Cartoon a Day: Rhino

Rhino
2009
Directed by Nathan Greno
Available on: "Bolt" DVD

I have been watching my cartoons that last few days, but fell behind on blogging. Hopefully I'll get caught up tomorrow, but for today I decided to look at a new cartoon. While out with the kids today we picked up the DVD of "Bolt." Included as a bonus feature is a new short, "Rhino," which will be today's cartoon. I think this is the first CG short we've done for Cartoon a Day. Now just to clear things up before we start, all the commercials and even the packaging refer to this short as "Super Rhino," but the title card just says "Rhino," so I'm going with that. Oddly enough, the IMDB, who are usually sticklers for going with what the title screen says, still list the film with "Super" in tact. These are the geniuses who decied that the film "Seven" should be listed at "Se7en." I mean, how do you even pronounce that!?!? I digress.

In this short Bolt and his human Penny have been captured by the villainous green-eyed man. They are about to be lowered into a pit of lava when Rhino, the hamster in a ball, is sent to rescue them. The film lives up to being a "short," it's only about 4 minutes long, but it is a lot fun.

This film is pretty much in the style of the opening "Bolt," which I described as being like "The Matrix" if the Keanu Reeves part were played by a dog. That 10 minutes was the best part of what turned out to be a really good movie. The action is exciting and funny all at once. Spoiler ahead: it turns out Rhino is dreaming all this, which you start to catch on to when he suddenly goes off from fighting bad guys to sing Hannah Montana tunes at a rock concert. It would've been better just to make it a big action fantasy and not to the "it was all a dream" ending. Still, it's a fun short. Here's hoping they do more with the Rhino character. He's a keeper Disney.