Upside Down

I went to a midnight screening of this last night. It's hit and miss, with more misses than hits, unfortunately. My wife said it was a "terrible movie", giving the reason that it was just a "bad story" and "boring" for the most part. I partially agree with her, although I appreciate the idea of the movie more than her, but we both agree that they could have done more with the story of this unique idea.

There are biblical elements to it, which I liked (her name is Eden, his name is Adam - they love each other but there are rules set out that they have to follow etc.), and the idea of two gravities is especially creative, but there are slight plotholes and the whole thing seems rather small when it should have been huge. It's essentially a love story. There needed to be more money shots and "wow" moments, but the ones I did receive were nicely done.

Jim Sturgess is horrible, and he displays an American accent here, and it all feels very staged (his voiceover is also trying too hard to be epic and it falls flat for me). Kirsten Dunst is fine, but underused. Timothy Spall is awesome, as always.

I loved the parts when Adam is running from the people "up top" and he jumps into the water, removes his "inverse matter" metal blocks and instantly lifts from the water into his "down below" water. Just a great idea, and I loved it. Executed well (but could have been better). I think, overall, that Upside Down just suffers from its budget restraints more than anything. It also ends rather suddenly after not a lot of chasing or adventure (which I was expecting from the marketing). It ends well, but me and my wife guessed that they would have a baby and that started a discussion about what the baby would be; down below gravity or up top gravity? or a mix of both which would mean the baby would just hover in mid air? or can the baby switch it on or off....it's all very interesting from this perspective.

As far as science-fiction ideas go, it's very good, but as for execution, it's just so-so. But I don't want to paint it up as that bad, because it's not (it's no In Time, for example), they just decided to tell the story from the less awe inspiring angle than someone like Spielberg would have.

C+

It was going along okay until those last five minutes. Holy shit. Easily the worst five minutes in any film this year. They perfect the formula, the corporate bad guys COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR, and she's pregnant with twins (even though we never see them take a layer of clothing off, let alone have sex)!

Hooray!



(C+)

Sturgess was horrible in this. The love story didn't worked very well either. A missed opportunity.

ʇıɥs

Upside Down is a rare original sci-fi movie that fully commits to it's premise in a logical manner. While I can imagine some viewers might consider the romance storyline to be hokey, I found it to have a fairytale-like quality that was utterly beguiling. An unsung gem! *A*

lol

I recorded this movie a few weeks ago thinking it would be the first time I'm seeing it. Apparently I have already seen it. Bummer.

Peter Sobczynski's review from RogerEbert.com does a good job of capturing the charm of Upside Down.