Movie Review — Up

Up was one of the films I watched on the long (13.5 hours!) flight from Los Angeles to Sydney in mid-February.

When it came out last summer, I was on the fence about seeing Up in the theater.  Just being computer animated isn’t enough to make me want to see it; there have been some really crappy films coming out that are computer animated.  (And being in 3D is already feeling like just a gimmick intended to suck an extra $5-10 out of my pocket.)  It’s from Pixar, so I expected a certain level of acceptable quality, but as an animated film, it holds the expectation of being aimed at kids.

Ultimately, as ticket prices have gone up, my desire to see films in the theater has gone down. Unless it’s a special effects films, I don’t bother.  Sorry, but a rom-com is going to work just as well on the home screen, and an animated film won’t have screaming kids in the audience when I watch it at home.  So ultimately, Up couldn’t overcome those issues and I didn’t see it in the theater.

(I did see Coraline in 3D last year, and non-3D versions of Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, Brüno, 2012, and a couple other films.)

(Okay, I just broke something in my head, imagining Brüno in 3D.)

Thoughts:

• Due to the computer animated nature of the film, I had to compare it to Avatar.  And Avatar comes out wanting.  Even in this film, primarily aimed at kids, there are layers and twists to the plot that Avatar can’t even approach.
• I find myself increasingly irritated at the character designs they use for some of these computer animated films.  This wasn’t as bad as, say, Hoodwinked!, but I really prefer the classic Disney style where the characters look like stylized humans rather than carved putty.
• The “pull the floating house” stunt would have been more effective if I hadn’t already seen it done in Fables.  (But the idea would probably have been in the works before the Fables story came out, so a neat idea is still a neat idea.)
• Doug’s “squirrel” obsession gave me no end of delight last Labor Day weekend (before I even saw the film), when my boyfriend kept seeing Yard Sale signs and would break off conversation in the same way.  In fiction, there is sometimes much truth.
• The house being isolated among the newer construction echoes an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, “No Parking Hare” (although that one took it to even more extreme places than floating the house away, if that’s possible).

The character of Russell, however, really brought the movie home for me.  I’m not sure they intended for him to be read this way, but to me, Russell was emblematic of the problems I remember with the Boy Scouts when I was a teenager.  Russell comes from a family where his father is largely absent, and he has glommed onto the Scouting program as the major focus in his life.  In theory, this is good, but in practice, he has acquired a huge collection of badges which are supposed to represent achievements but which really represent not much more than a list of boxes checked off, until he is down to only a single box remaining.  For all the things he has allegedly done to get these badges, he doesn’t seem to have really learned a whole lot, or rather, he has learned a whole lot but with no way to bring it into a cohesive whole, he has not retained much of it.  Russell is after his “Helping the Elderly” badge, but only to fill a hole on his sash, but because he understands why he should do this.

When I was a teen, I was a member of Cashmere, Washington’s “Gold Troop 1”, said to be the oldest Boy Scout troop west of the Mississippi.  A classmate of mine was the scoutmaster’s son.  Randy achieved Eagle Scout at like age 15, quickly followed by the various Palm awards and whatever else could be had there.  I only got to Life Scout rank (one below Eagle), dropping out when I was 16 or 17.  Now, I’m not saying that Randy was like I’m describing Russell, and I’m certainly not saying that he had an easy ride as the Scoutmaster’s son (although I think it would be safe to claim that he did have more ready access than most kids did to resources which enabled him to achieve those awards).  I’m just saying that I see in Russell some of what drove me away from Scouting all those years ago, but which other kids thrive on, and I wonder what that thriving gets them, in the long run.

(Incidentally, I had the top GPA in my high school class, and Randy was second.  The thrust for achievement is by no means limited to Scouting badges.  And my boyfriend was also a Life Scout who dropped before hitting Eagle, like me, and our friend Kent is yet another such former-Life Scout.  Odd.)
 

Support the Scouts, but not the Scouts

A couple weeks ago, I had to go into the local Boy Scouts store, because Rusty needed green epaulets for his Seattle Boys of Leather uniform.  I was initially leery of going in, because I’ve been so indoctrinated over the past decade that the Boy Scouts of America is evil due to their policies regarding gays and atheists (both as Scouts and as Scoutmasters).

Background: I was a Boy Scout.  I started as a Cub Scout in Waterville, Washington (population of about 1000 people at the time), continued into Webelos and Boy Scouts in Vancouver, WA, and then further into Boy Scouts in Cashmere, WA (population of about 3000, and they claim their Scout Troop is the oldest one west of the Mississippi).  I dropped out around my senior year of high school because Scout meetings and activities were taking time away from other things I wanted to do.  (No gay angle there, although I do retain some resentment that I had to choose between Boy Scouts and high school Drama Club; the latter took such a big time commitment that I couldn’t have done Boy Scouts, not unlike if I had been in school sports.)

Aside: I was a Life Scout when I dropped out of Boy Scouts.  Not an Eagle (one step below), and therefore not worth shit.  If you don’t achieve at least Eagle Scout — and probably the various awards beyond that — then you have no status, no value.  It’s Eagle Scout or nothing.

After a couple minutes in the store — and being helped by the yummy, bearded Scouts store staffer, in his shorts despite the rainy weather that day <grin> — I remembered what gets lost in the midst of our indoctrination: that there are Boy Scouts (the people) and there is the Boy Scouts of America (the organization).

The organization sets the policies, and is driven by its own religious, political, and monetary goals, and those can be quite discriminatory.  We are quite right to fight this organization, to try to get it to change (either from outside or from pressure from within, via the individual Scouts and their Troops).  It is right and just to protest against the organization and its policies, to change or withhold our donations to the national organization, and to lobby for it to move into the 21st century.

But we need to remember that individual Troops (and Explorer Posts) may have their own preferences.  The adult leaderships of those small units of the larger organization may not agree with the national direction, and may work contrary to it where they can (that “changing from within” thing).  The individual Scouts themselves may disagree with those policies, or in many cases may be oblivious to them (often because of their ages).  Some of them (Scouts or adults) may be gay or atheist or whatever.

And thus we need to be careful to direct our ire and and focus, keeping them on the national organization and not on the local Troops and the individual Scouts.  These Scouts are being taught valuable life lessons and survival skills, and in my experience, are typically not being indoctrinated into adhering to these national policies.  The best thing that we can do is to support the local groups and individuals while at the same time, trying to change things on an organizational level.  Make donations to the local Troops rather than on the national (or regional) level.  Volunteer your time and skills to help and teach the boys.  Participate in their fundraisers and charity drive.

And show your approval and support for the Scouts, but not for the Boy Scouts of America.

(And yes, you should read complete parallels from this to the idea of supporting the Troops but not the War!)

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Updated on Febrruay 7, 2011

I can’t find online support for the Cashmere troop being “oldest” troop beyond being the oldest in central Washington (although the “gold troop” designation indicates something significant), but here’s a nice story from the Wenatchee World newspaper from the troop’s 100th anniversary in 2010.  Wikipedia indicates at least two US-based troops from 1909, in Vermont and Oklahoma (the latter would be “west of the Mississippi”, so there’s clearly more to the story.  Regardless, a 1910 founding certainly makes it darn early!