Short Circuit Review: "Maddie & the Test" and "Life Drawings" — One Short for the Kids, One for the Parents

For the first time since 2022, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Short Circuit experimental films program is adding to its lineup on Disney+, bringing the series total to 22 shorts. The two new additions — Maddie & the Test and Life Drawings — are as different from one another as any two Short Circuit films have been, yet each speaks to the very best of what this program can do.

Maddie & the Test plays like a classic Disney short from the start. Colorful and kid-focused, it follows ten-year-old Maddie as she sits down for a dreaded school test. The visual language of the film does something clever and imaginative: the letters of Maddie’s name on the test page scramble together and come to life as a hand-drawn character, a helpful little companion trying to put jumbled words back in order. The lighting design does equally smart work, dimming when Maddie is struggling and brightening as things become clear — a simple but effective way of externalizing what it feels like to have dyslexia.

Director Heather Roberts Russell comes to her Short Circuit directorial debut after eight years at the studio as an artist and department manager on films including Frozen 2, Encanto, Wish, Moana 2, and Zootopia 2. She spent considerable time getting the portrayal of dyslexia right — interviewing family members who have the condition, consulting with Maryanne Wolf at UCLA's Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice, and holding roundtable discussions with Disney Animation artists who identify as dyslexic. The research pays off in a short that feels both authentic and accessible. Elementary school kids will relate to Maddie regardless of ability, and parents will appreciate the thoughtfulness behind the execution.

Disney Legend Mark Henn served as lead animator on the hand-drawn elements — the Name Maddie figure and all the letters and images that spring from the test page — bringing his decades of experience to the short alongside a team of CG animators led by Malerie Walters. Composer Lauren Harrold, who manages the music production team at Disney Animation, gave each dimension of the story its own musical voice: an orchestral score for Maddie’s world and a live jazz ensemble for her hand-drawn helper, with the ensemble recorded live in the studio.

If Maddie & the Test is the short for the kids, Life Drawings is for the parents. Director Larry Wu — a look development and environments veteran whose credits include Bolt, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Moana, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Strange World — brings a deeply personal story to the screen that has been nearly a decade in the making. An artist follows his passion from childhood through adulthood, his dreams of becoming a gallery artist gradually giving way to a career designing instruction manuals, before his health declines and he finds renewed purpose passing the torch to his daughter. The film carries the "Circle of Life" theme that Disney fans know well and is told entirely without dialogue, letting viewers bring their own experiences to the piece, as they might with a painting in a museum.

The production details reward close attention. Crayon dust and pencil shavings scatter across the page as the animation unfolds, threading the story’s own themes directly into its visual fabric — you’re watching an artist at work while watching a story about an artist. Wu combines hand-drawn characters, animated using charcoal and grease pencil, with CG environments, and the music evolves instrument by instrument alongside the story, from a toy piano in childhood to a full orchestra in adulthood, before circling back to a toy piano again when the daughter enters the picture. The late Disney Legend Burny Mattinson consulted on the project in its early stages — his guiding note to “keep the fun” in the opening childhood section is a quietly moving reminder of how many generations of Disney storytelling live within these walls.

Together, Maddie & the Test and Life Drawings bring Short Circuit’s Disney+ total to 22 films, and they’re a welcome return for a program that consistently offers something unlike anything else on the platform.

I give Maddie & the Test 4 out of 5 reading helpers.

I give Life Drawings 3.5 out of 5 self-portraits.