Where do we begin with this one? Ever since the early Pixar films we have come to expect an animated short to be placed in front of the film, quite often these animated shorts remain in the memory long after we have left the cinema which is a tribute to the artists and storytellers who work on these films, this will be the case of The Blue Umbrella.

We are all familiar with the story of Paperman, the 2012 Disney Animation Studios short placed before Wreck It Ralph, the Blue Umbrella shares more than a few similarities with that film. The plot is basically it begins raining and in a sea of black umbrellas in this monotonous city, a single blue umbrella stands out, suddenly a red umbrella appears next to the blue umbrella at a zebra crossing. These two umbrellas are separated and then must find their way back together (helped by some unlikely sources).

The animation in this short film is quite honestly incredible, at times it even looked as if we were watching a live action film, we really could not believe our eyes at the rendering of the city, as in most Pixar shorts there no words used and every emotion comes from Jon Brion’s wonderful score which is as beautiful as that of Paperman.

This is a short you’ll want to see again and again thanks to its wonderful storyline (despite its similarity to that of Paperman), absolutely beautiful visual animation and the moving score. We enjoyed Monsters University, but possibly we enjoyed this little short more. One note, this is not really of interest to children, adults will appreciate this. We heard the children were bored in our screening.

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Technical Profile

The Blue Umbrella
Studio: Pixar Animation Studios
Director: Marc Greenberg
Music: Jon Brion
Running Time: 6 minutes
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