Tuesday, May 21, 2013

May 21: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 (2004 -- Various)

★★★★

This is a fun collection of films from early Pixar.  In the very first short, 1984’s Adventures of Andre and Wally B, there’s a silent film vibe that will become more obvious in later films like Wall-E.  Even more, shorts like For the Birds and Tin Toy rely on the expressive faces of silent film, especially the eyes, that is a Pixar animation trademark.

And many of these films anticipate Pixar projects, too.  Tin Toy and Knick Knack anticipate the Toy Story trilogy, not only with their interest in toys but even with some of the toy characterizations.  The terrible kid of Tin Toy might be a predecessor of the daycare kids of Toy Story 3, and the sleek figures of Knick Knack anticipate Barbie and Ken in tone.  There’s also an interest in an old man character in Geri’s Game that anticipates Up, a film that deals sympathetically with an old curmudgeon but skirts maudlin cliché for the most part. 

This collection also shows the beginning of Pixar producing short film tie-ins to some of its major releases.  is a hilarious slapstick riff on the Mike and Sulley characters from Monster’s, Inc, and Jack-Jack Attack uses classic Warner reality bending to posit what would happen to a babysitter as an Incredibles superbaby begins to use his powers.  Mater and the Ghostlight shows the danger of such an approach becoming stale, though, as this little short overdwells on Cars’ Mater character without using much inventiveness.  It’s to Pixar’s credit that the studio typically avoids such predictable, uninvolving projects.
Mike’s New Car

And this collection also finds Pixar reaching outside Pixar World and stretching its creativity in some unexpected directions.  In some cases, like that of Red’s Dream, this outreach fails.  This little short has a distinctly graphic novel tone that ultimately only feels derivative.  One Man Band is hardly more engaging with its link to European culture, and Boundin’ feels like vintage Disney in the Wild West.  Slightly more fun is the slapstick-in-space Lifted with a young alien fumbling a human abduction under the critical eye of a supervisor.

The best film of the collection, and the one of most importance to Pixar, is the very short Luxo Jr.  This 1986 film not only gives Pixar its desk lamp icon, but it gets at the element in Pixar films that makes them unique and that brings people back to theaters again and again: Pixar films’ focus on an emotional core that evokes a shared human experience.  Here, a child (lamp) breaks his toy and is consoled by the parent before the kid finds a new toy he likes just as enthusiastically.  The bemused parent looks directly at us as we share this human moment we all recognize.   In its two-minute run time, Luxo Jr reveals the crucial element in Pixar’s ongoing success in feature length computer animation.

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