This Way Up (2008)

Many films have attempted to make movies on death with humour that certainly will not appeal to everybody, but those who like it will probably really enjoy it. This is one of them. However, for me personally, this was not a triumph. We follow a duo of father and son who work in the undertaking business, but run into trouble when a chain reaction causes a huge rock to fall on their car. There are some nice references in here about death such as the river Styx or also that the protagonists' death is so close to them when that rock hits the car and a couple more. Still I have to say the humor did not appeal to me too much. Apart from that, the plot was also not well-constructed. It was never really clear if the old lady was dead or even if the two undertakers were still alive in the latter parts of the film.Also the parade scene did not work for me at all. It stood so much in contrast to the whole atmosphere before that and the ending was not my cup of tea either. Why would they jump in the hole as well? So random. The final song was nice, but I cannot really make a connection between the music there and the 9-minute short film before that. The animation is fine. The Academy quite loved it as they granted it a nomination in the Best Animated Short Subject category. There, it lost to the (in my opinion far superior) Japanese entry. I kinda like the title though: "This Way Up". But that alone is not enough to let me forget about all the negative and mediocre aspects here. Not recommended and I cannot say I am too surprised that Foulkes and Smith, the two filmmakers behind this, have not worked on more movies in the last 7 years according to their IMDb filmography. I hope when they start a comeback, they will have improved.

This short was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short. There will be spoilers ahead:This is a fairly active short which packs quite a lot, so it bears repeated viewing. From the trip in the hearse from the funeral home, where the natures of the two main characters are set through some quick gags, this short starts out strong and builds from there.Something very minor starts a chain reaction, leading to the first gut punch the firm of A.T. Shank and Son will take this disturbing day. It will not be the last in a day which would make a sane man change professions.The most fastidious and determined undertaker in the world and his much less intense son go on a journey which would give Odysseus the screaming meemies! They meet with thickets, hunters, birds, boulders and slopes. They wind up in a Hell which resembles New Orleans at Mardi Gras as filmed by Roger Corman. Shaken but yet unbowed, the two seriously determined undertakers manage to leave the afterlife with their seriously damaged coffin, finally depositing it in the grave. The ending scene is wonderful and shows changes to both father and son. The song over the credits is delightfully bizarre.This is most definitely worth finding and watching, so long as you don't find the subject matter to disturbing for your taste. Most highly recommended.

This film was nominated the Oscar for Best Short Animated Film, and I'm glad I got to see what was essentially the British entrant. A.T Shank & Son are the coffin carriers who are having a bad day as they try to take a coffin to its place of burial. A boulder knocked off a cliff crushes the hearse, and they make their way across country, through prickly hedges, to get the coffin (their only company) to the right place. They are crushed and go down into what is essentially Hell, and into a flowing river with hundreds of coffins, but they manage to swim out and drop the (wrecked) coffin in its hole. An amusing caper film with some interesting CGI animation, the subject matter is a little questionable as to whether you can find it all funny, but being a British film, you can recognise the dark humour. Good!

Two gentleman must lay their dearly departed love one to rest--but circumstance largely forbids it. From an interesting chain reaction to bumbling mishaps while carrying the coffin, the two men go from the heights of hilarity to the depths of Hades just trying to get the damned woman into some holy ground. Jeez, if only it could be made easy by burying it somewhere else...This animation is a pretty witty and hilarious take on funereal ceremony. On the other hand, as fun as it is to watch, it didn't really add anything for them to go into the Land of the Dead and have to climb their way, Dante's Purgatorio-style, out. Frankly, it could have ended right as they got crushed by the giant boulder, making a pretty consistent and to-the-point comedy of ill-fate. Instead, even a short animation such as this can drag under the weight of the dead horse they were beating. Nonetheless, fun to watch and equally well-animated! --PolarisDiB