Pure Cinema: Sharing My Letterboxd Likes Day 60

Tired of waiting for their adolescent “master” to return home, a quintet of outdated electronic appliances venture out into the great wide world to find him.

While the concept of this film doesn’t make a ton of sense on the surface (no child on earth has ever felt a connection to appliances like this dork), THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER still packs a lot of thematic meat into a short runtime. Produced by many folks who would go on to join Pixar, this is a thoughtful script that isn’t afraid to slow down, ask big questions, and leave them unanswered. The final musical number “Worthless” hits especially hard to adult ears. Beyond that, there’s a murderers row of great voice actors, idiosyncratic dialogue, lush animation, and some of those perfectly 1980s nightmare fuel moments. “Run.” It was the first animated feature film to be shown at Sundance and remains an essential, if obscure, moment in American theatrical animation.

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER is on Disney Plus, with a 4K upload of a 35mm print approved by the producers on YouTube.