Watch: Pixar Short ‘Dante’s Lunch’ Introduces Us To The Determined Dog From ‘Coco’
While Disney/Pixar’sFinding Dorydidn’t make a splash at this year’s Academy Awards, the studio did take home a trophy for the short film attached that was attached to it, Alan Barillaro’s adorablePiper. Now the company has released its latest short,Dante’s Lunch, which serves as a nice introduction to the determined, long-tongued dog that will appear in Pixar’s Dìa de Muertos filmCocowhen it comes out later this fall.Yahoobrings us the new short film, which revolves around a dog, his bone, and the unexpected source of that bone:
Dante’s Lunchcomes fromToy Story 3directorLee Unkrich, who has been hard at work directingCocofor the past six years. Often, Pixar shorts are directed by up-and-coming filmmakers, but this doesn’t seem to be one of the traditional shorts that would play before one of their theatrical movies. Instead, it’s an early animation test Unkrich and his team created to get a sense of Dante as a character, and it turned out so well that Unkrich wanted to share it “as a little appetizer until the movie comes out.”
Pixar has set an incredibly high bar with their short films over the years, which often tell relatable stories that tap into huge, surging emotions.Dante’s Lunchis cute, but I don’t think it quite reaches the soaring heights of many of the studio’s other shorts on its own. As an introduction to the world ofCoco, though, it’s wonderful.
Dante is a Xolo, a Mexican hairless dog that’s the country’s national canine. While doing research forCoco, the animators discovered that Xolos are genetically prone to lose teeth, which results in their tongues lolling out of their mouths. As you can see inDante’s Lunch, they took that idea and ran with it when incorporating it into this character. “We thought we would kind of embrace that and make it part of Dante’s character,” Unkrich explained. “So his tongue is almost its own character, separate from him.”
For those who don’t know,Cocotells the story of a Mexican boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzelez), who loves music and travels into the land of the dead to meet his idol, a dead musician named Ernesto De La Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). Along the way, he learns about his family’s history and attempts to earn their blessing to bring music back into their home for the first time in generations. You canwatch the teaser trailer here.
Cars 3is the next Pixar feature film to hit theaters, anda short film calledLouwill play in front of that moviewhen it debuts onJune 16, 2017.Cocohits theaters onNovember 22, 2017.
