Lifted

Though I don't remember when it is, L had watched this short movie. Maybe I was a junior high school student. I found this movie was funny when I watched it the first time. Now, I can enjoy watching it enough. In the movie, at first, a swing shakes by itself. I thought "Is this movie a horror movie?" at first. However, it is wrong. This movie is comedy. It is presented by Pixar. The whole movie is made by 3D animation and characters are so cute and attractive. They are very friendly. And the story is humorous. There are many comical scenes in only 5 minutes. i didn't get tried of it. It is a quintessential Pixar movie. Also, what I think funny is the last scene. I think, usually, in a movie, animation and TV program, the credit roll runs at the end of the movie when all programs finish. However, in this movie, credit roll is used effectively as part of the story. It is my favorite point of this movie.

A remote farm-house (probably in the Midwest) is suddenly bathed in a bright, clean light and the sleeping farmer is picked up from his bed and carried towards the window, where an alien craft awaits. Unfortunately for him, the abduction is being undertaken by a trainee, who really needs more hours in the simulator before tried to do it on a live subject.

This short film was screened before the feature Ratatouille and worked well in getting the audience in the laughing mood. Like the equally good "For the Birds" this short film delivers constant laughs in a short time before bowing out with a strong finish. The former short focused on a big tall bird, this film focuses on a trainee alien but the approach is the same – have one weakness or failing be the subject of the short. Here the trainee cannot get the man out the window with the controls and the repeated failures are simple but also very funny. This continues to the end, which is a nice big laugh at the end. The animation is typical Pixar, very clean, professional and impressive with plenty of cultural references in the alien abduction itself for film fans.

Overall then a very clever and funny short film that works very well because it knows just what it needs to do and does it in a ruthlessly efficient manner.

A sleeping human rests on his bed when a gigantic UFO appears and, hell-bent on it, attempts to take him away.

The animation sets the scene as something mysterious, something that the spectator is expecting to see in an UFO movie, which later on adds to the humorisity of it all when the alien keeps on trying to take the human away without success, making the viewer realise that this isn't a normal short.

There's no dialogue, but the visual storytelling (the expressions of the aliens, the circumstances in which the youn alien is in) is so great that it isn't needed. The constant mistakes of the alien and the absolute blank-face of his partner are hilarious, but the story has time to turn a little heartwarming before making the audience laugh again. The ending is truly the cherry on top of this humorous short.

The first impression of this movie was I already had feeling that it would become a funny movie. And I was not wrong. The film about two aliens working together in order to lift a human up to their UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) is brilliant. First of all, I like how they portrayed aliens as green slime like creatures. Not to mention they are irresistibly cute as well. The small alien is my favorite. He probably has no talent to be what aliens are supposed to be, but he would never stop trying. The human who is going to be lifted is so unrealistic in my opinion, but that is what makes this film more interesting in the first place. This film is only five minutes, and I recommend you to watch it.

You will watch this short in the theatre before the beginning of Ratatouille. And it's very well placed, since it indicates much of the theme that drives Ratatouille. An artist puppeteering an instrument in order to create his art.

This short may be understood as a synonym for the work of an animator. Really really hard to manage, check out the number of buttons in the board of the spaceship. It's hard to learn the job, and while you don't master it, all you do will be a disgrace. But if you get to do it well, you'll do wonders. You'll puppeteer the world below, create and destroy, move and control.

These small appointments (not necessarily short films) are interesting to me because they are explicit indications pointing on how each creator comes out with his own originality and my opinion is, the creations reflect usually every stuff which is very close to the creator, usually his own thoughts and life (It's the second time in a short time i identify these signs, the other was with Miyazaki's Kiki).

The funny thing is when the construction, no matter how simple it is, is honest in its origins, works out very effective, so this short is really really funny.

My evaluation: 4/5

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