Presto

Pixar is the new Disney (as in the good Disney of old). They continue to make quality stories, push boundaries of visual design capabilities and, above all, charm audiences young and old. The same holds with Presto, the team's latest short cartoon which played before each screening of Wall-E. In it, a hungry rabbit, upset his magician owner will not give him the carrot promised to him, decides to sabotage the show in a variety of increasingly humorous ways until he gets it. What makes this simple premise shine is the clever slapstick gags, great characters and the overall sweet tone throughout the film. It's just pure and simple cartoon fun that sets the right tone for the film after it. The absence of dialogue actually makes the whole thing funnier, as their are no corny lines to ruin the enjoyment like in most non-Pixar cartoons. I highly recommend buying it on iTunes or seeing Wall-E just to make sure yo get to experience it.

Unusually for a Pixar short, Presto is a rather fast and frenetic cartoon.

A magician is preparing for his stage show and has a nice juicy carrot for his rabbit.

The rabbit is salivating but the magician is just teasing him with it. The hungry rabbit causes chaos with the show especially with the magic hats.

Inadvertently with all the bedlam and the magician getting injured with the tricks going wrong, the show wows the audience.

I have always loved Pixar, and Presto- shown before the enchanting WALL-E- is one of my favourites ever from them. Pixar films and shorts always have had amazing animation and Presto is no exception. The colours have so much vibrancy and warmth and the backgrounds are smooth and elegant. The music is suitably rousing and dynamic with what's going on screen. Presto has some great and very funny humour, not through dialogue, but through slapstick and visual gags. In fact, for me Presto is one of the funnier Pixar short films, the slapstick and visual gags are not just funny and there are plenty of them but also very clever. I also love how much heart there is in the simple story and how engaging the characters are, especially the rabbit. Presto has humour and heart, but what makes it so good is also its sweet tone without making it cloyingly sweet. Overall, a superb short film, it really is 5 minutes of sheer joy. 10/10 Bethany Cox

As any fan of Pixar's animated films know, when they send a new feature out, they include a short cartoon with it. PRESTO is the film that accompanies WALL-E and it is a silent picture.

A good part of the publicity surrounding WALL-E is that it is largely a silent film. But PRESTO is wholly one, concerning a stage magician, his carrot-hungry rabbit and a piece of real magic: a top-hot that is connected to a dunce cap. The magician can put his hand into the top hat and draw out things from the dunce cap. And, as is traditional, he intends to pull out the rabbit, but the rabbit, who resembles the rabbit in the TRIX cereal commercials, is upset that he is not getting any carrot, and sabotages the act in various amusing ways using the logic of the set-up.

A very amusing cartoon, and Pixar is to be commended for continuing to develop animation talent in its short subjects.

To go with Pixar's most perfect movie, we're treated to a 5 minute short before the picture starts. Presto is beautifully animated, looking just as good as a full length animated picture would, and also, like the movie it was shown with, Wall-E, it has no dialogue, yet still comes off brilliantly. It induced more laughs than any other full length film I've seen this year.

Presto is a magician. He's late to work and forgets to feed his rabbit who he's about to use for a trick. Presto has a hat where anything that goes into the hat comes out of another hat. Rebelling against Presto, the rabbit refuses to be pulled from the hat and tries to make the magician look bad. Chaos ensues, as do many belly laughs, which have never been produced in me to this magnitude from a cartoon.

This was one of Pixar's best shorts. It was the perfect length with the perfect amount of jokes, mostly slapstick, which caused some real laughter from me, and the entire audience. The animation was vibrant and colorful, and the way it had a nice glow to it, similar to the way Ratatouille looks (I don't know how to explain it). Never has a crotch hit been more expertly thought out, and never have I laughed harder at an animation as I did with this little gem.

My rating: **** out of ****. 6 mins.