Lava (2014 film)

Lava
Directed by	James Ford Murphy
Produced by	Andrea Warren
Screenplay by	James Ford Murphy
Starring	Kuana Torres Kahele Napua Greig
Production company	Pixar Animation Studios Walt Disney Pictures
Distributed by	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release dates	June 14, 2014 (2014-06-14) (Hiroshima International Animation Festival) June 19, 2015 (2015-06-19) (with Inside Out)
Running time	7 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Lava is a 2014 computer-animated musical short film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren, it premiered at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on June 14, 2014, and was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Inside Out on June 19, 2015.

The short is a musical love story that takes place over millions of years. It is set to a song written by Murphy, and was inspired by the "isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes."

Plot

On a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, a lonely volcano named Uku watches the wildlife creatures frolic with their mates and hopes to find one of his own. He sings a song to the ocean each day for thousands of years, gradually venting his lava and sinking into the water, but does not realize that an undersea volcano named Lele has heard him every day and has fallen in love with him. She emerges on the day that Uku becomes extinct, but her face is turned away and she cannot see him. Uku sinks fully into the ocean, heartbroken, but revives when he hears Lele singing his song to him. His fires re-ignited, he erupts back to the surface, this time right next to Lele, and the two form a single island where they are happy together.

Cast

• Kuana Torres Kahele as Uku, a lonely volcano searching for his true love. His face is an amalgamation of the faces of Kahele, The Honeymooners star Jackie Gleason and the bulldog Marc Antony from the Chuck Jones animated short film Feed the Kitty.
• Napua Greig as Lele, a volcano and Uku's love interest.

The two volcanoes in Lava are heavily inspired by the late Israel Kamakawiwoʻole and his wife, and the style of music used in the short is heavily reminiscent of his cover of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".

Reception

Nicholas Garrett gave the short a positive review; he said that "it is one of their most touching and subtle [shorts]". Oliver Lyttelton said that it was "beautiful". Pat Mullen gave the short 3 and a half stars out of 5, praising its "fantastic visuals" and its "overall originality and artistry". Nelson Rivera said "The story is told musically, which is always exciting, because music can really get to core emotions and Lava most certainly achieves this, almost effortlessly".

However, Pablo Ruiz gave a negative review, describing its storytelling as "lazy" and arguing that "there's no character growth, no arc. There's no story. It's just things happening on screen." Michael Colan ranked Lava as one of Pixar's weakest short films based on the writing, saying it has "too much telling, not enough showing". He praised the short film for its "gorgeous animation", however, and thought that it had a "good idea."

Single

The song to the short, also titled "Lava", was released on June 16, 2015, as a digital single and as a bonus track on the CD release of Inside Out's soundtrack.

See also

• Volcano
• Hawaiian Islands

External links

• Official website
• Lava at IMDb
• Lava at the Big Cartoon DataBase

Preceded by Party Central

Pixar Animation Studios short films 2014

Succeeded by Sanjay's Super Team