Dug's Special Mission

Remember Dug from the Pixar film UP? He was the Golden Retriever sort of dog given an ability speak. He was very friendly except when he was distracted by Squirrels, which he was every ten seconds, despite there being no squirrels in the part of the world he was.

Well, he's back and it's his birthday. And the big, angry, Doberman Pinscher dogs don't like him, so they give him an assortment of pointless tasks, like watching a rock. For the sake of amusing the audience, this always turns out all right for Dug and badly for the Dobermans.

There's no clear indication of where this very funny and heartfelt cartoon first appeared, but it appears to have been on a DVD. I'm guessing it was the DVD release of UP.

Dug is a happy and slightly dim dog. It's his birthday. The other dogs Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are exasperated when Dug gets into the way of their hunt for the giant bird. Alpha assigns Dug meaningless tasks to keep him out of their way only to have it backfire again and again. Dug is ostracized by the pack and then he encounters Russell and Carl Fredricksen.

It's a fractional prequel right before Dug's appearance in the movie Up. It's good to see Dug in his 'natural' everyday life. It's great to tie it all together with Carl and Russell. It's something to watch after finishing the movie.

I really impressed after watching this mini movie... You need to watch Up first and then watch this movie and enjoy!

This animated short film tells the story of a dog called Dug. He is given a series of special missions on his birthday by dogs with an ulterior motive. He takes the missions seriously, and they lead to unexpected results.

"Dug's Special Mission" is a funny and sweet animation. The series of missions are funny, and they lead to even more funnier scenes. It is an entertaining short film.

Being a Pixar fan, I was looking forward to this short film ever since it was announced. Heck, I was eager for it even BEFORE it was announced, because Pixar always includes a second short film on their DVDs. While I can see by the ratings here on IMDb that some people didn't enjoy it as much as I did (I can see why, if they're comparing it to "Up"), I still think that this short film had a number of elements that made it very enjoyable to watch.

All the humor that comes with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Dug is here, as well as Alpha's "broken collar" joke. However, this film did have a few discrepancies with the feature film it was based on that bothered me slightly. They're mostly anachronisms or continuity errors, but I can forgive them considering that this film is supposedly a representation of how Dug remembers these events, just like the "Married Life" sequence in "Up" was supposed to be how Carl Fredricksen remembered his marriage with Ellie.

This film isn't all physical humor, though. Before I go on, please note that you shouldn't watch this until you've seen the feature film it's based on. Anyway, after Alpha gets fed up with Dug, Dug is (to be brief) very sad and alienated. Pixar does their thing with the emotions, and Dug runs away into some fog-filled rocks. The first time I saw that, I felt sorry for Dug. However, as per his birthday wish (it is his birthday, after all), he finds "a new master": Carl and Russell. What a nice alternate location story!