Pixar’s New Short is Really Special: Sanjay’s Super Team
Posted on November 25, 2015 at 2:30 pm
The best part of “The Good Dinosaur” is the short film that comes before, “Sanjay’s Super Team.” The Pixar short films are gems but this one is really special. It is the first to feature non-white characters, the first to be based on the life of the person who created it, and the first to touch on religion.
In the film, as a father is performing a Hindu morning prayer ritual with a bell and a candle, his son Sanjay is behind him, trying to watch superheroes on television. Sanjay, who is wearing superhero pajamas and playing with a superhero action figure, has no interest in Hindu deities. But in a lovely sequence the movie shows us the link between the deities and the superheros. And at the end, we see a photo of the real Sanjay with his father.
Here is a clip from the film:
And here the real Sanjay and his producer talk about making it:
“The Good Dinosaur” is the good movie. Not the great movie. Not the especially memorable movie. Just the perfectly nice and pleasant movie, much stronger in visual splendor than in storyline.
Delayed for 18 months as Disney replaced the original director and realigned the story, the seams are palpable. And too much of it is much too familiar: a mismatched pair has to find their way home (see “Finding Nemo,” “Toy Story,” etc. etc.), a young animal is devastated by witnessing the death of his father through a natural disaster (see “The Lion King” — the staging is very similar), a boy with no family is cared for and preyed upon in the wilderness by animals (“The Jungle Book”), and it takes place a long, long time ago (see “Ice Age,” “The Land Before Time,” and “The Croods”).
But it is beautiful to look at, and the story is very sweet, a traditional “boy and his dog,” except here the “boy” is the dinosaur and the human is more like a pet. In the world of this film, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs bypassed earth, and so millions of years after the real dinos died off, they are not only still here, but they are thriving. Humans are just beginning to stand erect and have not yet developed language or tamed fire (but have somehow invented very handy leaf-clothes that are woven together so well they always cover the private bits). The dinosaurs can speak and they have learned how to farm, using their snouts to plow the field and building a silo to store grains for the winter. A loving herbivore dino couple (Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand) lovingly watch their three eggs hatch as the story begins. The biggest egg produces the smallest dino baby. They name him Arlo (Raymond Ochoa).
While his brother and sister are confident and capable, Arlo is fearful and anxious. His chore is feeding the chickens and they terrify him. His parents explain that each of the children will have a chance to literally make their mark — to add their paw print to the silo to show that they have made a contribution to the family. “You’ve got to earn your mark by doing something big for something bigger than yourself,” the father dinosaur explains.
Arlo’s siblings make their marks. But Arlo cannot seem to get beyond his fears. His father gives him a chance to set a trap for the animal that has been stealing their grain. But when the creature — a little human boy — is caught, Arlo lets him go. The father dinosaur tries to teach Arlo how to handle fear. But, leading Arlo to chase after the boy, a thunderstorm swells the river and Arlo’s father only has time to save his son before he is swept away.
Arlo gets separated from his family, and the only one who can help him is the young human, who crawls on all fours and pants like a puppy. Arlo names him Spot, and together they meet a variety challenges, many involving friendly characters or predators. Highlights include a very funny Styracosaurus whose antler protuberances are occupied by birds and animals (see “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose.”) But it is very funny to hear him introduce each of them, explaining about one of the birds, “He protects me from having unrealistic goals.” A brief visit to a collection of gophers who get literally blown out of their holes is delightfully choreographed. Sam Elliott provides just the right gravelly bass voice as another dinosaur dad who is less scary than he looks (but even that is too reminiscent of the better shark scene in “Nemo”).
The patched-together quality is most telling in a quasi-dream sequence (see “Footsteps” plaques at your aunt’s house) and an ending that seems to undercut some of what we thought we learned about what makes a family. The visuals are gorgeous, especially the clouds, the landscape, and the play of water and light. But the story is only intermittently as engaging as the background images.
Be sure to get there in time to see the short film before the feature, a heartwarming autobiographical tale about a Hindu father at his morning prayers. As he pays tribute to his deities, his son is on the other side of the room, watching a television show about superheroes. The way they are brought together has more imagination, heart, and inspiration in its brief running time than “The Good Dinosaur” has as a full-length feature.
Parents should know that this film includes extended peril, with some characters injured and killed (and eaten). There is a sad death of parent (who returns in a dream, which may be confusing or disturbing to young children), omnivorous dinosaurs with big teeth, etc., trippy fermented berries, and some potty humor.
Family discussion: How will you make your mark? Who in your family has a scar and what is the story behind it?
If you like this, try: “The Land Before Time,” “Finding Nemo,” and “Inside Out’
Pixar’s 21-minute “Toy Story of Terror,” made for television, is available on DVD and Blu-Ray and is a perfect Halloween treat for the whole family. The toys live with Bonnie now, and she and her mother are on a road trip to see her grandmother one rainy night. When they have to stop at a motel after a flat tire, Mr. Potatohead goes missing. The other toys have to find him before Bonnie and her mother are ready to drive away.
What I love about this film is that one of my favorite characters, the master thespian Mr. Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton) begins to narrate the action in his most resonantly Shakespearean tones, a kind of meta-commentary on the entire thriller genre. And Carl Weathers joins the cast as Combat Carl, who helps Jessie (Joan Cusack) foil the evil plot of the motel manager who takes toys to sell them on eBay. There’s a nice lesson, too, about how to feel less frightened.
The DVD/Blu-Ray has some nice extras about the making of the movie.
Inside “Inside Out” — Takes on Pixar’s Hit Movie About Feelings
Posted on July 6, 2015 at 3:35 pm
“Inside Out” is not just one of the best movies of the year (animated and live action). It is also one of the most psychologically profound and astute films about emotions and the mind ever made. It set the all-time box office opening weekend record for a non-series film and reached number one at the box office this week, out-doing two huge holiday weekend releases, “Terminator Genisys” and “Magic Mike XXL.” Copyright 2015 Pixar
And it has provoked some exceptionally thoughtful responses from movie critics and specialists in child development. My friend Jen Chaney wrote one for The Dissolve, tying the movie’s themes to other Pixar films that touch on the bittersweetness of the end of childhood, but explaining how this film takes it to a new depth.
According to Inside Out, the middle-school-girl brain is simultaneously orderly yet fragile, crowded with highly charged voices (some previously heard on NBC sitcoms, The Daily Show, and/or Saturday Night Live), and aesthetically similar to a pinball machine, a Lite-Brite, and multiple levels of Candy Crush. It’s rare in a children’s film—or for that matter, any film—to see elements of the human nervous system rendered with such exquisite care and unmitigated glee.
But the film’s point of view is more important than its plot, or its sophisticated view of the machinations behind Riley’s meltdown. For the first time, a Pixar film is confronting how much it hurts when a child realizes her childhood will end—while it’s still ending. It literally gets inside her head, then bluntly announces that being a kid hurts because it doesn’t last. That feels refreshingly candid, even for Pixar.
he movie’s portrayal of sadness successfully dramatizes two central insights from the science of emotion.
First, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations….Second, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — our social lives. Studies have found, for example, that emotions structure (not just color) such disparate social interactions as attachment between parents and children, sibling conflicts, flirtations between young courters and negotiations between rivals.
They would have preferred that Sadness have a less dreary affect. And they note that they recommended many more emotions, but Pixar explained that they could not handle that many characters.
he emotional messages of most entertainment for kids are pretty relentlessly positive: Love your family, stay true to yourself, keep positive, never give in to despair. As the research of Stanford’s Jeanne Tsai has shown, one of the emotions that Americans in particular privilege is joy—excited pleasure. Children see around them, in books and movies and advertisements, exemplars of delight at growing up. “That makes it harder to grapple with sadness,” University of California, Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner told me. “It’s a vacuum in our culture.”
But, points out Keltner, who consulted with Pixar’s Pete Docter on the film, sadness is a powerful tool, a trigger that sends kids back to their parents for comfort and connection. “You gotta hang on to that sadness,” he told me, because in the tumult of early adolescence, it’s the thing that can bring parent and child back together.
Major kudos are due Pixar and Disney for elevating the importance of the emotional lives of children and providing a creative vehicle for helping kids learn to understand and manage their complex emotions. Most importantly, the film reminds parents that having a happy child does not mean your child must always be happy.
Young children are deeply feeling beings. Starting in the earliest months of life, well before they can use words to express themselves, babies have the capacity to experience peaks of joy, excitement, and elation. They also feel fear, grief, sadness, hopelessness, and anger—emotions that many adults understandably find it hard to believe that such young children can experience. But just as Riley in the film needs her parents to hear and empathize with her difficult feelings of pain and loss—which helps her move on in positive ways—so do babies and toddlers.
She concludes with some very practical recommendations for parents.
And be sure to listen to co-writer/director Pete Docter, who spoke about what was behind the film and the crucial moment that changed everything in an interview with “Fresh Air’s” Terry Gross.
