Patema Inverted

It's an amazing movie because it's story line is incredible...

It's been a while since I've seen a descent anime movie. I sometimes think my expectations have been too high.

This is a movie set well after an accident that inverted gravity for a lot of the world causing people to literally fall into the sky. Years later the survivors of this accident live in two worlds below and above ground. Each world fearing the other.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. I felt it was brilliantly executed and the massive twist at the end then took me ages to work out. The credits were nearly coming to the end before I went "OMIGOD!!" as the meaning of the ending suddenly occurred to me.

Great!

In the midst of rehashed Hollywood story lines that we have seen a million times nowadays, it's nice to see something as original as "Patema Inverted" as far as the premise and scenarios go. It is a very interesting and mind-bending take on different groups of people who are affected by gravity in a different way. It also features nice chemistry between the two leads, breath-taking and detailed animation, one of the nicest end credits songs I have ever heard and a great twist ending that I did not see coming, along with the other twist that happens earlier in the film. If you are looking for something totally new and fresh, definitely check out "Patema Inverted."

I used to be a fan of anime, a huge one too... but the more good live-action movies one sees, the less one is impressed with anime writing, plots and characters. I'm set for life on screaming 15-year-olds, thank you.

Then again, once in a while a concept anime comes along that just completely blows your wig off, and Patema Inverted is one of these. The main characters are a pair of 15-year- old... dang it. All right, it's not completely original, and sometimes even bad, like when it has an obnoxiously evil general right out of Gundam Wing for a villain. Fortunately, the central couple are very modest with tears and histrionics, which is all the more impressive considering the terrifying anti-gravity hijinks they go through (a "69" version of Castle in the Sky, to put it in very general terms).

The movie opens with the sight of a large city over radio transmissions. The voices begin to talk more quickly, then transition into an outright panic, and then, we see the buildings detach from the ground and fall up into the sky, in ruins.

Patema is an adolescent girl born after this tragedy. She lives in an tunnel community deep underground, and likes to explore the "forbidden zone" - an uninhabited area where for some reason, all the EXIT signs are on the floor and railings attach to the ceiling. One day, she finds a colossal vertical shaft and notices that in this shaft, dust motes travel up.

She decides to follow the motes and explore, and discovers a world outside, covered in grass and trees, where the sky is visible and the stars shine at night. It's too bad that gravity here is the opposite of hers, and she's basically clinging to the world's ceiling for dear life, with the sky waiting to swallow her as soon as her grip gives out. Then, things get wild.

Direction and visual design are superb, and exceedingly creative with the possibilities of inverted gravity, especially when two people - one inverted, one straight - clasp onto one another. In fact, maybe a little too good - there were points where I kept imagining streams of vertigo puke spew out of my face and fly into the clouds. If you're scared of heights, you will sweat more watching this than any horror movie.

Did you ever watch Memento and then spend a couple of hours thinking backwards or expecting to forget everything any second? This type of lasting head-job is something I got very strongly watching Patema. Hell, I'm typing this in Notepad right now and automatically wondering how many lines I can write before they come unstuck from the top of the window and crash down.

Without further spoilers, I give Patema Inverted the highest possible grade. I only just have one additional complaint: have any of these people ever heard of a rope harness?

I don't want to spoil anything but when I saw the concept of this movie I did not think much of it. I figured I'd go watch it on the strength of the fact that it won some award in Ireland. I just saw the North American Premiere and I was totally shocked by it. The only review I had read of this movie was that it was "OK".

Folks, this movie is better than OK, it is fantastic. It is not at all what I thought it would be and the concept of "inverted" is key here. They keep on changing what's real and what's not, and your idea of what reality is switches back and forth several times. They have a few really big reveals in the film that kind of blow you away. I don't even want to say what other movies this is like because it would give it away. But similarities aside, it still manages to be original and refreshing. Just be prepared to have your mind blown several times in the course of the movie all the way to the ending.

There is another movie called Upside Down that came out around the same time as this, maybe a bit earlier. I have never seen it but the reviews on it are terrible. These guys may not be the "original" upside down movie but they certainly did a great job with the concept, probably better based on the reviews.

Do yourself a favor and watch it, and do not read any plot synopses on it beforehand. Don't spoil the surprises.