Ahhh, PIXAR. There once was a time when you were the Kings of Animation. People loved you. You were creating critically-acclaimed film after critically-acclaimed film. Buying you helped Disney get out of their animated "Dork Age". You helped shape a majority of peoples' childhoods... which didn't stop everyone from turning on you after Cars 2 was released. Now everyone seems to be convinced that you can't make a good film ever again. Even your post-Cars 2 films that DID receive critical acclaim, like Coco and Elemental, were met with skepticism before they were released. Their most recent film, Elio, has basically been sabotaged by Disney - I went to see it in theaters, but apparently everyone else either doesn't know that it exists or would rather go see the Lilo and Stitch remake again instead. Shame on those guys.
In addition to their many great animated movies, PIXAR is also known for making many great animated short films. Usually, they'll stick these before their movies in theaters (for example, the short Sanjay's Super Team was shown before The Good Dinosaur) and then can be found on the movie's DVD release. Some of them, however, were made even before the first Toy Story. And then there are some that are based on one of their movies and could be found as a bonus feature on the DVD (like the Incredibles "midquel" short Jack-Jack Attack). I remember back in... 2009, maybe, ABC aired a compilation of PIXAR shorts around the holiday season. That's how I saw some of these shorts for the first time.
Today, I'm going to make a list of my personal favorite PIXAR short films. Specifically, I've narrowed it down to eleven... no Nostalgia Critic comparisons, please. These are in no particular order. I'm obviously not the first person on the internet to do a list like this, but since when has being unoriginal stopped me before? And please don't be mad if a short you really, really like isn't on the list (apologies in advance to all you fans of Red's Dream out there - that terrifying clown guaranteed that it wouldn't be on the list). Let's get started, shall we?
"Luxo Jr." (1986)
Let's start off with this early one. Luxo Jr. introduced the world to the little lamp who would become PIXAR's mascot. It was also PIXAR's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left Industrial Light and Magic, and the first CGI film to be nominated for an Academy Award (it received an nomination for Best Animated Short Film).
The plot is very simple: little lamp has a ball. It plays with it. It pops it. Okay, it's not exactly Shakespeare, but who cares? The short is a nice demonstration of how you can give a personality to something that doesn't even have a face. I mean, would YOU look at this...
...and think "Maybe we could make a fun short film out of that?" I doubt you would. But PIXAR did it, and it actually managed to make audiences fall in love with that little lamp. Now, whether or not this short increased sales of actual Luxo lamps, I don't know.
Oh, and here's a fun fact for you - Luxo Jr. inspired WALL-E. Andrew Stanton revealed that in an interview. You can't NOT like a short that inspired WALL-E.
"Mike's New Car" (2002)
Monsters Inc. is my personal favorite PIXAR movie, so I guess it's not too big a surprise that I have a short featuring the characters on the list. Mike's New Car focuses on Mike (voiced once again by Billy Crystal) introducing Sulley (John Goodman) to his new car. What was wrong with his old car? It didn't have six-wheel drive - Mike's new car DOES!
This was the first PIXAR short to A) have dialogue and B) include characters from one of their movies (unless you count those Toy Story Treats shorts they aired on ABC in the 1990s). Just like the movie, this short is hilarious - it's basically five minutes of Mike getting put through the wringer. That scene with Sulley messing around with the adjustable seat alone is funnier than any of the jokes in Modern Family. As co-director Roger Gould put it, "If this were a live action film about two guys in a car, you could do some pretty silly things with the car. But a car in the monster world has greater room for exaggeration. A car seat in the real world - you can adjust it vertically a couple of inches up or down, but because monsters come in so many shapes and sizes, a monster car would have to be able to have a hydraulic lift that could raise or lower the seat five or six feet within the space of the car. Those were the kinds of things we could go berserk with when the car started going crazy and Mike and Sulley started to get slammed around inside it."
Really, Mike is the kind of character that could easily star in a whole series of humorous short films. He's like the PIXAR equivalent of Daffy Duck. So it's kind of weird that of all the shorts PIXAR has made, he's only appeared in two - this and 2014's Party Central, based on Monsters University. Which I have not seen yet. I'll have to get on that...
"La Luna" (2012)
This one was released in front of Brave, PIXAR's 2012 release that had the misfortune of being the first PIXAR film to be released after Cars 2, when "PIXAR sucks now!" claims were in full swing. I haven't seen Brave in years, maybe I should rewatch it at some point...
Basically, La Luna is a children's picture book from the 1960s or 1970s (maybe the 1950s too?) come to life. From the character designs to the gentle tone to the whimsical plot, this feels like it easily could've been adapted from something Maurice Sendak wrote. I mean, the plot is that a boy, his father, and his grandfather sweep stars off the moon. Why are they doing that? Well, I won't give it away. The short's director, Enrico Casarosa, went on to direct Luca in 2021, and in hindsight it's pretty obvious they were made by the same guy. They have very similar vibes, and even similar character designs (the dad in this looks a LOT like the girl's dad in Luca).
According to Enrico Casarosa, "I've always been fascinated by fantastical stories of the moon: is it made of cheese? Milk? A hole in the celestial mantle? I wanted to invent my own fantastical lunar myth. Authors like Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Italo Calvino were a huge influence and a source of inspiration for this story." The short's music was composed by Michael Giacchino, who did the music for several of PIXAR's movies, who was asked to "immerse himself in his Italian roots".
This short, if I could sum it up, is like being wrapped in a warm blanket on a rainy night and drinking a mug of hot chocolate. It just makes you feel good. I've gotta ask, though... aren't the boy, the dad, and the grandfather wreaking havoc on the Earth's tides?
"Your Friend the Rat" (2007)
Poor rats. They get no respect. I don't know how the mindset that rats = evil got started. Yeah, they live in sewers, but so do the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and everybody loves THEM. Ratatouille is one of the few animated... well, ANYTHING that portrays them as anything other than the rodent equivalent of pond scum. So it makes sense to have Remy and Emile (voiced once again by Patton Oswalt and Peter Sohn) star in a short film advocating for people NOT to think so little (no pun intended... y'know, since rats are little) of rats.
Utilizing a number of different animation styles, the short sheds a little light on the positive qualities of the mouse's not-as-popular sibling. I have no official confirmation on this, but I'm almost positive that this short was inspired by the work of Disney animator Ward Kimball - from the art style to the numerous jokes it throws at us. I dare you to watch this short without laughing at least once. We even get cameos from P.T. Flea and WALL-E.
Everything culminates in a wonderful musical number. Who knows, maybe Remy and Emile are on to something... maybe we WOULD have world peace if we just lived in harmony with rats. Just so we're clear, I'm not suggesting that you go out and hug a rat, I'm saying that if you see one you shouldn't, say, poison it. Rats have feelings too.
"The Blue Umbrella" (2013)
Most of PIXAR's films aren't exactly love stories, but there's usually some sort of romance subplot in there, even if it's not the focus. A Bug's Life had Flik and Atta, Cars had Lightning and Sally, Ratatouille had Linguini and Colette, and I'm not quite convinced that Inside Out didn't have something going on between Joy and Bing Bong (I know, I'm weird). This is one of the few PIXAR productions to be a full-on love story, the others being WALL-E and Elemental.
The Blue Umbrella, released in theaters before Monsters University, takes place in a city where everything is sentient: storm drains, mailboxes, buildings, traffic lights, and of course, umbrellas. It's your typical love story: boy meets girl, they hit it off, but they get separated and he struggles to get back to her, but they reunite and live happily ever after. But instead of humans, the main characters are umbrellas, which makes the short a lot better than one of those dull live action romcoms.
Saschka Unseld, the short's director, was inspired to make it when he was walking down a rainy San Francisco road and saw an abandoned umbrella just sitting there getting rained on. "Rain is a magical place," he explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "I wanted the soul of the film to be a love declaration to the rain, that celebrates the rain." I love the combination of photo-realistic humans (whose faces we never see) with the slightly anthropomorphized buildings, traffic lights, mailboxes etc. and the umbrellas with their black dot eyes and little smiles. I also love how the entire city seems to be helping the titular Blue Umbrella find his love.
Here's an embarrassing story related to the short: I saw Monsters University in theaters twice. The first time I saw it, I didn't see this short because I had to go to the bathroom and was in their for the duration of the short, fortunately making it back before the actual movie started. It wasn't until I saw it the second time that I saw this short, which I'll admit has more of an atmosphere when watched in a dark movie theater as opposed to my house with sunlight pouring through the windows. A lot of PIXAR shorts are like that. My suggestion - wait until night to watch this one.
"Presto" (2008)
How exactly DO magicians pull rabbits out of their hats? We may never know - magicians never reveal their secrets (except the Great Reveal-o. You all got that reference, right?). Presto Digitation, one of the two main characters in this short, pulls it off using two hats, one he might've gotten on loan from Mickey Mouse and a regular ol' top hat. He puts the Mickey hat on the head of his pet bunny, Alec Azam, and then sticks his hand into the top hat to pull him out. But before tonight's performance, Presto has made the mistake of not feeding Alec. And a hungry rabbit is not about to cooperate.
Animating the theater audience that Presto performs for was very expensive. To save time, most of the audience models - shown mostly from the back - were borrowed from Ratatouille (Presto's body from the neck down was also reused from Skinner's lawyer). Originally, the conflict of the short was going to be that the rabbit just had stage fright, but according to director Doug Sweetland, the idea was reworked because it was too complicated. At its core, this is PIXAR channeling Tex Avery and his Looney Tunes work, with other influences being the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, and Tom and Jerry. So basically, PIXAR made a modern Looney Tunes cartoon far better than anything Larry Doyle and his crew cranked out.
However, the cute little bunny Alec doesn't feel much like Bugs or any of the other Looney Tunes characters. There's a vulnerability to him that makes it easier to feel sorry for the little guy, helped by the fact that (unlike Bugs) he doesn't seem to actually be in control of the situation - he doesn't just stand there and make smug faces just before he messes with Presto. This character probably could have carried a whole movie, but with these PIXAR shorts, less is more.
Oh, and keep an eye out for a cameo appearance from The Muppets' Statler and Waldorf. There are a lot of Muppet fans at PIXAR.
"Boundin'" (2003)
Released in theaters before The Incredibles (though it debuted prior to that via special screenings of the short at the Laemmle Theatres), Boundin' is I believe the first PIXAR short to have dialogue in it. Directed by Bud Luckey, who also voices all of the characters, the short tells the story of a vain sheep very proud of his fluffy white wool. Then one day his wool is sheared off, leaving him, as he puts it "ridiculous, funny and pink". He's humiliated... until a wise Jackalope shows up to give him a pep talk.
Originally, Brad Bird wanted Bud Luckey's character in The Incredibles, Rick Dicker, to appear at the beginning of the short - he'd show up, start playing a banjo, and act as the narrator. Also worth noting, a few models are reused from Finding Nemo - some of the fish who appear are recolored models of Gurgle (y'know, the fish in the tank who shouts "CURSE YOU, AQUASCUUUUUUUUUUUM!"?) and the arm that grabs the lamb is none other than that of Dr. Philip Sherman. Stanley, the founder of Radiator Springs from Cars, also makes an appearance three years before that film's release - as the sheep-shearers' car.
With its western location and cast of cheery desert critters, it's hard not to like Boundin'. It's also one of the only PIXAR shorts to have a genuine moral. As the Jackalope puts it, "Does it matter what color? Well, that gets a 'nope', be it pink, purple, or heliotrope. Now, sometimes you're up, and sometimes you're down. When you find that you're down, well, just look around. You still got a body, good legs and fine feet, get your head in the right place and, hey, you're complete. Now, as for the dancin', well, you can do more. You can reach great heights, in fact, you can soar. You just get a leg up and you slap it on down, and you'll find you're up in what's called 'a bound'." I think we need that Jackalope in today's world more than ever.
"Piper" (2016)
First of all, compare the birds in this one to the birds in a previous PIXAR short, For the Birds. PIXAR's come a long way (not that the birds in For the Birds look bad, it's just that the birds in Piper look a lot better).
I really don't have much to say about this one other than "d'aaaaaaaaaaaaw, the baby bird is soooooooooooo cute!". But I'm okay with that. I'm a sucker for cute baby animals. Plus, the short really does capture the feeling of going to the beach and playing in the water. All that sand and grimy stuff in the water when it washes over the baby bird? So accurate...
Piper was directed by Alan Barillaro, who was inspired to make the short when, on a morning jog in the Bay Area, he saw hordes of sanderlings (that's the species of the bird in this short) scampering away from the water and then scampering back once it receded to eat. He and his crew spent weekends on beaches searching for shorebirds - and encountering hermit crabs, which inspired the hermit crab that appears in the short. And fortunately, he also fought the urge to make the characters more anthropomorphic or have them talk. "It's always fun to show a world we're familiar with but from a different perspective," he said. "We've all been to the beach, but have we ever viewed water from just an inch off the sand? That could be very fearful from a bird's perspective."
The short was released in front of Finding Dory, another PIXAR film that I seem to be in the minority on liking (much like Monsters University, it got mostly positive reviews from critics but is nowadays lumped in with Cars 2 as one of those supposedly so awful PIXAR sequels that they made in the 2010s). Fitting, seeing as they're both focused on water. You could probably insert the baby bird into Finding Dory and it would fit in even among the more cartoony main characters. If you like cute birds, you'll like Piper. What else is there to say, honestly?
"Lou" (2017)
I didn't see this one until much recently. Like, earlier this month. It was released in front of Cars 3, and I didn't see that one in theaters. In fact, I didn't see ANY movies in theaters during 2017.
Lou stars one of the most mesmerizing characters that PIXAR has ever created. He's a being made out of all the items in a school's lost and found box. His eyes are baseballs with black button pupils, his "head" is a red sweater with the neckhole serving as a mouth, and if need be he can literally pull himself together. He likes to help the kids at the school find whatever items they've misplaced - and when he sees one kid stealing things from his classmates, he decides that a lesson must be taught.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Lou is a mesmerizing character. The way they animate this character, constantly "shapeshifting" as he runs with his "body parts" rearranging themselves, is almost magical - like, remember the Greedy from the Raggedy Ann and Andy movie? Remember how that character was constantly flowing around, shapeshifting, contorting into different shapes? Lou is sort of like the CGI equivalent of the Greedy. If this character were in, say, a horror movie or one of those survival games on the internet, he'd be very creepy... but PIXAR, of course, managed to make him endearing.
Oh, and there's also a lesson about how being nice is nice. And an ending that's honestly pretty bittersweet. But I won't give anything away. You'll have to watch the short for yourself.
"Day and Night" (2010)
How do you personify daytime and nighttime? Leave it to the folks at PIXAR to figure out how.
Here we have these two blob-like characters, one being the personification of day and the other being the personification of night. They aren't sure what to make of each other at first, but soon become friends. This short is unique in that it combines PIXAR's usual CGI with hand-drawn animation (there's clearly some more Ward Kimball influence here), specifically by having hand-drawn characters with CGI bodies. I have no idea how they did it... though there's probably some video on YouTube that explains it.
The combination of two different animation styles is the short's main gimmick, but there are a lot of clever gags in it as well. I love how Day yawning is represented by the crowing of a rooster, and how his going to the bathroom is represented by a rushing waterfall (I know, it's toilet humor, but I still found it funny). The characters, despite being in a black void where cartoon physics run rampant, really do feel "weighed down" so to speak by the scenery inside them, which is a really nice touch. It's one of the most experimental things that PIXAR has ever done. And this is coming from somebody who just watched it on their laptop - I don't know how much more impressive it looked on the big screen (it was released in front of Toy Story 3, which I did not see in theaters... stop judging me!).
Watching this really reminded me of how much I think PIXAR should try their hand at a full-length hand-drawn movie. From my understanding, the PIXAR crew was dismayed when the industry decided to abandon hand-drawn animated films in favor of CGI (their intent when making Toy Story was never to have CGI replace hand-drawn animation). With that in mind, I think they'd be just the studio to help theatrical 2D films make a comeback. Though I'm not sure if Bob Iger would let them do it...
"Burrow" (2020)
Speaking of PIXAR and 2D animation, I believe this was their first fully-2D short film. The original plan was to release it in theaters before Soul, but the Covid-19 pandemic put a dent in that plan, so it wound up released on Disney Plus as part of PIXAR's "SparkShorts" series. When Soul eventually did get a theatrical release in 2024, this was shown in theaters before it.
Like La Luna, Burrow feels like a children's picture book come to life - in this case, something written by the likes of Beatrix Potter or Arnold Lobel. And like Presto, it stars a rabbit. This one wants to dig a nice burrow, but keeps getting waylaid by encounters with other animals - a mole, a mouse, hedgehogs, frogs, newts, bugs, etc. And like Boundin', it has a moral to it: in this case, that solitude is overrated.
I didn't notice it until I saw it brought up in an interview with the short's director, Madeline Sharafian, but this short actually makes for a pretty good parallel to what was going on during the pandemic. Not to brag, but I think those of us who live with other people had it at least a little better during the pandemic because, even if we were stuck in our homes, we at least weren't alone. And jeez, has it really been four years since the pandemic ended in 2021? Still feels like it was just yesterday...
Combining a cozy atmosphere with cute cartoon animals, Burrow is a short that might not make you laugh, but it'll definitely make you smile.
HONORABLE MENTION: "Mr. Incredible and Pals" (2005)
The idea of this short is that, in the Incredibles universe, Mr. Incredible and Frozone were approached by about having a cartoon show featuring their likenesses (sort of like how celebrities like Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Louie Anderson, and Jackie Chan all had cartoon shows starring them). The show apparently never aired, but a pilot was made - and it is laughably bad. Like, if this were an actual show, I'd probably wind up reviewing an episode of it at some point. For one thing, it features Synchro-Vox. I was born looooooooong after the days of Synchro-Vox being used as an actual animation tool instead of just something used when a cartoon feels like being intentionally creepy. So this was actually my introduction to the technique (well, that and the pirate at the beginning of the SpongeBob theme song).
The short is a fun parody of cartoons from the days of very, very, very small budgets. I particularly love the inclusion of a rabbit named "Mr. Skipperdoo". But, to be honest, the short itself is not the Honorable Mention here. The COMMENTARY is. Yep, the short actually comes with commentary by the actual Mr. Incredible and Frozone. And it is a riot. I would not be surprised if there was no script, they just put Craig T. Nelson and Samuel L. Jackson in the recording booth, had them watch the cartoon, and they just ad-libbed everything. I particularly love Frozone's mockery of the animation style ("Why's everybody got lady lips?! Are those human lips?! Whose lips ARE those?!").
And now I'm wondering... who would win in a fight? Mr. Skipperdoo or Alec from Presto? I'm betting on Alec myself. What do you think?
Further reading:
- BuzzFeed's 2021 ranking of every PIXAR short made at that point
- Screen Rant's 2024 ranking of every PIXAR short made from that point
- Vulture's 2015 ranking of every PIXAR short made from that point
If you'd like to watch these shorts for yourself (which I highly recommend doing), you can find them - and several other PIXAR shorts that aren't on the list - on Disney Plus. Or you could just get out the DVDs of whichever PIXAR movies these were released with and see if they're in the bonus features.
Say, maybe the reason why Elio isn't making more money is because it didn't have a short in front of it... I dunno, just a theory.
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