Ranking Walt Disney Short Films
Available right now on Netflix is a collection of 12 Disney short films. Honestly, all of them are pretty good, but I am going to rank them for you because that is just the kind of generous person I am. From worst to best:
12) Lorenzo
So, this is a little tango piece where a cat (Lorenzo) is super obsessed with his beautiful tail, so then an evil tailless cat curses him and his tail comes to life. So then Lorenzo cannot get his living tail to stop bothering him, so he ends up slicing his own tail off. It’s just real, real weird. I hated it.
11) Prep & Landing: Operation Secret Santa
This one is cute. Little Santa elves named Wayne and Lanny are asked by Mrs. Claus to sneak into Santa’s secret office and retrieve a little wooden wheel–which turns out to be a piece of Santa’s first toy he made–which she then gives to Santa as a Christmas present. It’s cute, but it is also dumb and boring.
10) Get a Horse!
This was an ambitious piece that blends old-style animation with new-style animation. Mickey and friends go back and forth in the screen, which is cool I guess. But honestly, the new animation style that they have here looks real strange to me. I don’t know, I just did not really like the way the characters looked? #NotMyMickeyMouse
9) The Ballad of Nessie
Did you love the aesthetics of Brave? You into the Loch Ness Monster? Here is the short for you! This short actually has a really great message. Poor Nessie gets kicked out of her home by a jerk guy who is building a golf course on her lake (seems real relevant to a lot of political issues honestly), and everyone tells her not to cry, to keep a stiff upper lip, but she ends up having nowhere to go, so she cries and cries so much that it makes her own little lake that she can live in. Moral of the story: it’s okay to cry, kids.
8) How to Hook Up Your Home Theater
I love this one because it’s an old style Disney short that stars Goofy trying to set up a fancy TV to watch his football game. It’s funny, but a real drawn-out “technology is so crazy, technology is hard to set up and understand and technology these days is just out of hand” and I personally am sitting there just thinking, “what baby boomer made this.”
7) Frozen Fever
Oh, this one. It could’ve been so good. And it’s not terrible–the song is pretty cute and the whole premise is sweet. Basically, it’s Anna’s birthday and Elsa wants to throw her this perfect birthday party, but she has a cold. And this is fine, except when Elsa sneezes these little snowball things come alive?? It’s like how she made Olaf, except these are tiny snowball creatures born of her sneezes?? It’s so bizarre. And then having a cold somehow makes Elsa act like a sloppy drunk? Colds don’t do that to people? Anyway.
6) The Little Match Girl
Based off of the classic Christmas story, this shows a poor little girl who is trying to keep warm by lighting her matches, which somehow spark little fantasies about having a decent standard of living. Although unlike the Christmas story, it’s unclear if she dies at the end? She is found by some lady? Now, if I were the little match girl, I would pull a New York City and use one of her matches to start a fire in a garbage can. That would keep her warm way longer.
5) John Henry
Disney has a rough history with racism and portraying any story with any person of color. This one at least is trying to be better. It takes the American tall tale and turns it into a song, and it’s actually pretty good. Not positive if the representation is perfect, but still.
4) Tick Tock Tale
I LOVE this one. There’s this cute little clock that runs slow and no one likes it but then one day the clock store gets ROBBED but since our little clock runs SLOW it can ALERT THE AUTHORITIES. Okay, the premise actually sounds dumb but I swear it’s heartwarming.
3) Tangled: Ever After
Awww Rapunzel and Eugene get married!!! This one is technically more about Pascal and Maximus losing the wedding rings and trying to find them again, but whatever, because that part at least is funny and Rapunzel looks SO HAPPY I love this one.
2) Paperman
Man, this one is cute too. It won the Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated), which is super cool. The one thing about this one, though, is that the guy just like….stares at the girl from his office? And then like….follows her? I mean it works out because all his paper airplanes transform into a living paper monster thing that physically drags him to where the girl is, but…..I mean it’s cute.
1) Feast
I might be biased towards this one because I freaking LOVE dogs but whatever I don’t care this one is the BEST. And because it’s the best, I am not going to tell you what it’s about. Go watch it. Right now. It is perfect and will make your day.
Well, those are all the Disney short films! If you want, maybe someday I will rank all the Pixar shorts for you! (There are so many more than twelve #yikes). Stay tuned.