Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Stompgal_87 I saw this short for the first time whilst renting the first volume of Pixar shorts and while it's not the best of the shorts from the 1980s it has detailed graphics and stunning effects for its era.The most realistic part of the exterior street design is the rainfall and I like the slow jazzy music played while Red is shown in the clearance section of Eben's Bikes (named after one of Pixar's technical directors) as well as the circus music played during Red's dream sequence. Like 'Luxo Jr,' the background in the dream sequence is dark and the clown is just as creepy-looking as the baby in Tin-Toy but at least Red and the juggling balls are brightly coloured and I liked how Red tried to assist the clown with his juggling act, which eventually led to the hilarious consequence of the clown not realising he was sitting on Red and falling to the ground. Also I liked how Red had moved to another part of the bike shop whilst he was dreaming and returned to his usual corner.All in all, this is my least favourite of the earlier Pixar shorts but it had great music, specially effects and graphics. 7/10.

kendavies Didn't anyone else notice the reference to the opening moments of Citizen Kane? (Rain, dark exterior, flashing neon reflected inside?) I agree with the other comments on this site, i.e. that this is an amazing piece of computer graphic animation given the technology available at the time. It is short, but within the four minutes manages to sketch a vignette of Red's existence. The clown (and his accompanying unoriginal circus music) are wooden -- especially the face -- the real expressiveness is left to Red himself, which he manages by wheel (body) and saddle (head) movements which clearly refer to Disney animal characters in the viewer's memory. Red also has the expressive jazzy music.

MartinHafer I gotta admit that if you watch this film today and don't understand the context for it, then you will most likely not be particularly impressed. It's such a very simple animated short and one that seems amazingly ordinary--something you could easily make today given the right rendering software and a home computer. However, think back to 1987. People rarely had home computers and those who did had systems with 8086 or 8088 processors--not much more power than a modern calculator (less in some cases). There were often no hard drives--those that did exist were minuscule. Macintosh computers were relatively new and very simple and Windows was still a vague idea, as IBM compatible computers used primitive versions of DOS as the operating systems. And, most importantly, most games were either text only or had very, very rudimentary graphics. In this context, RED'S DREAM is absolutely amazing and breathtaking. The Pixar folks were not yet a big company but just a few individuals doing work on huge computers and they had to design all the software themselves!! And, in spite of all this, the graphics were lovely and the story of a lonely unicycle quite watchable--even though it was really more an experimental film than anything else. Put in this light, my score of 8 seems amazingly low, but I must admit that in an age when we expect so much more, this isn't the most exciting CG animation I've seen. Still, it's a great film.

Gavno I make my living as the night engineer at the local PBS TV station. I also happen to be a LONG time animation freak.I've loved and collected the cartoons from Disney, the Fleischer Brothers, Warner Brothers and all the rest for a very long time. I felt that the art of the cartoon was a static field and that it would never drift far from it's pen and ink roots.One night at work... after a program that ran a few minutes short of a full hour, PBS used RED'S DREAM as filler material to round out the hour.A whole new world opened up on the screen...When RED came along, computer animation was still in it's infancy. I think Pixar produced the film as a demonstration piece for what their technology is capable of. At that point in time computer animation was still very expensive, probably as expensive as the traditional, one drawing at a time process of making cartoons by hand.Cartooning done the traditional way has become SO expensive that it's caused some major players to either get out of the field, or make major concessions in film quality.The beloved "Termite Terrace", the old Warner Brother's cartooning unit, closed years ago. Likewise, to cut down on the number of drawings required, Fred Flintstone suffers from "Hanna Barberra Palsey"; frequently, Fred's feet and mouth are the ONLY things on the screen that move.To combat the high costs of traditional, full motion cartooning, SOME concessions to modern technology have come to the fore. In some of Ralph Bakshi's work (HEY GOOD LOOKIN' and THE HOBBIT for example) he moved offshore to cut labor costs (Ireland), and used Xerox copying.Disney had ALWAYS been the unquestioned master at giving drawn characters the subtle nuances of personality, and occasionally he did it with inanimate objects like Red. My personal Disney favorite is "Casey Junior", the little locomotive that pulls the circus train in DUMBO. I saw somewhere that Casey's personality was inspired by the cartoonist watching a puppy. I can believe that easily; while trying to get the train moving, Casey does a maneuver that's VERY familiar to anyone who has spent a lot of time around dogs; Casey does a "Play Bow", a canine move used as an invitation to other dogs to come out and play with him. It was little touches like this that convinced me that the cartoonist and animator never had to worry about being automated out of a job by computers.But... then came Red.Red is ASTONISHING. This simple little unicycle achieves the goals that every cartoonist shoots for in his creations. In a very short film he introduces himself, displays a clearly defined personality, communicates to the viewer his wants, needs, and motivations, and he manages to touch that indefinable something deep inside of the viewer that makes you CARE about him. You really IDENTIFY with this simple little character in a four minute film.That's what cartoons are all about, and Red touches every one of the bases.When I saw this little guy, I realized that the traditional pen and ink and drafting board were on their way out, to be replaced by the microprocessor and the graphics tabletThe Shreks, Roger Rabbits, and all of the other modern cartoon characters were inevitable, both because of the economics of animation, and the success of little films like RED'S DREAM.We owe this little unicycle, yearning for stardom, a vote of thanks. He himself may be a dead end, but he opened the door to a whole new generation of cartoons.