Lifted

This is another fun little short in the tradition of fun little shorts from Pixar. Soundman extraordinaire Gary Rydstrom directs for the first time (according to IMDb), and the result is solid.

Not surprisingly, the sound for this short is fantastic, opening with some isolated nighttime noises of a country farmhouse. I've spent a fair amount of time on the real life equivalent of this digital set and this part sounded realistic to me.

By the way, I wrote this whole mini-review just so I could finish with this: Aieeeeeeeeee!

See Gary, the audience really IS listening.

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.

I've always thought it fantastic that Pixar precedes their excellent feature-length films with an equally-excellent animated short, since it serves beautifully to settle the audience down and ready them for the coming feature. With 'Ratatouille' currently in cinemas, the short film this time around was 'Lifted,' a brief but amusing tale of an attempted alien abduction that doesn't quite go to plan. It was directed by Gary Rydstrom, a first-time director but incredible seven-time Oscar winner, thanks to his excellent work in the sound department on such films as 'Jurassic Park' and 'Titanic.' Like Pixar's finest short films, the simple plot is propelled forward without the need for any dialogue, relying mostly on effectively-chosen sound effects. Accordingly, Rydstrom was an ideal candidate to direct.

In a quiet country farmhouse, a human sleeps peacefully, blissfully unaware that an immense UFO has stationed itself outside his house. Inside the spaceship, a young alien, named Stu, is trying desperately to remember which unlabeled toggle switches to press, presented with a vast selection across a large control panel. Stu's instructor, Mr. B., watches over him menacingly, his expression offering not a hint to the correct procedure and answering every mistake by scribbling briefly onto his notepad. Meanwhile, as Stu fumbles tentatively with the controls, the unfortunate human finds himself lifted from his bed by the spacecraft's tractor-beam and tossed violently against the wall and ceiling, never waking from his slumber.

I thought it was rather ambitious that the filmmakers decided to show the beings inside the UFO, since it is rare that we actually get to see a cinematic alien fiddling with buttons and levers behind a control desk. Not only this, but the two extraterrestrials – in just five minutes – become relatively well-developed characters: we immediately sympathise with poor hapless Stu, and Mr. B. discovers a streak of compassion that we hadn't originally expected of him. The comedic timing is just about perfect, and we hold our breath as Stu moves to press another button, before laughing at the unexpected consequence of this upon the unlucky human – his movements largely represented by a holographic blip above the control panel. The sound effects are cleverly-chosen, and the addition of the Wilhelm scream at the very end was a nice touch.

Lifted (2006)

*** (out of 4)

Extremely entertaining and rather intelligent short from Pixar has a couple aliens landing their aircraft above a house where they try to beam up the man sleeping inside. The only problem is that the smallest alien is having trouble with all the controls and can't get him up to the ship. This short is certainly very high on the cute level as the two aliens look the part just right and the overall comedy never gets too high but instead just delivers a fun time. I thought the alien was the amazing looking shots of the UFO outside the out. I loved the way it looked with that incredibly bright light and I really loved the ending and what the ship looked like when it took off. I thought the two aliens looked very good and their comic timing together got plenty of nice, if small laughs. On the visual level this here is certainly one of the best looking shorts I've seen from the studio.

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.