A Masterpiece!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

As we all know, babies of all types are delivered by storks, which collect them from their point of creation (in the clouds) and carry them in bundles to the ground. Of course you have you r cute creatures like puppies and kittens, but one stork works with a slightly less fun cloud where the creatures tend to be of a more "jagged" nature. Over time the working conditions that the stork has to endure appears to put a strain of the working relationship.This short preceded Up in the cinemas and continues Pixar's tradition of having a supporting short film for their releases (a tradition that I'm all in favour of and still maintain that more "live action" releases should do it too). This slot has seen some very good animated short films and it must be said that Partly Cloudy is not really one of the better ones that they have done. Of course, as with nearly all things Pixar, one of their outputs being slightly below their normal standard still means that it is very good by normal standards, and so it is with Partly Cloudy.In terms of content it is a relatively straightforward short with physical comedy providing all of the four or five laughs it has. This is not a complaint though because it is only a short film and as such it does do the job of being amusing by delivering these solid laughs in a short time. Of greater note that the specific laughs is the concept itself. The stork aspect is an old one but the whole idea is well brought to life by the design and the animation and it was this spirit of invention and creativity behind the laughs that I enjoyed.Not Pixar's strongest moment in terms of their feature-supporting short films and a bit simple in terms of substance but the design and concept is imaginative and generally it is still funny and enjoyable with physical comedy sight gags.

This short, which preceded my session of 'Up', is a playful answer to the question, where do storks get the babies they deliver? The answer, we learn, is that cute kittens, doggies and babies come from pink clouds creating them from cloud matter. But this isn't really what the short is about.Partly Clouded also follows one specific stork, the one who has the inglorious task of delivering all the dangerous, not so cute babies, like baby alligators and baby sharks. It's priceless.This is the second Pixar short I've seen, after Presto. And like Presto I was left wondering why Pixar didn't develop this short into a full-length movie.

At first this short looked like it was going to be decent, but I completely changed my opinion once they show how funny it can get with using a basic "baby delivering storks" element. Throughout the short it shows clouds that create infant humans and animals of all kinds and have the storks deliver them to their new families. One of the storks was trying to find an infant human or animal to deliver, but the cloud he comes to only makes slightly dangerous infant animals. Which makes the stork's job a little harder than the other ones are getting.I admit it was a good short, with some surprising good laughs. I don't have the heart to rank it higher than my other favorite Pixar shorts, but doesn't mean I hate it. I would definitely watch it again.

Once again, Pixar has accompanied one of its wonderful features (in this case, UP), with a short subject. And the short subject, PARTLY CLOUDY, plays like a variation on Bob Clampett's classic cartoon, BABY BOTTLENECK, although without Porky or Daffy.Like all of Pixar's shorts, this is a virtual silent picture, with just enough sound effects to keep it going. It concerns where babies come from before the storks deliver them: from clouds, it turns out, who shape them from their own material. For this one we get to follow the cloud and stork who produce not fluffy kittens, but other, more dangerous critters, like crocodiles and porcupines.I do have some slight issues with how clouds are rendered -- a bit more solid and cotton-batting-like than I would think, but this is a lovely little pleasure for the viewer.