What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!

What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!

What's up with this crappy ripoff of Up?

Genre:	Adventure Comedy
Directed by:	Everton Rodrigues Michelle Gabriel
Produced by:	Ale McHaddo Mikka Almeida
Written by:	Ale McHaddo (story) Daniel Turini Vitor Brandt
Starring:	Vagner Santos Paulo Avila Luciana Minei Alex Minei Sidney Cesar Francisco Freitas Sara Hepner
Distributed by:	Gaiam Entertainment (United States)
Runtime:	45 Minutes
Country:	Brazil
Language:	Brazilian Portuguese
Prequel:	Little & Big Monsters

"I guess I would say that What's Up is exactly like Up if you took all the heartwarming moments out of Up, and replaced them with plotholes and racism."
— Danny Gonzales

What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!, titled Voando Em Busca de Aventuras (Flying in Search of Adventures) in Brazil, is a 2009 Brazilian mockbuster of Pixar's Up made by Vídeo Brinquedo. The movie also serves as a sequel to another Vídeo Brinquedo film, Little & Big Monsters, which was itself a rip-off of DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens.

Plot

Two scientists, a boy, and his older sister, along with her boyfriend, go out into an experimental house held by a massive balloon, so they can go somewhere to find a portal with monsters in it. They soon wreak havoc on the cities, and it's up to the siblings and the scientists to stop these monsters from doing so.

Why It Should Crash to the Ground

A lot of problems from the previous film are present here.
- Awful and lazy CGI animation with stiff and robotic movements. It's so bad that it looks like something out of a PlayStation, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, or an Xbox cutscene.
- Generic-looking character designs that still look like Jimmy Neutron rejects.
- Unimaginative and lazy designs for the monsters.
- Poor background designs, with most of them looking almost empty.
- It is infamously loaded with racist and/or stereotypical jokes. Notable examples include the very excruciating French accent from the main antagonist Jean Pierre (Amanda's boyfriend), as well as a dreadful stereotype of a Chinese guy holding a camera and wearing a noodle t-shirt who says "Junky camera made in China! Battery dead already!" (which is his very first line of dialogue in the movie, by the way) who is embarrassingly named Ching Ling. It also becomes a very unfunny and insulting running gag, where the main obstacle in Jean’s evil plan is that his heavy French accent prevents him from annunciating.
- The lip-syncing is way off.
- All of the protagonists are still detestable. Dr. Zoox & Dr. Crumb come across as bumbling old men, Amanda is a ditzy airhead, and Guto is an obnoxious brat who is racist to Chinese people. On top of that, he never calls Ching Ling by his real name as he always refers to him as "the Chinese guy" "Beijing", and "China".
Misleading title and false advertising: Despite the name, the balloon does not rescue anyone, and Guto, the boy on the cover, wears glasses but in the movie he doesn't, except for the scene where he tries to resist Jean Pierre's mind control, and even then, he wears sunglasses.
- On top of that, the film's title is laughable and badly written with very poor usage of grammar and sentence structures.
The movie can't decide on whom to make the main protagonist as the main focus constantly shifts from character to character.
The plot makes no sense whatsoever, even with the monsters.
Annoying voice acting for the most part in both the original version and the English dub.
The science lab is quoted as a gossip show when it is instead legitimate.
Unnecessary and out-of-place product placement for Google.
The ending is so mean-spirited. Jean Pierre gets trapped in the same dimension as the monsters, they all abandon him, and he cries that nobody likes him. The movie also ends on a racist note as Dr. Crumb is worried that Ching Ling may be smarter than him, and Guto says that he thought Ching Ling was only going to make them dinner.
The joke involving Dr. Crumb telling Guto to show Ching Ling a fortune cookie to attract him out of the monster’s captivity is even more racist than it already is because fortune cookies aren’t Chinese; as they were invented in either Japan or in the United States by Chinese immigrants, implying that there is no difference between Japanese and Chinese culture which is a ridiculous and once again flat-out racist way of thinking.
The aforementioned awkward scene where Guto tries to resist Jean Pierre's mind control, but he sounds like he is trying to poop. Also, he wears sunglasses in that scene, which for some reason also prevents him from being brainwashed.
A recording error (hopefully) in which viewers can hear a voice say the n-word.
This film and Up have little connection with each other despite this film being an obvious mockbuster of the Pixar feature, albeit using the film's name to steal viewership.
The infamous scene when Jean Pierre drugs Guto along with Dr. Zoox & Dr. Crumb to sleep so he can be alone with Amanda...In a kid’s movie!
Jean Pierre could be considered a generic villain since he has no real reason to do the things he does and has no backstory at all and his character is nothing but bland defeat-the-hero villainy.
The relationship between Dr. Crumb and Guto has zero consistency compared to the previous film. Originally, Dr. Crumb seemed to be annoyed by his nephew's very presence. Here, they are inexplicably on much better terms.
Very poor DVD video quality with low picture resolution: If one were to open the video file on a PC, the video quality is horrible compared to playing the movie off the menu.

Redeeming Qualities

Despite the voice acting being annoying for the most part, some of it can come off as decent (or at least passable).
Some unintentionally funny moments, such as the monsters chasing Guto.
Just like the previous film, the graphics and animation (while still bad) are at least somewhat better than their previous films.
If anything, it alongside the previous film are probably Vídeo Brinquedo's more tolerable films.

Videos

The Movie

Reviews and the Top 10s

Trivia

This movie is a running gag on the YouTuber Dragoon's Minecraft videos.

External links

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