Before I get back into my Pixar marathon, I decided to review the latest Pixar TV show on Disney Plus, Pixar Popcorn. Pixar Popcorn is a collection of ten, one-minute shorts featuring the cast of numerous Pixar films and holy shit is this a mixed bag.
What I’m going to do is go through the episodes one-by-one, talk about them and give them a score. These will be spoiler-free but I will describe the premise and when something is a minute long the premise itself is half the joy of watching it. These are one-minute-long shorts as well so don’t expect my usual incredibly long, maybe too long, article style. Cool? Cool.
To Fitness and Beyond
Set in the Toy Story universe, Buzz Lightyear tries to get the other toys to exercise and become fit. For a start this brings up a lot of questions. Can a toy get fat? How? Do they eat? Are they only exercising because they’ve seen people do it and just sort of assume it’s something they have to do as well?
Other than that, it’s just pretty depressing seeing all the toys without Woody. Yeah, there’s not much to say about this one, it hasn’t got much to offer but is harmless enough seeing that it’s just one-minute-long, it’s not actively embarrassing to watch which is something I can’t say for a few of these shorts.
5 / 10
Unparalleled Parking
I’ve always defended the Cars movies as being better than everybody gives them credit for. Even the second one is simply a mediocre movie and isn’t the abomination everybody claims it is, just a 5 / 10 movie. Because of the non-hatred (I guess that’s the best way of putting it) I have towards the Cars movies I wasn’t against watching more Cars content, I guess. This made me feel embarrassed to consider myself a… not quite a Cars fan, I guess just someone who doesn’t hate the franchise, this made me want to hate the franchise. It’s a minute of the Cars parking, it has one kind of charming moment with Luigi, Guido and Ramone, that’s it.
2 / 10
Dory Finding
Other than two of these shorts nobody speaks, in the previous two it kind of worked. In Dory Finding it doesn’t. Dory doesn’t speak but instead makes what I can only describe as Lego game grunts and for a character who is usually so talkative it just doesn’t work. If they kept her silent I could have looked at it as an artistic choice, but by falling into a weird middle ground it just doesn’t work.
The short is just Dory reacting to things, somebody out there will like it. I’m not a fan of this one.
3 / 10
Soul of the City
This one is just a pleasant experience. It’s just a minute of characters from Soul (check out my review https://mainstream404.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/soul-review/) living in the moment. There’s not much to say about this, it’s got great animation and is just a pleasant experience that works as a nice companion piece to Soul. It incapsulates the themes and feeling of Soul in a single minute without dialogue and for that it deserves praise.
6 / 10
Fluffy Stuff with Ducky and Bunny: Love
Hey look it’s one of the two shorts with actual dialogue. Ducky and Bunny from Toy Story 4 argue as to which of them is more loved by kids. This is clearly just some cut Key and Peele dialogue from Toy Story 4 being animated and put with the rest of the collection, this is done twice in this season and at least the second time is pretty funny, this time it is not.
3 / 10
Chore Day – The Incredibles Way
This is easily the second best short of the entire collection because one, it’s visually interesting, and two, it’s something I’ve always loved seeing, the Incredibles just living their life. It’s just entertaining watching these superpowered characters do regular people things with their powers. I kind of wish it didn’t focus on Jack-Jack as much as it did because he is easily my least favourite part of The Incredibles 2, surprisingly a dumb baby isn’t as entertaining as actual developed characters. It’s not a big problem but if they didn’t focus on him as much, we could see some more Incredibles doing regular people things which is what I’m here for.
7 / 10
A Day in the Life of the Dead
This one is fine, it’s just Coco characters vibin. Nothing more, nothing less.
5 / 10
Fluffy Stuff with Ducky and Bunny: Three Heads
Just like the previous Key and Peele… I mean Ducky and Bunny short; this is just the two characters doing stand-up, luckily this time it’s actually pretty funny with them insulting Bo Peep’s three headed sheep, it’s good stuff, not much more to say.
6 / 10
Dancing with the Cars
The Cars dancing scene was actually one of the best scenes in the original Cars movie but it was because of what it represented for the characters and the area of Radiator Springs, it wasn’t the concept of Cars dancing that was good. This is just watching Cars dancing for a minute, my eyes kind of glazed over during this one, I guess if you really want to watch more dancing cars then here you go.
3 / 10
Cookie Num Num
Once again set in The Incredibles universe, this is my favourite of the Pixar Popcorn shorts. This has everything, a reason for them all to not be talking with a sleeping Jack-Jack that nobody wants to wake up, an entertaining premise with Mr. Incredible, Dash, and Violet all fighting over who gets to eat the last cookie, and interesting visuals with them all using their powers to get the cookie.
It’s just pretty cool seeing Mr. Incredible, Violet, and Dash using their powers against each other in such a trivial, low-stakes scenario, all whilst trying to keep quite as to not wake up the baby. The ending is also pretty good, I could see it happening from a mile off but that doesn’t stop it from being a good ending.
This and “Chore Day – The Incredibles Way” have made me realise that I want a TV show revolving around the Incredibles just living their lives with numerous episodes not even focussing on them fighting villains, that would be great.
7 / 10
So yeah, that was Pixar Popcorn season 1. Whilst it wasn’t anything I’m going to think about after I hit publish on this article, it was an entertaining enough ten minutes and I wouldn’t mind a second season, maybe one with a bit more variety on what franchises they cover, as it stands, we have three Toy Story episodes, two Cars episodes, and two The Incredibles episodes. Maybe limit it to one episode per franchise per season as it would just make the season a bit more varied.
If you want a season score then it gets a 5 / 10. Thanks for reading, see you soon with my Ratatouille review. Bye bye.
Mainstream404 