Pixar Popcorn

This is a series of very short films that usually have a cute gag or two in them. I watched them all in about 30 minutes and none really stay with you. I think the problem is the shorts are left over gags from the films-apparently at least. The animation doesn't seem quite as polished as normal. Moreover, the shorts have very little dialog, voicework. That seem less a commitment to being cinematic than a budget decision to not pay Tom Hanks again.

With new shorts series like Disney's Short Circuit and Pixar's own SparkShorts, it is refreshing to see these studios freed of the weight of their franchises to experiment both narratively and visually.

In Popcorn we see Pixar experiment once more with even shorter shorts and this time with the tricky proposition of playing within their best-known franchises. Not a studio to shy away from a challenge, it is very welcome to see that they are not content with telling stories in too straightforward a manner.

A majority of these shorts are dialogue-free, which is a great surprise. Wall-E showed that Pixar can work with silence, and that is cemented with the Popcorn shorts. Most of them are quite nice small scenes and gags.

Of these my favorites were the domesticity of the Incredibles ones, the silent comedy of the Coco one and the chill of the Soul one. This Soul short might be the most surprising one in its reflective atmosphere, tying to other left-field Disney+ projects like Zenimation and the Disney Park Sunrises.

Given these shorts are all only about two minutes long this is harmless enough project but you do keep asking yourself what the point is. The animation is of course excellent but the lack of voices on a couple of them is a real shame and a few seem like deleted scenes from the parent movie that were rightly excised.

For me the most interesting part was the popcorn themed variations on the Luxo Jr. opening logo.

They must be paying the voice actors by the word because nobody spoke through all 11 of the short except Ducky and Bunny from Toy Story 4. Dory gasps and I think I heard her saying "Wow" but that is literally it. At first I thought they were doing it that way so they didn't have to pay them at all, but Ellen and Craig T. Nelson (at least) did get credited.

My parents have absolutely despised each other for as long as I can remember, screaming vulgarities at each other on the regular. That is why I'm happy Pixar popcorn has come to make me feel happy after my deadbeat father and excuse of a mother have finally split. Thanks, Pixar. You're my new parents from now on.