Apted discusses his relationship to his subjects, and his own transformation over the years.
Throughout, the remaining participants take stock of private and career successes as well as perceived failures.
With its dull mixture of indifferently staged exposition and action, it suggests a primitive side-scrolling video game.
The Up series has been reissued by First Run Features in order to include the latest installment, 56 Up.
If you’ve followed the Up documentary series, you know that it catches up with a cross-section of Britishers every seven years.
56 Up works as yet another summit reached by Michael Apted.
The end result showcases none of Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted’s strengths, though the thematic material is more in the former’s wheelhouse.
The film is rigid in its insistence on making the Pevensie children grow up by waging magical battles with fantastic creatures.
The film is proof that liberal filmmakers can make movies that aren’t desperate manifestations of their political guilt.
The film reminds us that the series exists not just as a reminder of our mortality.
The Up Series is a powerful humanist statement that isn’t to be missed.
The drama has been seemingly extracted from all sorts of domestic abuse manuals and pamphlets and the result is strangely akin to a Lifetime see-Jane-run procedural.