A house decides it has had enough of being permanently rooted in one place and, with the companionship of an older house, sets off on an adventure.
You can see what this short film had in mind; houses are created as characters (much in the way cars and planes were anthropomorphized by Pixar) and we spend time enjoying these characters before a conclusion where we are touched, moved but also cheered by them. To speak of the film's strongest points, for sure it is the technical delivery of this idea. A student film it may be, but it is also beautiful to look at, with plenty of skill in creating the world and the houses. Personally I felt the houses needed a bit more to them to really draw me in as characters, but they had sufficient character to more or less perform that function. The construct is not just visual though, the use of music is also important and this is mostly well done.
The story is where the work was needed unfortunately. Although the houses go on an adventure, not too much happens – and it happens a bit too slowly for my taste. As a result there is not much to draw the viewer into their lives together, and it does feel like the makers had the idea, and the touching ending in mind, but that the middle bit (the film) came later. This is a shame because everything is well poised to deliver the emotional ending that it is hankering for, but it is rather superficial in nature, not really having the heart that the style suggests it does.
In the end this lack of heart does hurt it, so while it is superficially impressive and done with a certain charm, the characters and their story doesn't really come through in a way that was needed for the viewer to really connect to the material in the way that Pixar (clearly the model) have done so well.