Day and Night

August 1, 2010

The writer and director of the wonderful Pixar animated short attached to Toy Story 3 shows here why he should stick to films. For this print version he uses stills for illustrations and has kept the general plot—Night and Day (rendered as retro, Shmoo-like silhouettes filled with changing sunlit or moonlit scenes that look 3D in the movie but not here) meet, fight, play, bond at dusk and part friends. He has, however, flattened the age appeal by discarding all of the original's earthier scenes (no ogling of beach babes, for instance, nor even Day's early-morning pee) and replaced its soundtrack of lively music and sound effects leading up to a few seconds of Wayne Dyer on embracing the mysterious (a clear statement of the episode's real theme in a nutshell) with trite, superfluous lines like, "And then something magical began to happen..." and, "Now there is something new in me because of you." Bland, studiously inoffensive and robbed of most of its filmic progenitor's artistry and humor. (Picture book. 5-7)

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