between Pixar and everyone else. This was in part because, as a Disney product, Tangled had some Pixar assistance in its production. Still, Pixar no longer has the technological advantage it did when they invented the feature-length computer animated film.

Even as this gap closed, what separated Pixar films has been a level of sophistication and maturity that is lacking in many grown-up movies, let alone ones made for kids. Every film up until Cars 2 has very clear stakes beyond a fanciful, artificial competition or race to a finish line. No matter what the main characters in the movie are–toys, rats, robots–Pixar films have very real connections or parallels to what actual humans go through, and tackle subjects that other movies won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

Very few movies of any kind capture the painful aspects of parenting, and letting go as your children get older, that Finding Nemo and The Incredibles do. Almost none come close to addressing death the way that Up or Toy Story 3 do. You have to look long and hard to find a movie that trusts its audience as much as Wall-E, which has virtually no dialogue for the first 45 minutes. Some of these movies are better than others, but they’re all admirable.

Then comes Cars 2, a movie where there is almost no connection to anything real. Many Pixar movies lack characters who are people, but Cars 2 is the first one that doesn’t feel human. It has the feel of something templated, stamped out of a mold on the same assembly line that produced dreck like Shark Tale.

In stark contrast to other Pixar movies, no one changes in Cars 2. No one grows, and there are no discernible stakes. Bad guys chase Tow Mater around the world while Lightning McQueen tries to win a grand prix. The two protagonists have a minor quarrel when Mater costs lightning a leg of the race. Before long, they make up. Good guys win. Everyone has a dumb race in Radiator Springs. The end.

Pixar movies have always celebrated excellence, so it’s depressing to watch them make a movie in which the main character bumbles his way through life in an aggressively, willfully ignorant way. Tow Mater travels all over the world, listens to no one, learns nothing. He is essentially Larry the Cable Guy, right down to repeating the man’s well-worn catchphrases. Not a stupid person, just an ignorant one who has no interest learning something he doesn’t already know–the complete opposite of the lesson taught in every other Pixar film.

The movie even closes out with Mater being offered a chance to go on another spy mission, since he unwittingly proved himself worthy of this. Another Pixar film would show its hero discovering his/her talent and pursuing a dream (see: Ratatouille). In Cars 2, Mater stays in Radiator Springs because friends are important, or something. Hooray?

That seems to be the moral of Cars 2, if there is one: Friends are good! The problem is, there’s never any real connection between any character in the film. They’re friends because they’re friends, and that’s supposed to be enough for the audience to understand their relationships. Tow Mater feels remorse over messing up his friend’s effort to win the grand prix, and this is supposed to mean something to us. Let’s say his friendship with Lightning McQueen ends–then what? What is at stake for the two of them? What do they bring to one another that it’s vital they remain friends? Other Pixar films ask and answer these kinds of questions. This one does not.

Having said all of this, I can’t decide if I’m so disappointed because of the film’s actual quality or what I’ve come to expect from Pixar. It’s certainly not the worst animated movie I’ve ever seen; go watch Bee Movie some time if you wanna see a truly unfocused mess. (Actually, just take my word for it; DO NOT watch Bee Movie.) The animation is spectacular, of course, and the little background touches in the different international locales (particularly Tokyo) are responsible for the movie’s only genuinely amusing moments. It’s the main thing that keeps Cars 2 from the level of a straight-to-DVD sequel.

Had Cars 2 been made by anyone else, I would probably just shrug it off as not being very good and not be so bummed out. And yet, Cars 2 is so by-the-book and so obviously calculated for pure merchandising purposes (not that their other movies weren’t licensed to the hilt) in a way Pixar’s other movies weren’t that I have the feeling of being let down by an artist I came to trust. And not like Neil Young putting out an electronic album because he feels like like being weird for a while. This is more like Fugazi, out of nowhere, deciding to be in a Coke commercial. Nothing they’ve said or done would make you think they would remotely go in that direction, then all of a sudden, without warning, you hear “Waiting Room” over close-up shots of soda poured on ice cubes.

I suppose that’s the price of being as consistently excellent as Pixar has been for as long as they’ve been. People don’t just like you, they believe in you. You’re not just expected to produce something of quality, you’re expected to produce a masterpiece. And so releasing something that is not up to your implied standards is more than disappointing. It’s upsetting.

The pressure to produce under these circumstances must be crushing, and so I can forgive Pixar a bump in the road. It just feels weird having to do so.

"Classic" Scratchbomb, Cinematics

A Thousand Clowns, Now Available in Non-Imaginary Form

A tweet from Jesse Thorn alerted me to the fact that A Thousand Clowns is now available as a DVD-on-demand from Amazon. This is one of my favoritest movies ever, despite the fact that it’s been nigh impossible to view or purchase over the years. If I’m not mistaken, this is the very first time it’s been made available on DVD. You should probably buy it before someone at Amazon changes their mind.

If you want to know why you should buy it, check out this post I wrote earlier this year (also prompted by Mr. Thorn) on the origins of my obsession with it. Yeah, I was obsessed with something. Hard to believe, I know.

Cinematics

A Terrifying Glimpse of the Future

Over the weekend, I was somehow forced to sit through the last hour of Spy Kids 3D. I’ve never seen any of the Spy Kids films before, but it’s my understanding they’re about kids who are spies.

Spy Kids 3D is easily the worst movie I’ve ever seen, with a large asterisk. I’m not saying it’s the worst because of its content per se. In pure story/direction terms, I’ve seen much worse. Spy Kids 3D is the worst because it provided a horrifying window into our cinematic future.

The entire time Spy Kids 3D flashed before my eyes, I kept wondering to myself, What in god’s name am I watching? I didn’t hate it, I simply didn’t understand it. It felt like watching somebody else play a video game. It’s a movie starring real actors which still feels resoundingly fake. Nothing but the faces look remotely real, as if everyone is shoving their heads through holes in carnival cutouts. Needless to say, the dialogue leaves much to be desired, and the story is little more than a whisper. Things moved very fast and I had no idea why. Scenes would end and the next would begin with barely a connection between them.

One thing Spy Kids 3D has in its favor, particularly towards the end, is that the celebrity cameos get so ridiculous and unnecessary, it’s almost admirable. One famous person suddenly appearing, then then another piled right on top, and another and another, like a Dagwood Sandwich of Stupid. And at least the celebs give a bit of an effort; especially Sylvester Stallone, who chews up scenery with gusto.

But in one terrifying moment, it occurred to me that maybe the burden was not on this movie to be more coherent, but on me to adjust my mind to it. Because I realized that my daughter had no issues watching Spy Kids 3D. It’s sometimes difficult to tell how much a four-year-old actually enjoys something, since a kid that young will consume virtually anything you put in front of them. But she will tune something out if it doesn’t appeal to her, and this definitely appealed to her. I was openly laughing at certain things that I found ridiculous, and she would shoot me scowls, silently saying, C’mon, dad. (Yes, she does this to me already. I have a long road ahead.)

Because the world she is inheriting, this is a world in which fare like Spy Kids 3D is the baseline for kids’ entertainment. Consider this: Spy Kids 3D came out in 2003, which is eight years ago. Three-D movies were unheard of back then. The success of Spy Kids 3D (almost $200 million grossed worldwide) was a huge reason why Hollywood began to throw its weight behind 3D. And yeah, 3D as a format may be on its way out again, but that only means something just as dumb and expensive is on its way.

Now, consider the Transformers franchise, which relies heavily on exploiting people’s sense of nostalgia. The Transformers movies are essentially no different than Spy Kids 3D. Mindless, disconnected scenes. Characters who barely matter. No connection to anything real. An intensely cynical view of its audience.

My daughter has no concept of commercials. Just think about that. Most kids’ channels don’t have ads these days. Maybe you think that’s a good thing, and essentially it is. But it has also made her used to a world where she gets everything she wants, uninterrupted, all the time. The idea of waiting and patience is alien to the world aimed her. So is the idea of watching anything she wouldn’t want to watch, because thanks to On Demand viewing and Netflix Instant, she knows that she can see whatever she wants to see whenever she wants to see it. Hooray?

So I almost feel like Spy Kids 3D has been placed here by the Terminator robots as a warning of what awaits us in the years to come.

Or it could just be a really shitty movie. I think I’ll keep telling myself that.