PG-13, 100 min.
Director/Writer: Juan
Solanas
Starring: Jim Sturgess,
Kirsten Dunst, Timothy Spall, Blu Mankuma, James Kidnie
“Upside Down” is a science
fiction film that makes me think of Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity. If
Newton came up with his theory, but was unable to connect it with why the apple
fell on his head, then his story would have some semblance of the science
fiction theories explored in this movie.
The movie depicts a universe
in which two planets exist in the same orbit, with their surfaces just miles
apart at one point. Why these planets don’t rotate upon their axis’ I don’t
know. It seems like this wouldn’t work, but it was too inconvenient for the
filmmakers to explain their story without the planets’ surfaces matching up at
one fixed point. Every object on each planet is beholden only to the gravity of
the planet from which they originated. In other words, if apple from planet A
is placed on the surface of planet B, it will appear to fall up until it
descends back on to the surface planet A. This makes for some awesome visuals,
but some very complicated plot points. I could follow these points, but it’s
overly complicated for the story they’re trying to tell, which boils down to a
Beatles philosophy of love conquering all and changing the world.
Boy from planet A meets Girl
from planet B—in a ridiculously unlikely circumstance—and they fall in love.
They come up with a way to pass from one atmosphere to the other by climbing a
rope from one planet’s high point to the other. They still have to fight their
own planet’s gravity, however. In order to do this without a tether, antimatter
from the planet you want to visit is required, but there are undesirable side
effects, not the least of which being that one planet is the rich paradise,
while the other is poor and downtrodden. Of course, it is illegal for citizens
of planet A to travel to planet B.
But let’s deal with this
antimatter thing. I’m no scientist, but it seems movies are really beginning to
stretch the purposes of this very real material. Antimatter has become a lazy
way to make something mundane sound more exciting and futuristic. Be it a
really huge nuclear explosion or, as it’s used here, a counterweight. That’s
essentially how the antimatter is used here. He uses it to weigh him down to
the opposite planet’s gravitational pull.
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