In God We Trust

By now we’re all sick of that Juno talk and by that, I don’t mean the script. Or the fact that Ellen Page looked pretty cute as a pregnant teenster. By the way, while I’m on that subject. Why did it take Juno to make us realize Ellen Page was so darn cute? Frankly I think that’s a little fucked up since she had a baby lump the entire way through. Anyway, before all this Juno baby weird stuff, Jason Reitman was creating other stuff (shock!). There was Thank You For Smoking in 2005 but even before that there was In God We Trust, an awarding winning short film about life after death.

It starts out with a guy named Robert (Richard Speight Jr.) getting hit by a car. He soon finds himself in purgatory where all people are judged by a point system that figures in every bad and good thing you’ve done in life. A positive score means you go to heaven and I’m assuming everyone knows what a negative score entails. He’s a pretty average guy and many of his mistakes come in small amounts, just like many of us ordinary folks. Just before he’s about to be sentenced to hell, Robert sees an opportunity to escape and decides to take it.

With his time back on Earth he attempts to make things right again while his judge Gil tries to bring him back to purgatory using any means necessary. His positive points begin to add up by doing various tasks like breaking a radio that’s playing Ricky Martin or holding a girl’s ice cream cone. Besides these obvious comedic moments it has plenty of quirky dialog to boot. I personally enjoyed the line, “how can you say you’ve appreciated life when you’ve never danced?”

It’s pretty cool to see Reitman’s progression as a director by watching his earlier work first hand. If you have fifteen minutes to spare then I recommend checking out the video below.