Paperman

Speaking of shorts, my favorite short comes from Disney. Paperman was linked to Tangled and I just thought of it as an overall cute story. A little known fact about myself is that I am a hopeless romantic so when I first saw it I established an automatic connection.

Paperman starts with a regular Joe waiting for the train and then a floating piece of paper draws a cute conservative gal into the frame with her jumping for the raskly fella. They notice each other and right away you can tell there is mutual admiration from their body language. Disney knows how to perceive a character where the audience just connects right away. But then the girl leaves on the train and that sinking feeling of I just lost “the ONE” and I didn’t even catch her name, we’ve all felt it, overcomes the poor guy.

Because fate works in mysterious ways; while sitting at his desk a heap of wind blows the paper sitting there towards the window and as “Joe” looks up he sees cute mystery girl across the way conducting a meeting. He then has a LIGHT BULB moment and starts to make paper airplanes out of the sketchy looking documents to go all Buzz Lightyear on the situation. His attempts are valiant, but there just isn’t enough paper and his co-workers don’t want to share.

All the failed flights of love are magically awoken by the one piece of paper that has the girls lipstick illuminated in red and by the end the admiring duo are reunited. In the credits it leaves us with them having a cute date at the diner and a smile upon your face.

Now my job would not be complete unless I pointed out the inspirational take away from Paperman as a whole. Personally I perceive the message as a subliminal hint to never give up because when the regular Joe does, fate, so to speak, has other plans and guides him back to what he so heavily pursued during the story. You see, to give up is to give up hope and with Lord looking over you there is always hope for, as Disney would say, for all your dreams to come true. All it takes is a little courage, will power, and persistence.