Pixar’s “Wall-E” will debut this June along with their latest short animation entitled “Presto Chango.” Animation World Magazine writes that the short is a departure from previous Pixar shorts and describes it more as a slapstick ode to Warner Bros. “Tom and Jerry.”
It’s a slapstick ode to Warner Bros. and Tom and Jerry toons, in which a turn-of-the-century magician finds himself in a hilarious onstage feud with his hungry rabbit. Talk about a carrot and stick reversal. Presto, the magician, has never experienced such humiliation, as the crafty rabbit, Alec, gives him a taste of his own supernatural hocus pocus. There are plenty of magic hats and vaudevillian antics during the frantic five minutes, punctuated by iconic squash-and-stretch gyrations and bug-eyed reactions. Presto gets egg on his face, is attacked by a ladder, has his clothes torn off, gets electrocuted, uncontrollably dances a jig and is hurled high into the rafters. And the stuffy audience cheers every moment of it.
Being this is an ode to the classic Warner Bros cartoons, here’s a trivia note: Chuck Jones directed a 1939 cartoon called “Prest-O Change-O” featuring an early prototype of Bugs Bunny playing a magical wabbit.
I had heard that the movie WALL-E had an opening “short” about a magician. Since I am a professional magician I was curious how they would portray the magician.
Much to my surprise the “short” was very funny and entertaining. In fact the audience laughed harder at this short animation than they did during the movie WALL-E.
Thanks to the writers I can once again put the old trick of “pulling a rabbit out of my top hat” back into my show.
Steve Hart