Small Fry (2011)

Small Fry arrives as a footnote to the Toy Story enterprise, a short that ran before The Muppets in 2011 and has since settled into the Pixar Short Films Collection like a stray sock behind the dryer. The plot concerns a miniature Buzz Lightyear, a promotional giveaway trapped behind the glass of a Poultry Palace display case, who seizes his chance at relevance by dragging the genuine Buzz into a ball pit and assuming his identity. The genuine Buzz is left behind after closing time. The film then becomes a caper of mistaken identity, a rescue mission, and a reunion, executed with the brisk competence the studio has long since perfected.

The most interesting passage finds Buzz in a storage room, attending a support group for abandoned fast food toys. A mermaid named Neptuna presides. A grappling hook named Gary shares his pain. Here the short brushes against a genuine idea, the disposability of the cheap plastic trinkets that accompany a chicken sandwich, the brief and inglorious life of a promotional object. It is a real observation. It is also a joke, staged for a laugh and abandoned before anyone could mistake it for a thesis. The film has no interest in indicting the system that produced these toys. It simply finds them funny, and moves on.

The rest is standard Pixar house style. The voice cast is the usual repertory company. The themes are friendship, belonging, and the quiet dignity of being played with. There is no social program here, no sermon, no instruction for the audience on how to live. A weary classifier can only record the findings and file the short under harmless. A faint trace of consumer critique, played for comedy. Otherwise, nothing to report.