Upside Down

Kmac:

The pretty visuals may be the only upside to this movie. Upside Down is a science fiction romance set in a world where two twin planets are so close to each other as to create gravitational fields that keep them on their planet while being able to see the other planets people whom to them are upside down. If you want to know the scientific specifics the entire opening of the movie is just laying out the rules of this specific gravity, what you can do and what you can’t. What I couldn’t do was care about this movie.

The plot of the movie is a typical love story. In these world the planet on the bottom has fallen into poverty after an explosion leaving the citizens on the top planet as their superiors. Wrong side of the tracks boy meets upper crust girl and fall in love. When done well this is still a great story but I never felt the love and attraction between these two characters. I told Jmac I wondered if the movie was based on a novel because it seemed like the characters were inner monologuing and maybe I would understand their attraction better if I could read their thoughts. The movie simply did not do a good enough job in explaining their story. It seemed much too focused on the science, even though the key to using the other planets gravity was magical pollen and bees.

The movie was pretty to look at, I will give it that. The computer renderings created a world that seemed real enough to touch as it mixed set pieces with green screen. The scene from the trailer involving the office where the two worlds meet, having built a tower that extends from one to the other, is truly stunning, though I kept thinking there is no way you could goof off at work with someone looking down at your screen all day. It is one of those movies where you have to look at it otherwise it is just soundtrack. Since I have entertainment ADD these movies work much less for me.

To me storytelling beats visuals every time. I give this movie 2 out of 5 gravity defying pancakes.

Jmac:

Upside Down was an extremely visual movie, with the driving force behind the main character’s actions being finding his long lost love, and one of the taglines being love can conquer gravity, or something stupid like that. (Spoiler and no surprise, science conquers gravity... go figure)

The main guy was the same one from that Beetles movie ‘Across the Universe’ who just has one of those faces that guys cannot get behind and only hipster girls would like... its hard to explain but he is just off putting. Also while Kirsten Dunst is the second most viewed character she is not on screen as much as the playbill would have lead you to believe, its mostly just the other tool.

As silly as the storyline was, the visuals were very interesting, but the novelty of two world right next to each other with the same atmosphere, (but different types of matter from each world that falls, up or down depending on your viewpoint, back to its source of origin if taken to the opposite world), fell away so to speak very quickly. You can only show so many shots of a city flipped above a city before you get used to it and then get to thinking about how bad the story line is.

They ended the movie on a really bad notion, which was (SPOILER... but you shouldn't care) the two get together have a kid. So after the police and evil company officials chasing them, having a kid is what makes the authorities not follow them anymore.... a really good message to babies having babies. “hey kids if you're down on your luck and want to change the world.... just knock someone up, love trumps everything.” What would have been interesting is if they didn't focus on the love aspect and focused on what should have been a revolutionary plot line to overthrow a corrupt corporation bleeding one world dry to greatly benefit the other... much like our current world but we all have the same gravity.

I give it 1.4 “man there is something skeevy about that guy’s face”s out of 5.