Dear Diary: World's First Pranks

Voices of: Emma Stone, Kelly Marie Tran
Directed by: Januel Mercado
Rating: G
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Length: 3 minutes
2021

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Eep (Emma Stone) tells how she and Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran) invented pranks.

Review:

Tim: Dear Diary: World's First Pranks is a short animated film accompanying The Croods: A New Age. It's depicted in a different animation style, obviously made for much cheaper. It's a perfectly fine little short. It doesn't really add anything to the main story. It does give two characters from the film a bit more time together, but it ultimately feels a tad pointless. Fortunately, the short is only 3 minutes long.

The basic idea is captured in the summary. Eep and Dawn invent pranks and start pranking the other members of the Crood and Betterman families. For kids, these pranks will be enjoyable. My 8 year-old son and my 4 year-old daughter both generally enjoyed the hijinks on display here. Nothing is especially memorable, but it moves fairly quickly and it will hold people's attention for three minutes. It's fine to watch, but as I said, it doesn't really add much. If you skip this short, you will have missed nothing.

I do wonder a bit about the value of doing this. I suppose it does add additional content for the DVD release. It also gives aspiring filmmakers a slightly larger canvas on which to paint. For example, the director of this short, Januel Mercado, had the chance to direct his first short (he'd directed a bunch of episodes of an animated television show I'd never heard of). From here, he got his first feature film directorial debut (the surprisingly good Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). Did this film help him? Did he learn something from it? Maybe? In that case, I suppose the short film is worthwhile.

In the end, you can easily skip Dear Diary: World's First Pranks. It has enough that you likely won't be sorry you watched it, but it doesn't really add anything of value to the story.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- N/A



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Croods, The Croods: A New Age, Family Movie Night: Little Red Bronana Bread