Threatened with the forcible removal from his house, the last remaining one in the midst of a high-rise construction zone, Carl takes the drastic step of attaching thousands of helium balloons to his house so he can fly off in search of the adventure he and his beloved departed wife Ellie never got to take, the journey to Paradise Falls in the footsteps, or should I say dirigible trail, of famed explorer Charles Munz (Christopher Plummer (voice)).  Munz, disgraced after he returned with the skeleton of a bird that scientists later accused him of assembling from unrelated  bones set off for Paradise Falls when Carl and Ellie were just kids vowing to prove he was not a fraud.

After discovering unintentional stowaway Russell, whom Carl had previously sent literally on a snipe hunt, and some encounters with dangerous weather, Carl and Russell find themselves in Paradise Falls and towing Carl’s house to just the point Ellie had envisioned.

During the course of their journey, the mismatched pair runs into Doug (Bob Peterson (voice)), one of Munz’ dogs outfitted with a collar that translates his thoughts, as well as a specimen of the  bird, whom Russell names Kevin, Munz has been hunting all these years.

The core of this film isn’t Pixar’s stunning, as usual, animation, nor is it the plot.  No, what makes ‘Up’ a good film is character development.  Both Carl and Russell unintentionally end up on a journey that brings them more connection with the world around them and with a way of living that makes them happy rather than the way of living that has become accustomed (Carl) or what is seen as expected (Russell).

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

* Note: While Pixar released this film in 3-D the showing I saw was standard projection.

Carl Allen (Carrey) is the definition of a drone. His life is a well-worn path consisting of work, the video store, and falling asleep on his couch. His wife left him over a year ago, his job as a junior loan officer is a dead end that only encourages his tendency to say no to life. A chance meeting with Nick (John Michael Higgins), whom we are given little information about and are meant to assume is “an old friend,” and Nick’s raves about how the power of yes changed his life push Carl to attend a motivational seminar by Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp) during which he is singled out.

Bundley pushes Carl into making “a covenant” with himself: say yes to every opportunity that comes along. What follows is a series of experiences some absurd – like the homeless man who ends up stranding Carl with no working cell phone, no cash, and a car with no gas in a park nowhere near Carl’s house – some plausible and rewarding – the aforementioned stranding connects Carl with Allison (Zooey Deschanel) who, in truth, is the film’s moral and spiritual center to the pliable Carl.

Carl’s embrace of Bundley’s theory of life, open yourself to yes, embrace the possibilities, leads implausibly to an encounter with the FBI as Carl’s activities – learning to fly, to speak Korean, spontaneously taking a trip to Lincoln Nebraska with Allison – seem to suggest a pattern of terrorist activities. This implausible encounter is the movie’s linchpin, the one on which its thematic lesson turns, and it’s the most egregious example of the film violating its own internal logic. Yes, people can change but how likely to motivate you out of stupor is an encounter with someone you haven’t seen for a number of years, particularly when that person closes out your meeting by throwing a rock through the front window at your place of employment and running from security?

The premise of ‘Yes Man’ is more than timely in this era of hope and “yes, we can” political change. Unfortunately, a thin script, strange casting (Carrey looks every minute of 46 which makes his romance with the 28 year-old Deschanel a tad bit creepy) and direction (Danny Masterson as one of Carl’s friends goes from over-grown party boy to slime ball in less than 20 minutes of screen time), and what is basically a walk-on by Jim Carrey squander what could have been a great teaching-through-pop-culture moment.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Resources

• Trailer
• Jim Carrey on IMBD

But The Middleman isn’t just some dime-store comic book property, it’s a fun, literate and self-conscious treatment of semi-secret agents, superheroes and villains, a pop-culture confiture that rivals anything Joss Whedon and the Gilmore Girls ever offered up in zither’s fast-paced talk-fests. While I’ve not read the comic book, it is said to be ingenious.

Grillo-Marxuach is also the creator and veteran producer of such shows as “Medium” (2005), “Lost” (2004), and the short-lived “Boomtown” (2002). Middleman is probably best characterized as a reprise of the original Patrick McNee iteration of The Avengers, but updated and self-deconstructing as Grillo-Marxuach and his team name drop cult memes as varied as Stuart Gordon and The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency without skipping a beat. Middleman is admirably tongue-in-cheek fare for an audience that can appreciate the absurdity of modern ‘reality’ television as well as the buddy-dramedy Secret Agent shows of yesteryear, from ‘Wild, Wild West’ to , yes, ‘Get Smart’.

Though the parent network, ABC has picked-up a few similarly quirk-filled shows during the past several years (‘Dirty Sexy Money‘, ‘Lost’ and ‘Pushing Daisies‘ come to mind) it has chosen to bury Middleman on ABC Family along with the provocative ‘Kyle XY’. One would think that clones, robots and The 700 Club wouldn’t mix well, yet ABC Family has chosen to program all of these shows on the same network.

Why ABC Family would relegate an ambitious new genre show to a para-religous network is anyone’s guess, but the results of moving an engaging, family-friendly show from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on in the gulag of para-religious basic cable can only be interpreted as willful sabotage.

Fact of the matter is that the real audience for this show would be the comic-book savvy Buffistas, Browncoats and former Farscape fans, if not the fans of SciFi Channel’s ‘Eureka‘.

Middleman stars Matt Keeslar in the titular role as a gadget-wielding superhero of sorts who is out to defend the world from mad scientists, criminal organizations and rogue daytime television hosts with the assistance of his able lieutenant, Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales).

In the first episode, Wendy and the Middleman go up against a PG-rated tentacled Hentai monster and cybernetically enhanced apes, in that order. Subsequent episodes feature Lucha Libre Wresters, Prada-wearing Succubi, Jewelery-eating aliens and evil daytime talk-show hosts. The dialogue is fast and pithy.