Sanjay’s Super Team Review

Sanjay’s Super Team is Pixar’s 17th short film which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and is such a wonderful surprise and one of the finest Pixar shorts.

It is about a young Indian boy who is enjoying watching his favorite superhero show while his father is trying to meditate at a Hindu shrine. He disapproves of his son’s infatuation with superheroes and forces the boy to pray with him. The boy eventually imagines the world with Hindu gods as superheroes and finally comes to terms with his religion. The story is absolutely wonderful. The directing from Sanjay Patel is excellent and him being the first Indian director of a Pixar film lead to such an authentic and refreshing storyline. It is very important and wonderfully portrays the Hindu religion while also embracing the superheroics at the same time. It is such a clever and sophisticated script with a moving conclusion.

What I found disappointing is the fact that the father isn’t present that much and the second act with the action lasts for too much and I expected the much more intriguing first and third act to last longer. However, everything else here is pretty much fantastic with great character development and a wonderful mythology beautifully realized. I loved the score with a couple of excellent sound effects during action sequences which are also so well executed. And the animation is gorgeous with great colors, slick visuals and great character design. It is such a pleasant surprise and such a vast improvement over Pixar’s previous film ‘Lava’ from the same year.