4. Partly Cloudy
Plays Before: Up
Cuteness Level: Off the charts, too cute to comprehend, scientists are looking to harness the cute of Partly Cloudy for world peace Played before Pixar's masterpiece, Partly Cloudy is no slouch itself. Playing on the popular myth of a stork delivering babies (which I am 90% sure is not accurate), the movie shows that clouds create babies of all species. The puffy white clouds manufacture the almost grotesquely cute spawn of dogs (look at those puppies!), cats (look at those kitties!), and humans (which are kind of cute, I guess). The dark clouds make babies for the other animals, the scarier ones, including rams, porcupines, and alligators (which are also very cute, have I mentioned that Partly Cloudy is cute?). But the core of the short is actually the relationship between the unfortunate stork that delivers the violent, tough babies and the particular storm cloud that creates them. Staying with your friend through thick and thin is an admirable goal, but if the stork did leave the storm cloud in the end it would be hard to blame him. Partly Cloudy has breathtaking animation with an array of colors that come out in every scene (just look at the detail in the screenshot above), and obviously they knew what they were doing when they created the tiny animals that drive the plot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxwylIB9tr0 Directed by Peter Sohn, Partly Cloudy is a story of friendship between a cloud and a bird, a symbiotic relationship that sometimes can be harmful but ultimately makes life more meaningful. Pixar is wonderful at taking these syrupy and sentimental ideas and (pardon my pun) clouding them with intelligence and beauty.