George and A.J. (2009)

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

George & A.J. are staff from Shady Oaks Retirement Village who are supposed to bring in Carl Fredricksen. They are shocked when he flies away with his home. One week later, they are to bring in Mrs. Peterson but she escapes with her cats pulling her home away. Others do their own escapes in their own special ways until Shady Oaks itself is rocketed away with oxygen tanks. Then Carl returns in the blimp crushing George & A.J.'s van.The animation is more primitive and similar to animated storyboards. It ties in with the movie 'Up'. It has a fun premise building upon the movie. The characters are good. The primitive animation does limit its appeal and there are obvious differences from the movie. I'm guessing this short was done before or during the making of the movie and some of the differences can be contributed to changes that naturally happen in any production.

"George & A.J." is a little additional movie to Pixar's Oscar winning "Up". We follow the lives of the two men who were in charge of getting Carl to the nursery home early in the movie before he flies off with the help of all the balloons. The duo is interviewed by the press and, briefly afterward, back to normal in their jobs again. Or are they? Too bad, more seniors start stuff like that inspired by Carl now. The open mouth scenes were pretty funny and the ending is nice too with the two (3) heroes from the film back from their voyage. Still, I must say, I am surprised that this 3-minute short film is actually considered a Pixar movie. The animation style is so simple that it rather looks like a fan-made film. Had they done it in the same way like the movie or like "Dug's Mission", this would have been a lot better for sure. All in all, a decent watch for everybody who loved "Up", the rest can do without it.