Together Forever – A Pixar Nighttime Spectacular returned to Disneyland tonight, in a special sneak peek in advance of Friday's start of Pixar Fest.
The Pixar-themed nighttime spectacular first appeared in 2018, as part of the original Pixar Fest at the Disneyland Resort. For the festival's return this year, Disney has tweaked the show by adding some of the Pixar films that have debuted in the past six years, including Onward, Soul, Luca, Turning Red and Elemental. But the show remains a love letter to the animation studio, told in projections upon Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street USA and the It's a Small World facade, as well as (on select nights when the winds are calm) fireworks above the park.
The 13-minute production is one of two anchor productions for Pixar Fest this year, joining the all-new Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration! parade at Disney California Adventure. The shows will run daily during the festival, which starts Friday and continues through August 4.
Of the two, the Disneyland show is my favorite, though there's much more than just these two shows for Pixar Fest. I will have more about the festival tomorrow, so keep watching for that report.
In the meantime, though, here is tonight's performance of Together Forever.
My only beef with the production is the musical choice to end it with Randy Newman's "You’ve Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story. Yes, this is probably Pixar's most popular song, but it's not a grand finale anthem. It's the transition into the denouement, the song that lifts us from our darkest moment and gives us the hope that propels us into the big musical finale. Orchestrating "You’ve Got a Friend in Me" into that role miscasts it, taking me out of my memory of that moment from Pixar's original feature and making me think instead of the committee meeting in which some Disney executive said something along the lines of, "I don't care if the song does not fit emotionally. It's Pixar's biggest hit! We have to finish with it."
Alas. However, with a loaf of pyro and a cute tag with Barbie to send us on our way, all is forgiven. Together Forever truly is a Pixar nighttime spectacular.
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