Imdbidia Destino is a beautiful Mexican old bolero song that speaks of destiny, timing and love, and the thread of this film. Although created in 2003, this was a joint project of Salvador Dali and Walt Disney, started in 1946 but never finished because of lack of funds. Disney, the company, decided to have it finished to include it in Fantasia 2000. The short fits perfectly with the original Fantasy, in spirit, style, themes and mood, something remarkable because the original creators are no longer with us.Like other pieces in Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, Destino is a symbolic piece that links the music, the visuals and the narrative in very artistic ways. It has many levels of reading and it is up to you what in the story speaks to you, or what the story is about. It was never meant to mean only one thing because, although Dali certainly projected his main themes and visuals into the story and imagery (the world of the oneiric, the subconscious, the Psyche, the Freudian) Walt Disney saw it mostly as a romantic love story. Destino is a contemporary ballet with an exploration of the male and female psyche expressed in a mythic romantic drama.The movie uses 2D animation and is wonderfully Disneyan (what Disney was before it became too commercial), with a beautifully lyric piece that stays true to the soul of the creators and feels as if they had carried it out to the end. Dominique Monfery has achieved something wonderful, magic and respectful to what the piece meant to be.A short film like this might have been mind-blowing in the 1950s, as planned, because the format, language and themes were very hot and innovative at time. They are not as much nowadays, so the freshness is perhaps gone, it feels like a wonderful Disney vintage piece, and that is remarkable, but it didn't touch or move me.

MisterWhiplash At one time Disney and Dali wanted to collaborate for one of the former's compilation animated films (one could image this with Donald Duck, right?) and it kind of fell apart for reasons unknown. Thankfully Roy Disney picked up the mantle in the 21st century - after Fantasia 2000 the spark was reignited - and the results are rather extraordinary: it's like going into Dali's art gallery and seeing characters walk around.One might almost be taken aback, if one knows Dali's art, how close a lot of this is to paintings he made. He is co-writer on the script, however, so I have to think this was how he intended it (a script was written for the short, it's hard to dismiss that at least). Par for the course for the co-creator of Un chien Andalou, the film has only the closest thing to a 'story' insofar as as there's a man, and a woman, and they want to be together, and passion ignites... except they're in a world full of uninhibited things, like ants which turn into men, eye-balls in tuxedo suits, and, at one (very clever) point in the background, a moon walking on spider legs.It's not very long, only about seven minutes long, but the film never stops to amaze with how it presents its unique creature-creations and sights down long, distorted hallways with squared designs, and the distortions that can be provided by modern-day technology. The only thing holding it back from top-10-OMG-masterpiece terrain is that some, not all though, of the CGI animation isn't convincing. The characters themselves look great, as do several of the amalgamation-beings (eyeballs, insects, 'things', statues), but here and there a touch of the smooth look of CGI doesn't totally flow with the rest of the film. But this is a nitpick only for me.What also carries this, and I have to think this was one of those elements in place when the film had its inception, is the song: Destino is passionately sung and performed, and it carries the viewer along with the images, just as the tango did in 'Andalou' - you can't really have what's on the screen without the melody, only here it's not as ironic or whimsical. It's a gorgeous experience, and I'm glad Disney decided to finish what it started, especially for a creator like Dali who had so few film projects realized in his time.

Robert Reynolds This short was nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short. There will be spoilers ahead: This is the latter-day result of an unlikely collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney begun in the 1940s and ultimately set aside and forgotten until rediscovered by Roy Disney and completed almost 60 years later.It's impossible to mistake this as anything but a collaboration between Dali and Disney. While it reminds one of Fantasia, it's likely that the short would have disappeared without a trace had it been completed as originally scheduled. If anything, it's even more esoteric and artistically inclined than Fantasia and Fantasia was widely seen as a flop. As a short it would have set the studio back far less financially than Fantasia did as a feature, but Disney was already starting to have trouble making back the costs of its shorts because Walt Disney had such high expectations from even his shorts. That financial pressure was part of what put this in mothballs in the first place.It would have been interesting to see what the Disney studios would have made of this in the late 1940s-early 1950s. As it is now, this looks for all the world like a series of Dali paintings brought to life and set in motion. Half melted objects, a likeness or two of Dali and other Dali trademarks given the Disney touch make this a fascinating curiosity and the quality of the backgrounds and character designs is magnificent.This is available on the Blu-Ray release of Fantasia 2000 and looks beautiful, particularly in HD. There's also a feature length documentary on the project on the same disc which I haven't seen but which looks to be very good itself. Well worth watching. Most recommended.

hawaiianjazz5 After reading all of the reviews of "Destino" and doing some searching for downloads of the movie I decided to search in some torrent engines. I was searching through a bunch of torrent search engines and didn't find "Destino" anywhere. (A torrent is just a compressed file that you can download with some free software.) Then I started thinking; if somebody could go to the Disney museum, which has a constant destino movie playing, and record it, then put it up for torrent download we could all get a bootleg copy. Either that or the Disney Corporation needs to make "Destino" publicly availible. Please contact me if you do obtain a bootleg copy.