The Cell 2 just moved down a peg on my “Most Unlikely Movies That Somehow Get Made Anyhoodles” list.

You remember Adaptation.? Great movie. Really great.

Remember the movie-within-the-movie (not the one based on The Orchid Thief — the spec thriller called The 3)? Remember the really horrible twist ending? Remember how we all laughed when Nicolas Cage pitched it to Nicolas Cage? Yeah. It sure was a terrible idea (but great comedy).

I just learned that there exists a best-selling book. A thriller. Ted Dekker’s Thr3e.

Did you know they made a movie based on it a few years back?

I just had the woeful misfortune of watching it (as I read the paper, cleaned the kitchen and did my nails).

I kept waiting for Charlie Kaufman to come in and deliver a punchline, but no. It’s The 3, sans snark and irony and cliche-embracing. Oh, and plus lots of Jeebus-thumping (I guess Dekker is a big fan of G*d [I am not against saying or typing "God" but I like placing a little puckering void in the middle of his name -- when I get my winning Lotto ticket, I'll totes be pious]?).

Seriously, universe. What the fuck?

Movies can be magical. Some are so magical, they remain as popular today as when they were first released many DECADES ago. Pixar makes magical movies. Up is magical.

The opening short film? Adorable and magical.

The first ten minutes of the movie? I wept.

The rest of the movie (starring a septuagenarian and the fat boy scout he hates) is a beautiful story of a man who wants to fulfill his dead wife’s life-long dream (despite the logistical improbability).

I briefly considered doing one of my regular “break-it-down-and-expose-the-nuts-and-bolts” reviews, but then I thought, “why ruin any of the magic that I got to experience?” So, I’ll tell you it’s worth seeing (in my opinion, the 3-D version was nice, but I don’t think it was necessary — I’d like to see the 2-D version soon) and that it seems to be geared more to the adults than the kids (or my arrested development is showing), and that it gets a solid A from me (I cried at the end, as well), but that’s all you’ll get.

What I WILL do, however, is break down Armond White’s “review” of Up.

I will bold Armond’s words to differentiate between us and also because he’s Black.

The Way of Pixarism

By Armond White

Pixar rules pop media like nothing since mid-20th century General Motors held sway as the preeminent American corporation (and the bane of grassroots individualism). Every Pixar film—including the new Up, gushed over by Cannes Film Festival shills—is greeted with nearly patriotic fervor. This absurdity clarifies contemporary news media’s unprincipled collusion with Hollywood capitalism.

Wait. Are you saying that Pixar’s movies AREN’T worthy of their praise? That if not for the news media’s collusion, people would see that their animated emperors have no clothes? Really? Or do you just hate White people?

Up’s uninteresting story of an old widower who attaches his home to helium balloons and floats off to Venezuela with an overeager kid in tow follows the same formula as the previous nine Pixar movies. But artistic standards get trumped by a special feature: sentimentality. Pixar’s price sticker includes enough saccharine emotion to distract some viewers from being more demanding; they don’t mind the blatant narrative manipulation of a sad old man and lonely little boy. They buy animation to extend their childhood like men who buy cars for phallic symbols.

1) Armond found Up’s story “uninteresting,” but this is the same man who wrote (in his review of Dance Flick — which he really loved), “No matter how many people get verklempt over the lugubrious Benjamin Button, I know in my soul that history will avenge the Wayanses’ superior age/masculinity farce Little Man and fans who have already forgotten Eminem’s 8 Mile will one day catch up to Damon Wayans’ insightful hip-hop burlesque, Marci X.”

2) His car analogies are getting tiresome. Especially his comparison between buying a ticket to a cartoon and buying a car because you like big penises.

As a child, Carl Fredrickson, already a young fogey, thrilled to the airborne adventures of daredevil explorer C.J. Muntz. But in retirement, Fredrickson sulks; mischief deeply buried beneath blandness. Carl’s not an irascible audience-surrogate like the urban curmudgeon Mr. Magoo. Only Russell, the pie-faced, father-abandoned, 8-year-old scout, is cuter. “Cute” is how Pixar oversimplifies the world.

1) Mr. Magoo was an “audience-surrogate”? Armond, for serious, are you retarded? That’s like saying Toonces, The Cat Who Could Drive A Car was an audience-surrogate. For those of you who aren’t used to reading movie reviews by people who gets erections whenever they confuse their readers, an Audience Surrogate (no hyphen, Whitey!) is “like the audience, normally young — permitting the audience vicarious participation in the hero’s adventures.”* That’s certainly how I felt whenever Magoo yelled at that Asian fellow, or when Toonces’ mouth opened before the car crashed.

2) The kid in Up (Russell) is Asian. Armond just referred to him as “pie-faced.” I find that quite niggardly.

3) Pixar oversimplifies the world IN THEIR CARTOONS as cute? Um… have you ever seen a Disney movie? Or, you know, any other cartoon ever? They’re (almost) all cute (thanks for fucking up my theory, unwatchable Shrek franchise!) — not because they’re “oversimplifying the world,” you sanctimonious prick, but because cartoons do better when the leads don’t repulse children (thanks again, Shrek franchise!). And I’m glad that you found the old man lead (who is cranky, belligerent, borderline-hateful even) cute (or is that you oversimplifying your original review which explained that by saying “I loved it!” when everyone else says “I hated it!” and vice versa, you’ve made a name for yourself in the free-weeklies-no-one-cares-about market?).

Even the montage showing Carl’s marriage to childhood sweetheart Ellie (their wedding, companionship, XXXXXXXXXX, then XXXXXXXXXX), is over-sentimentalized. This silent interlude is no more daring than the utterly conventional Wall-E: It concludes with XXXXXXXXX. Sheesh. Although Chaplinesque music underscores these maudlin scenes, they’re not emotionally pure like Chaplin; they preen. Critics who forget that movies should be about people defend this reduction of human experience.

1) I replaced spoilers with “XXXXXXXXXX” so that Armond’s bullshit can be enjoyed while maintaining some mystery where plot is concerned.

2) Yes. The interlude wasn’t “daring.” What it was was emotionally true. I’m sure that someone like you goes to bed alone every night, wondering what love feels like. But, as someone who shares his life with someone who would bend over backwards for him (and vice versa), I can tell you that the unfolding of Carl and Ellie’s relationship was daring in its TRUTH. Go masturbate while crying, you goateed douchebag.

3) Chaplin never preened? Really. Do you mean Charlie or Oona?

4) Movies should be about people? Really? No wonder you hate Pixar! Their movies are about fish! Monsters! Cars! A rat! Bugs!

5) The reduction of human experience? Are you fucking high? It’s an 80-minute movie that takes YEARS to produce and you’re mad because it wasn’t unspooled in real time? Tell me how the 70-year version of the movie is.

When Up trivializes Carl and Russell’s loneliness—treating it to the same Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint as Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E, Monsters, Inc., A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 1 and 2—the predictability becomes cloying. And the inevitable shift to anthropomorphism—Carl and Russell float to South America, encountering a prehistoric bird and mysteriously “talking” dogs—is very nearly depressing. Almost as depressing as Wall-E. Despite some imaginative imagery (gray-blue night storms, dark yet vivid jungle scenes, compositional values J.J. Abrams knows nothing about), Up drops its emotional elements for chase mechanics and precious comedy. This way, Pixar disgraces and delimits the animated film as a mushy, silly pop form.

1) You should read some Joseph Campbell. Or hang yourself. And for more of the “Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint,” swing by a comic book store. Pick any one at random and, if the hero doesn’t win at the end, check the following issue.

2) Oh! Up has imaginative imagery! Well, too bad the imagery plays such a small part in A FUCKING CARTOON.

3) The reason the dogs talk is mysterious until 20 seconds later, when it is explained. Did you watch the movie while dreaming up ways to shit on it? Maybe if you had paid attention, you’d realize that the amount of “anthropomorphism” in this movie is NONE.

4) That’s right! Shit on Star Trek again, in case people forgot that you’re a contrarian by trade and a film critic by error.

5) Yeah! Fuck you for adding humor to this movie, Pixar! And chase mechanics! It should have been much sadder and far more maudlin! Why were no children bawling in my local theater!?!

6) I had to look up “delimits.” It means “limits.” I hate Armond White so much.

7) Saying that Pixar limits what animated films can be is like saying the Beatles ruined pop music with their records. Would Hollywood be as eager to dump trillions of dollars on cartoons if Pixar hadn’t shown them that solid, funny, well-animated all-ages movies will be embraced by everyone except Armond White?

Pixarism defines the backward taste for animation. Refuting Chuck Jones’ insistence that he didn’t create his great Warner Bros. cartoon for children, Pixarism domesticates and homogenizes animation—as if to preserve family values. The only exceptions have been Brad Bird’s Pixar movies The Incredibles and Ratatouille—both sumptuously executed in Bird’s belief that animation should show “how things feel rather than are. Indulging in the human aspect of being alive.” Yet their conceptual weak point was cuteness—same as Up’s glossing over Carl’s XXXXXXXXXX and that inconsistently imagined dog pack.

Did you just say that Pixar “domesticates and homogenizes animation”? Did you accidentally attend the screening of one of Michael Apted’s __ Up documentaries? At least you liked The Incredibles (which was so not about a Journey/Rescue/Return) (wait… yes it was) and Ratatouille (lots of people in that one, so you were OK with the anthropomorphism, right?). Oh! But those cartoons were also cute! Why couldn’t the rat have diseases? Why couldn’t some of the Incredibles have glaring birth defects?

Also, the dog pack wasn’t inconsistently imagined. You were. By your parents. Oh no I dih-ih!

After ripping-off Albert Lamorisse’s classic The Red Balloon, dispersing it into Carl’s thousands of colorful orbs, Pixar then literalizes the meaning of flight as a commercial icon: Up. Here, it’s simply the means to “adventures” and not an ecstatic elevation of individual identity. Last year, elitist film nerds forgot how Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon also dishonored Lamorisse’s beautiful tale—as they cynically overrated the entropic Wall-E.

Um… The Red Balloon is a classic. But just because lots of balloons appear in both movies, you cannot accuse Pixar of plagiarism. Just as I can’t accuse you of stealing some of you smartest observations from the sign held by that homeless man who hangs out in front of Filene’s Basement on Broadway and 79th (he also thought Dance Flick was terrific, I assume). Also, anyone else having a hard time reading that first sentence? The one that whines about how the floating house is merely the means to an end and not “an ecstatic elevation of individual identity”? Yeah. But kudos to Whitey for managing to insult film critics for not screaming “PLAGIARISM!!!!” at The Flight of the Red Balloon (I haven’t seen it, but hey — it has a red balloon in it, so it must be plagiarism). But here’s the best part of the review (and not just because it’s the end):

All this deflated cinema and Pixarism mischaracterizes what good animation can be, as in Coraline, Monster House, Chicken Little, Teacher’s Pet, The Iron Giant. Up’s aesthetic failure stems from its emotional letdown.

Coraline was gorgeous. The Iron Giant was phenomenal. But the other three movies Whitey holds up as examples of what animation should be?

Chicken Little?

Just looking at this promotional art makes me sad. Shitty animation, a fish in a football helmet, a duck that is ugly… uh, weren’t cartoons supposed to be about PEOPLE, Whitey? And boo to anthropomorphing?

Monster House?

This animation is terrible! Oh, wait. This is the Game Boy Advance version. Hang on.

OK. So, dogs wearing collars that allow their thoughts to be heard? That’s bad. Too anthropomorphic. But a house that eats children? THAT’S about PEOPLE!

And Teacher’s Pet?

That doesn’t even look like Clark Gable! Wait. Wrong one.

How is this appropriate for kids? Oh. Sorry. Here we go…

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that Armond “Whitey” White is so utterly filled with shit that every time he burps, four unblemished logs tumble to the floor. Have you ever seen animation this shitty? Couple that with the fact that (I think?) these things aren’t people! They’re… horribly drawn.

That’ll do it for me, but here are some of my favorite comments on the website Whitey posted his review on:

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you are an idiot
please turn your computer off and never turn it back on D-bag

by Your Mother

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Let me be the first to congratulate Armond on using his dislike for Up (which I haven’t seen) as an excuse to bash Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not every critic that can create such a penetrating dialectic between films involving balloons. I salute his speaking truth to power etc. etc.

by Vadim

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You are a joke.
Go watch another Friedberg-Seltzer movie.
Your opinions are about as worthless as you are.

by Matt

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hack. reviewer equivalent of a troll. trolling presumably to wring out clickthroughs. you randomly take a potshot at jj abrams half way through, and in case, you hadn’t noticed – you do a complete plot walkthrough, interspersed with meaningless verbiage. You moron.

pompous meaningless verbiage like:

“yet their conceptual weakpoint was cuteness..” if cuteness is in fact a weak point in an animation directed primarily at children, why is it conceptual? why say conceptual? Cuteness is not a ‘concept’ in the context of the animations you’re referring to – you utter, utter, utter moron.

by swimtwobirds

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Im not going to say anything because you clearly get off to being a retard.

by Duke

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Well said, everyone but duke.

To read the (many, many) other comments, click here.

And to you, Armond, I say: Please to shut the fuck up.

Good day.

*Googling takes so much time and energy!