a5c7b9f00b Sanjay, a young boy, is watching his favourite cartoon show, the Super Team, while his father is preparing for the daily meditation. Undoubtedly, this is the day's most important activity, nevertheless, the boy has no interest in joining his father. But does Sanjay know that, sometimes, cunning and skilled adversaries can be hiding in the most unusual of places?
Bored with his father's meditation, a young Indian boy daydreams of Hindu gods as superheroes.
Sanjay wants to watch his favourite superhero show on TV rather than join his father in prayer. However, he discovers that Hindu deities are, in their own way, superheroes.<br/><br/>I love the way Pixar give their up-and-coming staff the opportunity to generate short films (this one accompanies The Good Dinosaur), and there have been some very successful little films which have emerged as a result of that policy. Sanjay's Super team is not one of them, at least as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps this is because it is personal to creator Sanjay Patel to the extent that I could not identify with it at all. And perhaps it is because I felt it had an air of political correctness to it which I didn't care for.<br/><br/>The story is slight, but the visuals in the action section are stunning, and the 3D is very effective.
Sanjay's Super Team is a breath of fresh air, not only to Pixar animation, but to all of mainstream animation and certainly to anything generally coming from Disney. This short follows Sanjay, a little boy who is a big fan of superheroes, but not of practicing his religion much to the dismay of his traditional Hindu father. But as the tables turn, Sanjay is thrust into action and the short really takes off into beautifully wild and inspiring action. Through a series of different styles of animation, Sanjay's adventure goes from mundane to epic, bringing with it bright colors and intricate designs that command the screen.<br/><br/>This short is shiny, a true visual feast, but it also stands out for its story content. Sanjay's Super Team feels authentic because it is, as real life Sanjay Patel directed the short based on exaggerated experiences from his youth. It's lovely to see a culture and it's religion that is oft overlooked in American cinema get some attention. This is Pixar's first project, of all of their shorts and feature-length projects alike, featuring humans to be lead by a person of color protagonist, after all, so it's as important as it is fun, if not more. It's also nice to see Hinduism and it's Gods portrayed in such an encouraging and positively energetic way.<br/><br/>It has moments reminiscent of The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack, which is a completely good thing. If only Pixar had given us a new feature length action film of this caliber and laid those tired old dinosaur bones to rest.