June 30, 2010: Day & Night
Day and Night (not to be confused with the recent terrible action picture Knight and Day) is a Pixar short film which ran in theatres ahead of Toy Story 3. I saw it in 3D, not that it would have been necessary.
Two big lumbering animated guys, more or less blobs with little heads and hands and feet, move around on a black background, and they are transparent, showing outdoor nature scenes through them. One of them evidently represents daytime, and the other one is nighttime. In a series of “grass is greener” scenarios, they see what each other is experiencing – a sunny green meadow, a beautiful moonlit night – and each wish that they had what the other had instead. Eventually, they get to a point where they both have the exact same scene, and from there they cross over from day to night and night to day.
In just a few minutes, the point is made that what you have is exquisite in its own way, and that with patience, you will probably get what you want, even if it’s what someone else has right now. Differences are then able to be celebrated rather than envied. This wasn’t my favourite Pixar short, and I can’t say that the point it made was particularly profound, but it was a pleasant time-filler before seeing the main feature.
Pixar shorts aren’t always that great.
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