For the Birds

A group of small birds nestle comfortably on a telephone wire. When a large bird wants to join them they treat him with contempt and make fun of him. However when he joins them on the wire they learn a very harsh lesson about accepting others.

Shown before Monsters Inc. this short helped make for a longer running time and give a feeling of more value for money. It is a very simple short, with no dialogue. The little birds are really cool with great facial expressions and manage to be really likeable. The big bird looks real goofy and it's easy to join the little birds in mocking him. I suppose that is good because it makes their lesson our lesson.

The animation is superb, the backgrounds are bright and colourful and each feather on each bird looks really realistic. The short is very funny - funnier than it sounds, the little birds are really funny, kids will love it because all the comedy is visual, adults will love it because it's not too childish. It feels better than it is because it is a one-joke short, if they'd had to make this longer I think it would have suffered. However as a short it manages to be short and sweet, it's not very memorable but it is a funny joke.

Overall it is by no means the funniest 5 minutes of my life (!), but it is a very good one-joke short that is funnier that Monsters Inc (but lets not forget that MI actually needed a better story!). Funny, warm but ultimately forgettable.

I've watched this short a dozen times, and I still laugh out loud at the main gag. This film is comic perfection.

Remember how the Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons always looks plaintively at the camera whenever he makes a mistake, the pupils of his eyes narrowing just before he falls off the cliff, the boulder crushes him, or the dynamite explodes in his face?

That was the kind of touch that made those old cartoons great. And it is clear from this film that the spirits of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and the other classic animators are alive and well at Pixar.

The message here may be muddled and a bit heavy-handed (I mean, the small birds wouldn't have fallen, if that goofy bird hadn't perched on the wire in the first place), but the film is really has more than meets the eye. The film is obviously about prejudice. It tells us that different doesn't necessarily equal inferior. That we should adapt to others who look different from us. And that sometimes we really need to be different. But I really liked the hidden message in this one, which is about tolerance. The goofy big bird is totally indifferent to all the rejection and harassment he gets from the small birds. I don't know whether he is tolerable, confident or simply naïve, but I liked how he insisted to stay among them despite everything.

(8/10)

A life lesson about difference, in the first act the birds are fighting each other and then the bigger bird appears, which is a reason for mockery and exclusion from the group, he unintentionally enters the group but the birds that used to fight get together to expel him. Of the group, they just don't realize that it will be bad for them and in the end, who ends up being different is the one who used to be prejudiced.

This short little gem was screened before Monsters Inc. And it was the best part of the coming 2 hours or so. It's endearing, it's hilarious, and it's cute and adorable. It got more laughs in its 5 minutes than Monsters Inc got during its 90.

I'd highly recommend this short movie to anyone. Perfect entertainment.