BURN·E

It's 2805 A.D. Humanity had launched itself into space on the spaceship Axiom leaving behind a mess on Earth to be cleaned up by robots before the people return. A small meteorite hits a lighting spire outside of the ship. BURN-E is a repair robot and sent to replace the spire. However, things keep going wrong. Not the least of which, WALL-E's pursuit of EVE is interfering and the ship lands back on Earth. Nevertheless, BURN-E is programmed to repair the damage no matter what. This is a nice companion piece to WALL-E but not much more than that as a stand-alone. It interacts with the story tangentially. The comedy is light fun. It's nice to see but only after watching WALL-E.

The next short, in the "Shorts" section on Disney Plus is "Burn-E", which was originally produced to be a DVD extra for "Wall-E" and that takes place on the same ship, at a parallel time to the events in that film.

Burn-E, a maintenance welding droid on board the Axiom Starship, is tasked with fixing an exterior sensor on the hull. Eager to please, he sets off but is distracted by Wall-E's actions further up the ship and is loses his replacement sensor overboard. His further attempts to complete this basic task and return to the ship are repeatedly but accidentally thwarted by the actions of Wall-E and Eve.

Some of the shorts in this section of Disney Plus have perhaps felt like deleted scenes that have been given a lick of paint, but this does give the impression that it was a specifically designed side story, written to interact with certain moments from the main film and in that regard, in every regard in fact, it's utterly charming. It's clever, how it weaves the problems of this little robot around the bigger narrative and funny, how the reactions of this machine can be so expressive and adorable.

As I say, this "shorts" section has been a mixed bag, but this was excellent stuff.

Poor Burn-E He just wanted to fix the Light from the Ship It keeps Failed all the time. I laugh about it! This was a COMEDY MASTERPIECE!

While Wall-E is chasing Eve around the space ship, as told in the Pixar movie of that title, what else is going on? That's a big ship, filled not only with enormous, lazy humans, but lots of robots working hard to make them happy and to keep the place running. This short subject form Pixar tells the story of Burn-E, a welding robot aboard that ship, who has to deal with all the problems that Wall-E creates.

Well, he has to try, anyway, because that's his job. He's assiduous about doing his job, even when it becomes impossible.

Animated in the same style as the feature, this excellent short cartoon first saw light as an extra on the DVD release of WALL-E.

Having absolutely loved WALL-E, I was all for seeing the short film that came with it. Burn-E is just as good as the movie it featured with, and while not quite in the same league as Geri's Game, Knick Knack, Jack-Jack Attack, Presto and One Man Band, it is one of Pixar's better short films to me. The animation with beautiful colours and atmospheric backgrounds is amazing, the music is haunting and understated and the story has an enchanting atmosphere to it. Burn-E may be a one-joke short, but seeing as the joke itself is funny, it works brilliantly. Burn-E, like WALL-E, is not just endearing but there is a very human side to him which makes us identify with him all the more. In conclusion, beautifully animated and enchanting, this is a great short film and perhaps one of the better one-joke animations I've seen. 9/10 Bethany Cox