This Guy Is Falling

This gleeful little film could care less if you actually buy anything in it. But that's the magic of it- it just takes off and whisks you along for the ride. I reminded me a lot of the Cars music videos from the 1980s.

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Shadowplay Studios, the company responsible for the opening titles of the current hit Juno, is also responsible for this quirky computer animated short This Guy Is Falling, directed by Gareth Smith and Michael Horowitz. As a teenage couple in the front of a used car is arguing about the driver's (a girl) wisdom in her vehicle purchase, the boy next to her accidentally pushes a lever that suddenly causes the car (and the other vehicles and people around them) to go floating up in the air weightless. Among the people was another teenage passenger in the back seat who decides to leave them and find his girlfriend who's in danger of being weighted toward the propeller of a jet plane. I won't reveal anything else except that things get wonderfully weird and exciting after that with a twist that extends to a scene after the credits end. I found this on AtomFilms as linked from Cartoon Brew and recommended by Jerry Beck. Well worth seeing.

Warren is riding in the back seat of the car with Bob and his girlfriend Alison. Bob is ribbing Alison about getting ripped off when buying her used car – hell, she doesn't even know what the red switch marked "gravity" does! In the middle of a little argument between them, the switch gets hit and everything begins to float around. It is at this point in his life that Warren discovers something that had thus far evaded him – love, in the shape of a girl who just floats into his life.

A chance find on a video, this short film is nicely quirky and enjoyable enough to be worth seeing. Mixing animation and live action with a off kilter sense of humour and some nice inventive touches to the writing, it manages to be weird enough throughout to keep you watching. The story is simple enough despite being very different in appearance but it works and I did enjoy it throughout the running time. Other reviewers have alluded to the idea that filling a short is easy but I have seen enough bad ones to know that it is not. Here it works well and is never dull.

The animation is not Hollywood action movie standard for computer graphics but it has a feel to it that fitted the tone of the whole film and it works well with the live action. The cast do well and again seem to fit the off-kilter tone but really it is the production/direction of the whole package that really holds it altogether and matches everything up.

Overall a inconsequential bit of fluff when compared to some short films but one that is weird, different, interesting, fun and enjoyable – and all those qualities should make it well worth 10 minutes of your time if you get the chance to see it at some point.

I was up late (as I usually am) channel surfing and come across "This Guy is Falling." Pretty cool pun, huh? Anyways, it was on either Sundance or IFC (can't remember). I liked it. The animation was so impressive. Think about this: Three people are in a car. The guy in the passenger seat looks over and see this button with a label under it. It says: Gravity. DO NOT TOUCH! Well, he presses it and you probably know what happens after that. Except that it all looks really cool. I couldn't believe my eyes. Whoever made this could have a real future in filmmaking.