One Man Band (2005)

Pixar's one man band get cacophonous when two buskers vie to get a gold coin from a little girl. The short story starts with an avuncular busker playing simple music with his trumpet, when he sees that a little girl is about to drop her coin in the fountain, perhaps for a wish. But he manages to lure her with his music and immediately pushes his bowl so that the coin goes into his pocket. Just when the girl reaches to drop the coin into the bowl, another violinist begins to play his instrument. This man is lanky and he plays his instrument mellifluously.The war begins and the girl gets confused as both the buskers get more and more competitive. The ending is unexpected, and I'm glad Pixar didn't go for an emotional ending. The animation is quite vibrant and detailed for a short film and the humor is subtle. My rating: 7/10

One Man Band (2005) *** (out of 4) Mildly entertaining short from Pixar has a little girl showing up at a fountain wanting to throw her gold coin in but two rival musicians start playing hoping to earn her coin. This isn't the greatest short in the world but there's enough going on here to make it worth watching if you're a fan of the studio. I think the best thing about the movie is the animation, which is very good from start to finish. We get some very good looking items including the actual look of the two musicians and all of their instruments. Also worthy are some of the smaller shots like the one where something happens to the coin. What I didn't think worked as well as some of the other shorts was the actual story. It was good enough for five-minutes but there really weren't enough laughs to push this film over the edge into something I could watch over and over again.

Again and again, Pixar films has produced the very best in cutting-edge shorts using computer generated animation. The quality is top-notch and the writing exceptional--so good that for the worst of these short films I'd give them perhaps an 8. The problem, however, is that the films are so good, so consistently great that I think the Academy Awards folks are reticent to give this studio the Oscar for Best Animated Short--otherwise, smaller and less prestigious studios might feel left out and not even bother entering since Pixar would take home most of the awards. I have noticed that their films don't seem to win like they used to and in a few cases (such as KNICK KNACK) they weren't even nominated--even though, to me, they seemed to be producing the best shorts. They are consistently very funny and the most technologically challenging product out there.Now it is very difficult to assess whether or not the wonderful ONE-MAN BAND was yet another case like this because although I have seen this film, the winner (THE MOON AND THE SON) is difficult to find and isn't available anywhere on the internet. I'm not even sure where I can get this HBO produced short. All I can say is that ONE-MAN BAND looks near-perfect, has tremendous set and character design and will make you laugh even though it is dialog-free. A truly exceptional and charming film.

For a moment I thought I had walked into the wrong theatre. The Pixar-animated short ONE MAN BAND was the first thing on the screen -- no announcement, just there, unfolding itself as a simple story of a little child who goes to a wishing well with one gold coin and is wooed by two musicians carrying the most complicated apparatuses that can in essence replicate an entire orchestra and play smart tunes.Watching the little girl react to the first musician who distracts her from throwing her coin into the water was a hoot. More so, when the second musician appears in defiance. Soon a frenetic play-off sends the little girl back into the fountain and before she has a chance to throw her coin, down it goes into the gutter, leaving now three people coin-less.I thought that it would turn into a schmaltzy moment -- the little girl's contorting grimace as she veers close to tears certainly seemed to indicate so -- but it's here when the story turned into something completely different, straight out of Warner Bros. hilarious toons. She asks the musicians to pay her, but they have nothing, and then she asks one of them to hand over a violin, then a bow -- which he does -- and she begins playing. Badly.No sooner than she starts than out of nowhere a by-passer throws a bag filled to the top with coins. It was a sudden, remarkable moment -- I was caught taken by surprise and laughter at its "Bang!" quality -- and thus, she is proved the winner in this little battle for survival as she throws two coins into the top of the fountain. The last scene has the two musicians trying to climb to the top of the fountain, at night, still trying to take away the coins she left.A funny little intro to CARS, one crackling with the crazy wit that toons should always have instead of hammering away at the strings of the heart like it were some kind of perverse guitar. If only the rest of the movie would have had this sort of pulling the rug moment, but CARS was made to manipulate people to feel good, cry a little, and wonder what it's like to live in a world where even little insects are mini-cars. Somewhere, James Cameron must be chuckling to himself. The machines in this Universe have won.