SUMMARY: A small snowman who lives in a snowglobe is beckoned over to join the bathing beauties in a Miami themed shelf ornament. But his attempts to break out of the snowglobe do not go according to plan.
WHY IT’S HERE: ‘Knick Knack’ was Pixar’s final short film for eight years, as they would soon be making movie history with the feature length ‘Toy Story’. In contract to the previous Pixar shorts by John Lasseter, which has mixed a range of emotions with visual experimentation, ‘Knick Knack’ is a purely comedic short made up mainly of geometric shapes, which was the strength of the computer they used at the time. After the headaches of trying to create a human character for the previous ‘Tin Toy’, the Pixar team were grateful to work on something less challenging and drew on their personal love of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Tom & Jerry cartoons to create a derivative story but in an innovative format. ‘Knick Knack’ works, although it stands out mainly due to its tonal difference from most Pixar shorts. The quest of the snowman to break out of his snowglobe is clearly motivated by sexual desire, something that was addressed in later rereleases of the film when Lasseter tweaked the original to reduce the size of the Miami beach temptresses breasts.
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