{2jtab: Movie Review}

Upside Down is not a very good romance as far as storybook fables go.  It is; however, fairly strong and needlessly complicated science fiction.  For my money, I’ll take the latter any day of the week.  After all, this is a concept film and – in order for any part of the starry-eyed romance between Jim Sturgess and Kristen Dunst to work – the backdrop of two parallel planets with different gravity fields has to work.  And it largely does, making this an interesting (if flawed) film for anyone needing a late night syfy fix.

Juan Diego Solanas' Upside Down is an obvious metaphor.  One planet, known as Up Top, thinks it is superior to its opposite, known as Down Below, and has enslaved it.  People are forbidden - by their own gravitational fields and their governments - are forbidden to travel between the two worlds.  They can; however, see each other.  Imagine looking up at your ceiling and seeing … other people staring back at you.

Welcome to the twin worlds of Upside Down.  The fairy tale begins and ends with a laughably off-putting narration from Sturgess as Adam, the boy who has fallen in love with a girl from Up Top.  As a youth his frequent visits to the top of a nearby mountain put him within shouting distance of a girl named Eden (Dunst) who has climbed to the top of a similar mountain in her world.  They fall in love and he figures out a way for them to visit each other.  When they are unexpectedly caught, Eden falls back to her planet.  Adam believes her to be dead.  Turns out, she’s only suffered amnesia.

Years pass.  The two worlds have been bridged by a huge corporation called TransWorld.  This is where Adam and Eden work.  While the citizens are still banned from crossing the gravitational fields that hold them to their own worlds, once Adam discovers that Eden is still alive he risks everything – including his own life – to get her back.  Co-starring Timothy Spall, Upside Down is a simple story wrapped inside an exciting environment.  Sure, it breaks its own rules at times but it’s at least a bit watchable.

Visually, Solanas and his team have outdone themselves.  Upside Down is a breathtaking beauty of mountainous terrains and surreal cloud seas at odds with cold and gray dystopian elements.  Up Top is futuristic with its rich technology and Down Below is barren with industrialization and energy lows.  Oh, it’s all CGI but it does work in creating a sort of Charles Dickens-like world that separates the haves from the have-nots and reminds the citizens of either world of this at every turn.

It’s the story department where Upside Down falters.  This is easy, easy and all-too-familiar material.  It’s also paper-thin.  The characters – including the actors – are a bit too stilted and lifeless for the backdrop’s own good, resigned to simply looking pretty or pouting at their lot in life.  The freshness of the twin worlds quickly wears off with Sturgess and Dunst in lead roles swapping spit and hokey lines of dialogue.  There’s no chemistry here; nothing that really registers.

Upside Down is airy science fiction escapism but – with a cheeky love story guiding it along – it’s simply not good for much else.  Writer/director Solanas has definitely crafted a visual spectacle, but the film’s beauty rarely coexists with the film’s romantic core. The visuals too often come first and that causes the story to suffer in a major way.  This is for Syfy enviro-junkies at best.  All others should look elsewhere for an evening’s entertainment.

{2jtab: Film Details}

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
Runtime: 100 mins
Director: Juan Solanas
Writer: Juan Solanas
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jim Sturgess, Timothy Spall
Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Romance
Tagline: Two worlds. One future.
Memorable Movie Quote: "Up-top, they always win, And down-below, we always fail."
Distributor: Millennium Entertainment
Official Site: upsidedown-movie.com
Release Date: March 15, 2013
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: June 25, 2013

Synopsis: Ever since Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) fell in love as teens, their bond has faced astronomical odds. The pair are separated not just by social class and a political system bent on keeping them apart, but also by a freak planetary condition: they live on twinned worlds with gravities that pull in opposite directions—he on the poverty-stricken planet below, she on the wealthy, exploitative world above. Their budding but illicit romance screeches to a tragic halt when interplanetary-border patrol agents catch them and Eden suffers an apparently fatal fall. But when, ten years later, Adam learns she is alive and working at a vast corporation whose towering headquarters connects their planets, he sets out on a dangerous quest to infiltrate the company and the upper world to reconnect with her. Upside Down is a visually stunning romantic adventure that poses the question: what if love was stronger than gravity?

{2jtab: Blu-ray Review}

Component Grades Movie Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray Experience

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - June 25, 2013
Screen Formats: 2.35:1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1; English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD); DVD copy; Blu-ray 3D
Region Encoding: A

The film yields both a 2D and 3D 1080p video transfer.  The 2D transfer is quite the beauty. The film-like texture of the transfer definitely lends itself well for the film’s up-close shots that rely mostly on facial texture and color consistency on costumes and close-by sets.  The color palette shifts dramatically throughout the film. It's very cold in spots, dominated by blues and grays, but also almost resplendent and heavenly in others, defined by bright whites and golds and reds.  The CGI sometimes appears a bit fake, but mostly works wonders, due to Solanas and his cinematographer getting some truly amazing shots that make the film come alive.  The 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio track shifts focus and changes angles almost as much as the camera does.  Dialogue is never contained to one channel, while environmental noises come out of every single speaker.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• None

Special Features:

The Blu-Ray comes with both 2D and 3D transfers and a handful of bonus material that’s actually viewable in 3D, which makes the disc something I’d almost suggest buying.  If only it were a bit better, though.  Most of the special features cover the film's origins, the picture's uniqueness, the core plot elements, supporting themes and metaphors, Juan Solanas' work and style, cast and the characters they play, shooting stunt and special effect scenes, and solving the many technical challenges necessary to create a seamless and visually arresting picture.  With a healthy cut of deleted scenes, this one might be worth looking at a deep, deep, deep discount buy.

• The Making Of (25 min)
• Deleted Scenes (2 min)
• History of the World (3 min)
• Juan and Jim (1 min)
• 12 Preliminary Sketches
• Tango Storyboards (2 min)
• Missing Forest Storyboards (2 min)
• Sage Mountain Previz (3 min)
• Office Previz (3 min)
• Final Shot Previz (3 min)

{2jtab: Trailer}

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