PRESTO!
I'm so glad to see that Presto, the computer-animated short directed by Pixar veteran Doug Sweetland that precedes screenings of WALL-E, has shown up online, because it is a gem. My friend and I attended a late night showing of WALL-E that was predominately populated not with children thrilled to see the film, but with adults presumably seeking an alternative to Wanted and hoping just to be amused and pass the time. Things got off on the wrong foot with seemingly endless ads and previews of corny kids movies, but finally a Pixar logo appeared and people readied themselves for the main attraction, only to come to realize that what they were seeing was not WALL-E but rather something called Presto. (I actually worried for a moment that we'd sat down in the wrong theater.) As the short—which features no talking, only pantomime—began, the disappointment of a further delay was unmistakable... and then, quite remarkably, the audience was charmed and won over. There were a few chuckles at first, and then, before long, a full house of grown men and women fitfully laughing in unison at the zany antics of an animated rabbit (Bugs Bunny's grandson?) and the inconsiderate magician who owns him. In between my own chuckles, I looked around in amazement. All I could think of was the similarly unexpected scene in Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941, which inspired the 2000 Coen brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou?) in which a bunch of hardened prisoners from a chain gang are ushered into a church, sat down, and shown a Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoon, and within seconds are howling with laughter as if they hadn't a trouble in the world. Such is the power of laughter, and nobody has offered it as purely, or consistently, or to as many people as Disney, and now Disney-Pixar. Check out the entire library of Pixar shorts on the company's site, and give a look to Presto—even though it loses some of its luster when removed from the big screen—below...
