Upside Down

Honestly, I learned about the film only from advertising. After watching the trailer, I was surprised, it's not every day you see a high-quality, well planned picture. The idea seemed to me interesting enough, the music is great, and the cast is excellent, well, I decided to go to this motion picture, hoping to see something new and unusual. I can not say that the film is completely lived up to my expectations.

Think of all the visuals will love movies, because each frame is similar to an independent picture, and it is no exaggeration and sarcasm. The two worlds are quite different, they are difficult to compare, but they are both beautiful in their own way. One world - the sunny metropolis, second - steam punk gloomy town. Honestly, I can say that this film can inspire a fabulous art objects and musical masterpieces.

In the soundtrack of authorship Audiomachine I fell immediately after watching the trailer. He's not intrusive, but maintains an atmosphere of the film.

The first ten minutes of the film the audience tell the universe itself and its rules. All these beautiful drawings and attached personnel. All anything, but this story seems to be dull and boring. Such a beginning influenced by my perception of the story the hero's life. Therefore tie melodrama seemed to tighten, although the film does not seem boring.

Most of all I "hit" the ending picture. Get the feeling that cut out a epilogue and then leave all the work. In my opinion, the trailer was much more interesting movie, I do not know, perhaps because he was more intrigued audience, or because he was more dynamic. In general, received a quality, beautiful, do not strain your brain melodrama. In general, to rejoice: French film happy ending!

If there is one thing "Upside Down" has going for it, it's the visuals. Good God, the film is gorgeous to look at. We've seen hints of a similar visual style in the "Total Recall" remake and "Inception," but the filmmakers milk the unique look in "Upside Down" in as many frames as possible. At times, the visual puns can be a bit too obnoxious to the point it becomes stupid, but overall, they portray the "dual gravity" idea really creatively. Of course, with fantasy films like this that operate within its own set of rules, you usually have to ignore the implausibilities and just go along for the ride.

However, the story is a whole different matter. As the film opens to explain the world's rules through voice over rather than showing it on screen, I knew I was in for trouble. Within the first five minutes, exposition after exposition is thrown to the audience at such a quick pace it's almost impossible to keep up. It also doesn't help that the dialogue is downright embarrassing. With the film's over-reliance on narration, "Upside Down" leaves little time for its characters to develop which consequently makes the story as a whole feel contrived.

For example, the love interest that grows between the film's two main characters comes out of nowhere. Unfortunately, actors Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst don't have the chemistry to sell their newfound romance authentically as well. Every story development feels fake and mechanical where it should feel natural. Furthermore, the film lacks any real climax, so the last 20 minutes where everything should build up to a resounding resolution, instead, just fizzles out to an anti-climatic, deus-ex-machina-like ending as if the story didn't know how else to end.

"Upside Down" has a great idea that should have been a lot better than it ended up being. However, it's obvious the filmmakers were more interested in focusing on the visuals than actually telling a good story. "Upside Down" proves that as awesome as visuals can be, it can't overshadow incompetent storytelling and a weak plot.

I like sci fi movies when they are a metaphor of something else. Or maybe they do not pretend to be a metaphor and it is just me who can't avoid to see it that way.

And I like movies when they show who the director is.

When I first start watching the movie, I thought it was a Russian film. And that the worlds were a metaphor from the cold war.

But it didn't go deep into this analogy. But, it did develop the topic that the protagonist was from an inferior world trying to have the privilege to enjoy the superior world. The inferior world is poor. The superior world is rich, developed, and dominates the inferior world, even when this superior/inferior distinction is arbitrary.

And I loved the scenes in the cafe Dos Mundos, with couples dancing a tango "el último café". Yes. The director, Solanas, is argentinean, from the land of tango. And yes, he has this vision of inferior versus superior world. I live in a country from the inferior world. And I know, just like the protagonist, that this is just an arbitrary distinction.

Solanas is like the protagonist. He comes from the inferior world, but now lives with the privileges from the superior world.

This movie made me think about my situation. Working in Latin America for a Multinational company, doing the work just to see how the "superior" world takes the benefits.

Good sci-fi movie for us, the inhabitants from the inferior world...

The film's setting is magnificently beautiful, there are a lot of stunning ideas and images and the main story is good enough to make the two-planet world look real. The one and the only one flaw of the film is that it pretends to be a sci-fi film rather than a fairy-tale in an unusual setting. If you judge it as a sci-fi you will find a lot of "how could it be" things that tear the imaginary world apart. The actors are great and it is fun to see Spall as a protagonist friend rather than foe. Both Sturges and Dunst are wonderful. So if you want to watch a sci-fi film you better avoid "Upside Down". This is a love story set in the fantasy world. No more, but no less.

This movie looked so promising based on it's trailer. Not to mention the visuals were absolutely gorgeous. It had this fantasy quality about it without looking fake; even though you absolutely know its green screen. Also, the plot premise was such an interesting idea; star-crossed lovers separated by the science of their universe. I was excited to watch it because I thought It'd have an "inception-like" quality. HOWEVER, I was horribly wrong.

The character development was just sort of...there. And no real relationship ever seemed to develop between the characters. It went from WE LOVE EACH OTHER to I DON'T KNOW YOU to WE LOVE EACH OTHER again without anything real happening. The romance has a bad back story and the sudden realizations were too flimsy. Adam was adorable in his endless attempts at trying to get to Eden. But thats all. They were so flat in the end and nothing interesting happened. Not to mention, the excitement factor was a bust and it was clichéd and awfully expressed in the end. It felt like I was watching a poem told with gorgeous figurative language, but lacking any substance, heart, or care. The movie needed a better plot, it needed more events, it needed more character development, and it needed a lot of polishing up. Since it's main point of drama was in the romance and even THAT was awfully put together, all in all, it was flop.

However, it was an okay watch and again, the visuals of such a disorientating world totally threw me off whack. For the next ten minutes after the movie, I felt like things should be floating upward and I should be upside down...it was weird but showed that I actually did get immersed into the world.

My recommendation? GET A BETTER WRITER