What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!

What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!

What's up with this crappy rip-off of Up?

Genre:	Adventure Comedy
Directed By:	Everton Rodrigues Michelle Gabriel
Produced By:	Ale McHaddo Mikka Almeida
Written By/Screenplay:	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.

Enredo (Plot)

Two scientists, a boy, and his older sister, along with her boyfriend, go out in 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.

Por Que Este Balão Não Resgata Ninguém (Why This Balloon Does Not Rescue Anybody)

A lot of problems from the last 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 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 John (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!" who is embarrassingly named Ching Ling. It also becomes a very unfunny and insulting running gag, where the main obstacle in John’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; Guto, the boy on the cover, wears glasses but in the movie he doesn't, except for the scene where Guto is trying to resist the villain's mind control, and even then, he wears sunglasses.
- On top of that, the film's title is very 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 actually real.
Unnecessary and out-of-place product placement for Google.
The ending is so mean-spirited. John 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 saying that he thought Ching Ling was only going to make them dinner.
- The joke about showing Ching Ling a fortune cookie is even more racist than it already is because fortune cookies aren’t Chinese; they’re Japanese, implying that there is no difference between the Japanese and the Chinese, which is a ridiculous, racist way of thinking.
The awkward scene where Guto tries to resist the villain'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.
Hopefully a recording error in which you can hear a voice say the N-word.
This film and Up have little connection with each other in spite of this film being an obvious mockbuster of the said Disney and Pixar feature, albeit using the film's name to steal viewership.
The infamous scene when John drugs Guto along with Dr. Zoox & Dr. Crumb to sleep... IN A KIDS MOVIE!!!!
The antagonist could be considered a generic doomsday 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 Guto’s very presence. Here, they are inexplicably on much better terms.
Very poor DVD video quality with low picture resolution: If you open the video file on a PC, the video quality is horrible compared to playing the movie off the menu.

Resgatando Qualidades (Redeeming Qualities)

In spite of the voice acting being annoying for the most part, some of it can actually 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 least hated films.