Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Masterful Movie

Best movie ever!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The 'Up Series' represents one of the most fascinating and unusual uses of film in cinema history - a documentary life-long chronicle of the lives of 14 people starting at 7 years old, revisiting them every seven years through age 49 (so far). While I could quibble, wishing for a bit more depth here and there (especially with the women, where there's a bit too much emphasis on love and marriage at the expense of all else), it's really an astounding, moving, frightening and uplifting document. There's no way to watch this remarkable series of films without reflecting deeply on one's own life, and how you have changed (and stayed the same) over your own lifetime. While Michael Aped deserves every bit of credit he's received for this amazing piece of cultural anthropology, it's important to note this first film, 7 Up,was actually directed by Paul Almond, and Apted was a that point a researcher for the project.

I know that it probably seems pretty silly of me to watch the latest installment before watching the previous ones - and I never really planned to do it like that - but I've watched "49 Up", and I really admired it. All twelve of the interviewees provide strong incite into the present state of affairs. True, Michael Apted has interviewed them so many times that it very likely is getting somewhat intrusive, but I think that we do need documentation of what the world is like every couple of years; I mean, just look at what all's happened in the world (or even in the characters' lives) since 1998.Anyway, I'm now very eager to see the other installments. And I intend to watch them chronologically. I definitely recommend this one.

This is not a social science film and it's not exactly an art film either. But neither is it just another version of Big Brother. I personally found this unique project profoundly moving in its originality. Through this film we get a deep sense of the way humans adjust to their circumstances, maintain their personalities and shape their own lives around what they want and can have. I had a sense of the innate decency of most human beings, our capacity for love and survival, the way in which character runs deeper than circumstances, but also the strong effect that circumstances such as the class one is born into can have on us. Most of all I was touched by the unpredictability of life: it would have been hard to say whose marriages would last and whose would not, for example.Having said that, it is unclear to me why so many of the subjects, who volunteer to take part in the filming, seem to fear and oppose it so much. As someone who would have loved the opportunity to revisit my own life at different stages, I have a hard time understanding the reasons for their reluctance and even hostility.

The seventh film in the unique "Up Series" - documentaries made for Granada, the privately held British television corporation - that has followed a group of 14 ostensibly normal English subjects, of differing backgrounds, from age 7 to 49, issuing a follow-up film every 7 years. This latest installment is the best to date. It is well organized, presenting one person's life at a time rather than skipping around among them. Nearing age 50, these people have become highly thoughtful and articulate; they're all more interesting now than ever before. And the director, Michael Apted, has also vastly improved his skills at interviewing his subjects, which makes a great difference for the better. What impresses is how well nearly everyone has done in life.The original thesis of the series is that kids grow up without much change from the way they were early on, a view put forward in the 16th Century Jesuit aphorism: "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." But the life trajectories of a number of these individuals belie that view, suggesting instead that people often do change in response to life circumstances, a view supported in several 20th Century accounts of human development across the lifespan (e.g., the work of the Harvard psychologist Robert White and his contemporary, the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson).The original thesis in the first film, "7 Up," also held that social class, or socioeconomic opportunity, had a controlling effect on development, a view that excludes the influence of both hereditary and learned aspects of individual psychological makeup and adaptation. Roger Ebert lists the "Up Series" among his top ten film productions of all time, and has said that the series represents "…an inspired, almost noble, use of the film medium." I heartily agree. My grades: 10/10 (A+) (Seen on 10/17/06)