This movie was so close to being a 5 out of 5.  If you have seen this movie, keep reading and I will tell you why.  If you have not seen this movie, do yourself a favor and see it, and then proceed to finish reading this review.  This does contain spoilers.  I am so bothered by one certain aspect of the movie that I am going to get straight to the point without any preceding babble about the rivalry between Pixar and Dreamworks and me choosing which I like better (Pixar) by weighing out their top movies (Ratatouille and Wall-E beat the shit out of Shrek and Kung-Fu Panda).  This is a straight-to-the-point review because I saw it last night and I have to vent.

First off, the movie is amazing.  It really is.  Especially in 3D.  It’s visually incredible, the voice acting is top-notch, and the story will have you balling your eyes out at times and laughing your ass off at others.  Once again, if you haven’t seen it, GO SEE IT.  There is, however, one major plot hole that I can’t get around.  Here it goes:

Ok, so remember when Carl and the kid first meet  Charles Muntz on Paradise Falls?  It was a pretty awesome moment.  They get to go into Muntz’s blimp and check out all the findings from his adventures and Charles gets to eat a meal with his childhood hero.  Muntz’s reason for being on Paradise Falls for so long was that he was hunting a giant bird that everyone accused him of fabricating tales about (oddly enough, Carl and the kid were able to find the bird without any hunting experience or training whatsoever.  Funny how that happens, right?).  So Muntz is in the middle of telling the story about how he plans on capturing the bird and bringing it back to the United States after decades of searching so he can finally clear his name and let people know that he wasn’t lying.  He actually stated that he wanted to bring it back alive; that he had no plans of actually killing or harming the bird.  Then, for reasons of simply creating conflict for the storyline, Carl attempts to keep the fact that he and the kid already had befriended the bird a secret, as if Muntz’s plan was to capture the bird, kill it, and exploit it in the United States.  Up to this point in the story, Muntz is seen as a good guy; an explorer who was wrongly accused of lying and is desperate to rightfully clear his name.  Suddenly, the plot instantly points the finger at Muntz as the bad guy and a poacher of some sort.  The story then continues with Muntz vs. Carl and the kid, the winning prize being the bird, whether it would be set free or taken to the United States.

This is what bothered me about the movie so damn much.  Muntz was not a bad guy.  The reason he was trying to sabotage Carl and the kid was because he was under the impression they were out to capture the bird and bring it back and claim credit for it themselves, ignoring the decades of work put in by Muntz.  So not only was Muntz misunderstood and completely under the wrong impression of Carl and the kid, but he even dies at the end.

I know what the Pixar writers are capable of doing.  Did you see Ratatouille? Did you see Wall-E?  Those are possibly the greatest animated movies of all-time.  Their story lines were perfect.  The fact that the writers made such a huge mistake almost ruined the entire movie for me.  True, it’s hard for me to complain about such fiction when it’s about an old man who ties a shitload of balloons to his house and successfully floats all the way to South America, where there are communicative dogs and a villain who according to his timeline, was probably close to, if not older than, 100 years of age.  But in every fictional film there is still a realm of fictional reality, and if the plot crosses the boundary of that fictional reality, it bothers the shit out of me.  The fact that later in the movie, the dogs even fly planes and have swooping attacks on the house, that doesn’t even bother me as much.

If the storyline stayed within the realm of fictional reality set up by the plot, the movie would have been over very quickly without any major conflict.  After hearing Muntz’s story, Carl should have said, “Holy shit! Really? I totally just captured the bird by accident! Let’s go clear your name! I mean, I’d like to set my house down at the Falls so I can fulfill my promise to my dead wife, but that could just be a stop on the way! We can finally clear your name and then I can come back and live the rest of my peaceful life! Yay!”  Even with that, they could have still had a great conflict.  Muntz told Carl that there had been explorers there before that have tried to hunt the bird and take credit.  Let’s say that a pack of about half a dozen explorers come that want to kill the bird and it’s species to make a dress out of the feathers for some random queen or something.  Like if poachers came and they were the bad guys.  There is just so much that they could have done to fix this plot hole, but instead they just continued almost as if it was due to laziness.

I know this review was long, and I apologize profusely to your newly-exhausted eyes.  Reviews shouldn’t be this long and whiny.  I just had to vent.  And I know it sounds like the movie was ruined for me, but I still give it a 4 out of 5.  It really is a fantastic movie.  If you can look past this plot hole, then you will certainly fall in love with the film.  I am going to now take a deep breath and maybe have a beer.  Until next time, thanks for reading.

-The Dune Review