Brilliant. Slapstick.

Pixar’s new short is reminiscent of the best Warner Brother’s shorts.  The stage setting and pacing remind me of the one in which Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny compete for the crowd’s approval, with each trick outdoing the previous one.  It also brings to mind Road Runner cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote suffers one body crushing injury after another yet keeps on going.  The lack of spoken dialogue also brings the Road Runner shorts to mind, it communicates very clearly without words.

There is another unmistakable influence at work here, which was unexpected: the video game Portal.  This is an experiment in the possibilities brought by being able to cheat gravity, momentum, and direction within a well defined set of rules.  To say anymore would be to venture into spoiler territory.

While the WB cartoons are clearly an inspiration, Presto takes things one step further and two steps faster.  The pace is relentless.  I hadn’t stopped laughing from the last gag before the next was being played out.  My kids were roaring with laughter throughout, mostly due to the comic violence that the characters inflicted and attempted to inflict one each other.  The adults were laughing due to that too, but also due to the sheer brilliance of the tricks the characters played on each other and accelerating spectacularity of it all.

As Presto ended I was convinced that it alone was worth the price of admission and that my kids would be talking about it for days as their new favorite thing ever.  I was wrong about that last part.  What followed was so engaging and beautiful that they soon forgot all about the bunny and the magician, but this is a Presto review, not a Wall-E review, so keep things on topic.