Extra-terrien

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.

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.

This animated short is on the 2-Disc Special Edition of Ratatouille, and I understand that it was also played in theaters right before aforementioned feature was. With a running time of five minutes and not a single spoken word, this communicates entirely through the visuals, and the quality is definitely top-notch. The story-telling is quite good, and this doesn't go for the cheap audience-pleaser of just doing fancy stuff with the ever-expanding technology, and instead uses it. This has a cool enough, minimalistic plot that you can instantly get into, and a conflict that takes a mere second to wrap your head around, including for young children, in spite of the exact situation being one that I'm willing to bet no one in the audience has found themselves in. All of the sound is excellent, as is the use of it. I didn't personally find this terribly funny, but I can imagine that many will. The material tends to be physical, with slapstick and sight gags. Cartoon violence, and a brief image that might remind people of plumbers is the extent of the offensive material. I recommend this to fans of CGI movies. 7/10

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.

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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