bob the moo Catching up on the Oscar-nominated shorts from last year brought me to watch this film which is on Vimeo (I assume unauthorized). It is a surprising film to find in the pack for the Academy Award – I have not yet seen all of those nominated, but for sure this is by far the weakest I have seen from the pack. The plot sees a young boy watching his superhero cartoons while his father does his morning prayers. Forced to join in, the boy retreats into a fictional world where the gods are superheroes fighting to protect him. The name of the character is the same as the director/writer, and the end credits suggest it is based on real personal experience.This is the bit that surprised me the most, because if the film is so personal, why does it have almost no heart. Technically it is all well and good, with typically impressive animation from Pixar, but there is nothing really beyond this and the movement. The narrative is very simple and it delivers its idea but doesn't draw us into the characters or make us feel for them. Without comparing it to other films, and looking at it on its own merits this is true, but to put it alongside World of Tomorrow or Bear Story only highlights this weakness further. We don't make a connection with the boy or his father in the film, nor is there a real sense of danger or wonder in the action section – so when we come together in shared understanding at the end, it doesn't have any impact other than being very functional along the same lines.The animation is slick and professional of course, but otherwise there is really very little to the content of the short and it left me cold. The only reason it even stuck in my mind was that I kept pondering how it had gotten into the final pack of shorts up for an Oscar.

tavm This Disney/Pixar short was shown before their The Good Dinosaur. It tells of a young Hindu boy more interested in his superheroes then in his dad's religious symbols. Then we see images of the boy's imagination going wild when he's imagining what his dad's artifacts are like as superheroes. I'll stop there and just say that part of me was confused as to what was going on but I got the gist of what the director was trying to convey. It's quite touching when the ending moment comes but I'll probably have to watch this again someday in order to really get what is going on when what happens in this short start happening. So on that note, Sanjay's Super Team is at the least, worth a look.

atmommy I was very disturbed by how scary the demon character is in this short. It was much too intense for my three and five year old. I wish we could erase this from our minds. My three year old began having nightmares because of this short and The Good Dinosaur. Both are not appropriate for younger audiences. I am upset we had to sit through this for almost ten minutes. It was a dark and scary tale that, I guess was a good match to pair with The Good Dinosaur, as that movie was just as disturbing. I have learned my lesson, no movies for my kids that I don't watch first!I would not recommend anyone with small children who are sensitive to scary things to watch this.

GoneWithTheTwins Starting off with a most tired gimmick, "Sanjay's Super Team" claims that it's based on a true story … mostly. But this isn't one of those stories that is too wild to believe; it's merely a children's comedy about daydreaming. It barely qualifies as humor to use that increasingly intolerable statement, especially when no one would question the realism of such fantasy asides.The plot follows little Sanjay as he watches his favorite television show "Super Team," which is interrupted by his father's prayer time. After a brief battle of raising and lowering the volume, the father wins out and forces Sanjay to join him as he worships three statues of Hindu gods by candlelight. Not to be outdone by the uninteresting tradition, Sanjay retrieves his action figure and imagines the two of them transported into a foreboding temple, where a six-armed, four-headed, sword-wielding golem wages war against three spell-casting, fireball-hurling, magical warriors.The use of specific Buddhist items and Hinduism beliefs are somewhat unfriendly to anyone unfamiliar with the religions; it's not the most universal or understandable ethos. But more controversial than the un-politically-correct integration of religion into a Disney production is the enormously stereotypical designs of the two main characters, sporting football-sized noses that nearly prevent their faces from containing other features. At least the core message of father/son bonding is a family-friendly theme, highlighting a potential for compromise in education and entertainment.The Massie Twins