Piper (Alan Barillaro, 2016)
Imdb
Date Watched: 6/18/16
Cinema or Home: Cinema (with Funny Face)
Reason For Watching: It’s Pixar
Rewatch: No
Whenever Pixar announces a new feature, I get a little extra excited because I know a new short will accompany it. There are many that I absolutely love, but the last several have been disappointing to me. In fact I haven't loved any of them since
Partly Cloudy, which appeared before
Up.
Well today they redeemed themselves.
Piper is wonderful. The animation is nothing short of stunning. It's probably the most photo-realistic animated film I've ever seen. The story itself - of a hatchling sandpiper learning to find food and overcoming his fear of the water - is also really sweet. I'm not yet sure exactly where I'd rank it among Pixar's other theatrical shorts, but it's definitely among my favorites.
* * *
Finding Dory (Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane, 2016)
Imdb
Date Watched: 6/18/16
Cinema or Home: Cinema (with Funny Face)
Reason For Watching: It’s Pixar
Rewatch: No
Possible Spoilers
Despite being a Pixar fangirl, I had my reservations going into this. Pixar doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to sequels or for that matter to their recent output (with the obvious exception of
Inside Out). And although I like
Finding Nemo, it's never been a particular favorite of mine.
I can't say that I was blown away by this movie, but I definitely had a good time with it. I had quite a few laughs and really liked most of the new characters. But there were definitely some things that bothered me a little bit. First of all, I'm usually very much impressed by the attention to detail and research that goes into Pixar's movies, but I really felt like that just didn't happen here, particularly when it came to a captive whale shark named Destiny.
We're first introduced to Destiny when Dory finds herself in a pail of dead fish and is tossed into Destiny's tank as food. Whale sharks are huge, slow moving filter feeders who would not benefit from a few dead fish being tossed into the tank. The movie also had Destiny doing things that just aren't physically possible for a giant, slow moving fish (A
Free Willy style escape by a whale shark? I don't buy it, Pixar).
The story itself also ventures into some really absurd territory and features an absolutely ridiculous finale - featuring a transport truck full of marine life, an escaped octopus, and Dory in a cup. I know it's an animated children's tale, but it really stretched my limits in terms of suspension of disbelief. Oh well. Even with its flaws it's much better than
Brave.
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