In God We Trust

Robert (Richard Speight Jr, best known as Lex in the now defunct show, "The Agency") gets hit by a bus and sent to purgatory, where after he hears that his "score card" is less then stellar, he escapes. Now it's up to him to get his "good points" up enough to avoid hell In this twenty minute short. This is the first work I've seen from Ivan Reitman's little boy, Jason. And it's proof that sometimes talent doesn't skip a generation. May not be as good as some of his father's work, but I can definately see the potential. This short is pretty damn amusing.

My Short Grade: B+

Where i saw it: Atomfilms

We loved this short film. When one of us got AtomFilms hi-def, this was one of the first films we got on it. Simply splendid! We loved it! The little details made the film! Aspiring film makers, take notes! :) The music was brilliant!

Robert dies, goes to purgatory and discovers he is destined for hell(for little things; like he never danced... aside from at a funeral). Robert escapes and gets a bit of a second chance. He starts out scaring the bejeepers out of two paramedics, who -thought- his body was caput, then he heads out to make things right.

This film has an educational quality, too. yeah. We learned that smoothies can help save you from eternal damnation. Good to know.

First saw this at the Toronto Film Festival, and it was great. Better than some two hour features I saw there! This director is a talent to watch, I hope he is already working on a feature. I think you can see this little gem for yourself at atomfilms.com. It was there a few months ago.

I can't tell you too much about the story, cause I don't want to give it away! The actor was in those Doritos commercials, and some other stuff, he's very familiar. The writing is all there, and the acting by (forgive me, I don't know the names) the "purgatorial officer" was hilarious. You could tell that the people making the short were having fun. Well, if they weren't they sure looked it. Try to find this somewhere, you be glad you did.

This is an early short film by Jason Reitman a name that rung a bell somewhere so looked him up on this site to discover he's the Canadian director of acclaimed films such as THANK YOU FOR SMOKING , JUNO and UP IN THE AIR .so that makes him relatively rare in that of the many short films I've recently seen he's gone on to having a very successful career in making feature length films

From the outset we're shown the directors talent as he uses the language of cinema such as editing as the camera pans across space on to Planet Earth and a crash zoom lens hits upon a man called Robert picking up a quarter on the a road that ends up becoming a fatal mistake . At this point I thought I might be watching a short film inspired by a rather disappointing British sit-com from the early 1980s called DEAD ERNEST that starred Andrew Sachs who found himself in Heaven and did all he could to be sent back to a mortal life . This isn't in fact how this short film pans out and despite its title and premise only the most bigoted bible basher will find anything offensive about it . It's a film dealing with redemption and contains a lot of charm and this is mainly down to Richard Speight as Robert a rather u, likable loser type character . As I said earlier the director uses some impressive camera work and keeps a consistent tone throughout and while there might be a slightly twee element it's a very enjoyable black comedy

While Jason Reitman certainly has plenty of connections, at least he is trying different forms of filmmaking before following his talented father. Funny, eclectic, and interesting, I really thought this was a great little film to watch.

Sure, some of the jokes seemed a little forced, but the dancing scene is priceless. It was also fun to see how ingeniously purgatory was portrayed, a lumbering beaurocracy between the upper management and the mail room (hell). At least we know the younger Reitman is cutting his teeth and refining his work before he tries to make longer films.