The Trailer:
Director: Juan Solanas
Cast: Jim Sturgess & Kirsten Dunst
Synopsis: Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) fell in love as teens despite each being from adjacent worlds,both with their own gravitational pull, and now must forge a way for them to be together.
Ohmysatan! Upside Down had such promise and failed miserably. I wanted to like it so fervently and I've waited forever to see it and it was just a huge disappointment. Perhaps I hyped it up too much and that's why I feel so disgruntled with it, but this is still an undoubtedly boring and confusing movie.
It starts off really good with a nice prologue that explains the physics and the basic rules of the two adjacent worlds, which are: 1) All matter is affected by the gravity of it's home planet, and not the other. 2) Anything of matter can offset it's gravitational pull with matter from the opposite world, known as inverse matter. 3) Prolonged (after an hour, I believe) exposure between matter and inverse matter causes the inverse matter to catch fire. This is an interesting concept, though slightly confusing as I had to keep going back to the beginning to relearn the rules.(More on my confusion later) Anyways, after the prologue, things just start to go downhill from there. Yup, after the first few minutes the movie just plummets and never climaxes. The first thing that bothered me: Adam and Eden's childhood romance. What was the point? Them falling in love as teens didn't propel the movie forward, only slightly, but it could've just as easily started from when they are already in their late twenties and there would've have been any effect on the rest of the movie. I just didn't understand it, and the whole amnesia bit was just as unnecessary. It literally wasn't even an obstacle in their budding relationship. Again, that could've been scrapped during the screenplay editing and the final product would have been better for it and a lot fucking shorter in running time. Upside Down is a two hours long, TWO HOURS!! And what it boils down to, without the marvelous setting (I'll get to the setting later) and interesting concept, is another boring star-crossed lovers tale that isn't at all interesting in the slightest and undeserving of the two hour long run time. In addition to the romeo-and-juliet style romance, there's a subplot regarding magical pink bees who gather pollen from both worlds. Adam uses (what does he use? I have no idea. Is it the pollen? The honey? The bees themselves?) some component of the pink bees to mix together an anti-aging cream. This actually seems like the main plot for the film because there is so much time spent and focus on it, except the cream never comes to fruition and then it's simply dropped. Like what? Again, what was the point of bringing this into the story if it serves no purpose? And the ending is absolutely ridiculous. All of the "obstacles" that our characters face aren't resolved until the last six minutes. Yes you saw that right: the last six minutes! And they're all resolved by divine destiny or happenstance or whatever you wanna call it, either way it's silly. It's as though the writers realized that the movie was going to run too long so decided to just slap some random ending on to tie up loose ends. That's bad writing in the flesh, my friends. Okay, back to my confusion regarding the rules. The first rule I don't have a problem with, I understand it completely: you can only be pulled by the gravity of your own planet and never the other. Got it! It's the other two rules that kept confusing me. When it says matter I assumed it meant matter as in anything that has mass and takes up space (Physics, y'all!), but that doesn't seem to be the definition that Upside Down uses. I've come to this conclusion due to a few occurrences throughout the film that don't follow the last two rules. One thing that confused me is a scene where people from Up Above (the two worlds are titled Up Above and Down Below, how original!) are drinking liquid presumably from down below as they appear to be floating due to being pulled by it's home planet's gravity. So if this is true, why does the liquid not burn up inside of them? Wouldn't the liquid be inverse matter since it is from the other planet? It takes a couple hours for liquids to pass through the body, so it would be dangerous to drink anything from the opposite planet, right? And that's just one thing, there are plenty others but to talk about them I would basically have to describe the entire movie and I just don't have time for that nor do I want to. Then, as a child of science, I simply couldn't wrap my head around the idea that a planet would have such a weak gravitational pull that it didn't affect a plane that is maybe a mile away from another planet, yet be strong enough to hold people on it so that they can't be influenced by the other planet. Because of these confusions and failure to understand the physics and rules of these planets I spent a lot of time trying to sort out and make sense of everything instead of actually watching the movie.
The only saving grace of Upside Down is the magical setting. The CGI and special effects work on this movie is phenomenal. The way the movie is shown through blue hued filters gives it a crisp and wondrous feel. The expansiveness felt with the use of wide range shots of the shared sky was beautiful and grand. There was a lot of effort put into the magnificence of these twin worlds which may be the downfall: there was little to no effort put into the story and the development of the characters. At the end of the movie I didn't care if Adam and Eden ended up together or not because I never really got to know them. And also because their story is boring. This is a setting that demanded a grand, extraordinary tale to go along with it... a tale that wasn't delivered. *Sigh* You know I read that Juan Solanas' inspiration for the movie was the unequal relationship between North America and South America, and that idea is present as Up Above is host to the upper class people while those from Down Below are in poverty. I would've much rather watched a movie about a revolution of the Down Below people fighting for a way to be a part of the Up Above world, or to be just as well off. That would have been infinitely more interesting than the story that is delivered and not to mention more deserving of the wondrous setting and running time. Also let me just say that the performances by both Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess were not their best performances. I respect both actors and tend to like them in their other films, but this just felt like they were only sort of trying to do a decent job.
Finally, this movie is all about the looks. It is pure eye candy for any one who loves films with luxurious, well-crafted settings, but its also boring clichéd nonsense for anyone who wants a deep meaningful story. Would I watch this again? No, plain and simple.
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