The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

A brainless android wakes up to be taunted by a large bee.

Director:

Alvy Ray Smith

Writer:

Alvy Ray Smith (concept)

Storyline

Dawn, the forest. André is waking up. Soon, Wally is taunting him. André points the other way and, with Wally temporarily distracted, runs off. Wally quickly catches on and chases André...

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Plot Keywords:

forest | cgi animation | pixar animated film | anthropomorphism | bee | 

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Genres:

Animation | Short | Family

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Details

Official Sites:

Pixar [us] The story,

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 February 1985 (France)

Also Known As:

My Breakfast with Andre

Company Credits

Production Co:

Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

2 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The title is a tribute to Louis Malle's film My Dinner with Andre, referencing actors Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn.

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Goofs

[This goof only happened in its original SIGGRAPH release] Throughout most of the film, the characters were incomplete and made of pencil test line drawings over the completed backgrounds. This was corrected when re-released.

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Connections

Featured in Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible (2010)

User Reviews

Not the bee's knees of 3D animation...

'Andre and Wally B' isn't strictly a true Pixar film (since it was produced mainly at Lucasfilms), but John Lassester was amongst the creative team behind it, and it can still be found on their official Pixar site. A very early venture in making short animated films from CGI, this definitely doesn't rank up there as one of their coolest, perhaps because the limitations are all too obvious. The 3D animation isn't really all that great – the characters look basic and chunky, like they were taken straight from some sort of video game – while the storyline (if you can call it that) is too firmly-welded in the style of classic Walt Disney shorts. This may be done in computer animation, but otherwise it's just the same cartoony mayhem you've seen countless times before, involving a strange character named Andre (you know, I'm not really sure what kind of animal he's meant to be), being chased by a malicious bee. To be fair, I do actually enjoy a lot of the older Walt Disney cartoons, but the traditional 2D animation there had a greater fluidity that the more primitive CGI in this short film, which feels far too awkward and bulky to pull the same style off successfully.

I'm guessing they didn't really have the capacity back then to put together a CGI film with a great deal happening in, so all things considered this isn't bad. It just can't compare to the sort of thing Pixar since went onto achieve, having adopted their own unique style and approach to this medium – their studio's first short, 'Luxo Jr' was an absolute classic.

Grade: C