Pixar Popcorn

These short films are decently cute and fun but completely pointless. Nearly zero dialogue. The ducky and bunny episodes are the only ones with actual talking. I was looking forward to these but pretty underwhelmed. Something seems off or different with the animation as well. It's not terrible or unwatchable, but noticeably different than the quality from the respective movies. I'd say if you're a hardcore Pixar fan they're still worth a quick watch. You can watch all of them in about twenty minutes. But don't expect them to add anything meaningful to the story or any character development. They're okay for what they are.

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.

When I first heard that Pixar would release some new shorts, I was expecting something along the lines of the five-minute shorts they usually produce. I was disappointed to find out that these are microscopic skits that don't really add anything to the original films. "Popcorn" is not a good title; perhaps "leftover crumbs" would be more accurate. My favourite was the Incredibles doing their chores with their powers. But even at its best, I feel that Pixar's labour would still be better spent just producing more great films instead of these harmless but pointless diversions.

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.

Not going to lie, this is very weak by Pixar standards. Even the animation felt a bit below par if you ask me. Only two of the shorts have proper voice acting, and as a result are automatically some of the better ones. The Incredibles shorts were my favourite of the bunch, because they kind of had a plot and gags that were fairly interesting for 2 minutes, but the rest? Completely pointless and mostly a waste of time. One plus side is you'll only need around 20 minutes to binge through all of them. Disappointing.

4.5/10