So much average

Overrated and overhyped

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Red's Dream is the third (short) film by Pixar and the second from mastermind John Lasseter (not counting his two unrelated works around 1980. And after parent and child lamp in Luxo Jr., he breezed life this time into an old unicycle the very own Pixar way. It's a rainy night, the shop is closed and nobody's on the street, when Red starts dreaming about what it would be like to be a big star, first being an assistant to a juggling clown at a circus and then taking over and juggling himself before bowing down to the standing ovations from the crowd. Sadly, it was just a dream for the little one, but the dream of Pixar becoming one of the most influential and prestigious animation company's was becoming more and more reality with these 4 minutes.It an animation effort from over 25 years ago that was well ahead of its time and you just had to enjoy their attention to detail, like the "50% off"-sticker referring equally to the number of wheels. Also the way the little unicycle lowers its head after realizing it was just a dream, is a perfect display of how Pixar never fails to convey true emotion, even if it comes from inanimate objects. Pretty good short film and you could already see they'd be up to grand things in the 90s.

Red's Dream (1987) *** (out of 4) This early Pixar short works best when you really think at how remarkable the animation was considering the entire CG thing was rather new so in many ways this short is very fresh and original. It tells the story of a red unicycle who is sitting alone in a store on a dark and stormy night. The unicycle then begins to dream what it would be like if someone would actually buy it and let it impress them. Once again, I was really impressed with the visual style of the film as the animation is quite good even though it's still rather young in its making. I thought the entire look of the film was wonderful especially the early shots of the rain, the look of the store and the very final shot. There really aren't any laughs but I guess that's not a bad thing as this movie was clearly meant to tell a brief story that's charming.

I gotta admit that if you watch this film today and don't understand the context for it, then you will most likely not be particularly impressed. It's such a very simple animated short and one that seems amazingly ordinary--something you could easily make today given the right rendering software and a home computer. However, think back to 1987. People rarely had home computers and those who did had systems with 8086 or 8088 processors--not much more power than a modern calculator (less in some cases). There were often no hard drives--those that did exist were minuscule. Macintosh computers were relatively new and very simple and Windows was still a vague idea, as IBM compatible computers used primitive versions of DOS as the operating systems. And, most importantly, most games were either text only or had very, very rudimentary graphics. In this context, RED'S DREAM is absolutely amazing and breathtaking. The Pixar folks were not yet a big company but just a few individuals doing work on huge computers and they had to design all the software themselves!! And, in spite of all this, the graphics were lovely and the story of a lonely unicycle quite watchable--even though it was really more an experimental film than anything else. Put in this light, my score of 8 seems amazingly low, but I must admit that in an age when we expect so much more, this isn't the most exciting CG animation I've seen. Still, it's a great film.

One of the Pixar shorts from the eighties, this one is directed and written by 'Mr. Pixar' (and director of the upcoming 'Cars' (of which the first teaser sucked heavily, but nevermind)) John Lasseter. It tells the story of the dream of a lonely unicycle, who desperately wants to be in the circus entertaining the people. The constant rain and sad jazzy music help to make this a moody one. Nice short animation picture, but hard to judge on it's own. But knowing how shorts like this and Knick Knack would eventually turn into brilliant pictures like Toy Story and Finding Nemo (haven't watched The Incredibles yet), this sure was a good sign of even better things to come.6/10.