Rendez-vous avec le destin

Disney now owns Fox and its properties, including "The Simpsons" cartoon TV series, in addition to Pixar already, in case anyone didn't know. This short, "Playdate with Destiny," accompanying the Pixar feature "Onward" (2020) feels like an advertisement of that fact. The youngest of the Simpsons family, Maggie, the now-thirty-something-years-old baby, takes center stage in this one. Although there's a bit of exploration of potentially more interesting avenues, with dreams and that the short plays out like a modern silent film, it's mostly a parody of a globetrotting romance flick, with the infants imagining themselves doing grown-up mush. The train gag is decent--probably reminiscent of far too many movies. As with the Pixar movie, I'm generally indifferent to it, so at least it makes for appropriate mediocre accompaniment to a mediocre feature.

In this silent Simpsons short film that appeared before Onward in theaters, baby Maggie tries to reconnect with a boy she met at the playground. This is neither good nor bad, just there.

A little background: This is a sequel of sorts to the previous Maggie Simpson short The Longest Daycare. They're similar in format, silent and filmed from the angle of Maggie's point of view. Playdate's issue is that it pales in comparison to its predecessor. Daycare had the better jokes, rhythm and direction. More importantly, it was original. This just feels like it's trying too hard to recapture lightning in a bottle.

There are some funny moments, especially one at the beginning, but mostly this short just coasts. Animation is good for what it is. Again the effort given to show the world from Maggie's height is commendable.

You might get more out of this if you haven't seen Longest Daycare, and if you're a Simpsons completionist, go nuts. However, this isn't anything anyone really needs to take the effort to see. (I do encourage you to see Longest Daycare if you haven't yet. It's free and legally/officially available on Youtube.)

I'm a pretty harsh critic, and I agree that this short was not bad but nothing special. However, I'd really like to see more Simpsons shorts like these.

Don't replace The Simpsons (30 min show) with these, however, since that's just irreplaceable.

I like the first one better. This one was ok it had a few good gags here and there. It feels a bit pointless since we are never going to see the little boy again.

Classic tale of first love, longing, loss and refinding each other all compressed Into 4 minutes. All that without even a word spoken.

If the writer's could make the show's episodes at this quality then they would be at least half as good as they used to be.