If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Best movie ever!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Everyone in the world should have the treasured opportunity to watch these brave souls grow up before our eyes. I recommend all the films beginning in 1963. Certainly the class system is exposed as the monster it is, but I do find increased options for the children of the "less born to privilege", 49 year old subjects.I love the reticence and modesty of the subjects in this film. They seem to grasp the massive cultural contribution they are making but prefer not to think about it. I applaud the subjects for saying that they want to drop out but I do hope they ultimately don't. In this day of fake reality TV, it is wondrous to see the power of the Real McCoy of documentary film/TV. I am close enough in age to the 49 ups. Through them I have a brilliant record of the world I grew up in and that of my English family. Bravo for an historic act of courage and generosity by all concerned.

I grew up in England, and saw the first documentary there. I emigrated to Canada at 18, and have seen the rest of the series here. It has been both an opportunity to see how England and the English have changed, as well as seeing "old friends" every seven years. I grew up in a Navy family,we were not wealthy, but because my father was a Naval Officer, we were considered upper middle class, so I rode horses, went to the Continent on Holiday and and attended boarding school from age 10. I also attended a 1 room schoolhouse and changed primary schools with alarming rapidity, so I met many kids just like all the ones on 7-UP, I could even understand Nick's Yorkshire accent! My favorite is also Bruce, but I love Tony, Neil and Symon, and can totally empathise with Suzy! Funny how so many of the kids had broken childhoods, but became wonderful parents themselves. I am looking forward to catching up with them at 56!

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)

This is the film documentary of the lives of a dozen English children filmed at 7 years intervals starting at age 7. They are from a wide variety of backgrounds. A few turn out with predictable lives, most do not.On the plus side, this is the story of people who grow up, deal with life's challenges, and grow into maturity. Some of them are relaxed and open with the documentary, such as the African/English fellow (sorry -- I'm bad with names). Many of them are profoundly concerned with the welfare of others, and became teachers, or philanthropists.On the dark side, most of these people are clearly annoyed with the project -- tho they have participated in it for years. Also, one must assume the best on the part of the director of these films, for the devil is in the editing. How balanced is it really? And there is also one more point which detracts somewhat from the appeal of this movie: it's about the English, the most guarded, self-efacing and embarrassed people on the face of the earth. The physicist tells a joke about the extrovert engineer who looks at the feet of the *other* person when he's talking, and one wife talks about how her husband was always apologizing to her for nothing, but that just about sums up the English social milieu, typically an uptight people who are embarrassed with life.Maybe this is why I found the fellow with mental illness to be so refreshing, poignant and profound. He had come to terms with life -- as they all had -- but he was able to conceptualize it and share it.Watching a film like this inevitably inspires one to compare oneself with the people on screen, or more accurately inspires one to look at one's life a little more closely and how one has handled the ups and downs of life on this planet. In that sense, it's surely a good film.Unless one is a thoroughly incorrigible voyeur, some parts of this film will be boring and irrelevant, but overall a good experience.