By Nate Johnson
With its own streaming service, Disney now has more flexibility with how long content can be. Instead of a theatrical window or a thirty-minute block on TV, Disney can experiment with more shorts. Below are my rankings and reviews of a variety of original shorts only found on Disney+.
1- Pixar in Real Life
Imagine your favorite Pixar characters in real life. No really! Imagine seeing Wall-E roaming around or having a command center for people’s feeling like Inside Out. These shorts are fun to remind me why I love so many of Pixar’s movies.
2- Lamp Life
Continuing the story from Toy Story 4, you are invited to see where Bo Peep was all those years. As a life long Toy Story fan, I’m always excited to see more of the gang.
3- One Day at Disney
An offshoot of the documentary, these shorts gives people an inside look of all sorts of careers in the Walt Disney Company. As someone who works in the parks, it’s fun to see other areas of the company, even the former CEO Bob Iger himself.
4- Pixar Spark Shorts
You know those fun Pixar shorts that premiere before every Pixar movie? Here is a batch of original shorts that you don’t have to wait for new movies in order to watch. My favorites are “Float” and ”Loop”. Pixar again creates content that is relevant for today.
5- Forky Asks a Question
A spin-off from Toy Story 4, Forky is back asking questions about life. There are ten in all. There were hit and miss for me. My favorites (What is a Friend? and What is a Computer?) were top-notch and I could watch again and again. The others were alright in my humble opinion.
6- Disney Animation Short Circuit
Like Pixar, Disney Animation Studios came out with a new batch of shorts. Each one was experimental. I liked “The Race”, “Cycles”, and “Puddles” the most.
What I enjoyed most about the shorts was I could watch them during a break at work or binge them while waiting on my oil change. Their brevity let me finish the stories in a short sitting and I didn’t have to remember what happened before them.
