Second Animation Celebration: The Movie

One of the summer's biggest hits was Disney's "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," which was preceded by a new seven-minute Roger Rabbit cartoon. And despite the brevity of his role in this pairing, Roger has been getting a surprising amount of credit for "Honey's" success.

The current "Worth Winning" is also preceded by a very brief cartoon, this one featuring "The Simpsons," Matt Groening's characters who have gained a following on both TV's "Tracey Ullman Show" and recent Butterfinger commercials.

Both cases, though appreciated by the audience, were almost cruel gestures — such rapid-fire, hilarious cartoons are very tough acts to follow.

But there's no question that animated shorts are an "in" thing right now and we'll be seeing more of them in theaters in the future.

So it's a special pleasure to see "The Second Animation Celebration: The Movie" come around now, since there's never been a better time for a film like this to accumulate an audience. And this is a wonderful collection.

There are 24 shorts from 12 nations and the only cartoons familiar to me were Pixar's "Tin Toy," a very funny computer-animated short about a little one-man-band tin soldier trying to escape a rampaging baby, and "Scaredy Cat," a silly (but funny) joke obviously inspired by "Bambi Meets Godzilla."

The rest are new, and most are fabulous.

The real selling point for "The Second Animation Celebration" is the inclusion of five of Groening's "Simpsons" cartoons, gleaned from the "Tracey Ullman" show. Chances are if you watch the TV program at all you've seen at least some of these, but repeat viewings don't make them any less hysterical as the zany five-member family visits the zoo, goes to a funeral, indulges in a burping contest, listens to bedtime stories and tries to take a family portrait. ("The Simpsons" will soon be getting their own half-hour prime time TV series, by the way.)

Also terrific are a new, wonderfully funny and fascinating Pixar computer-animated effort, "Knick Knack," about a hapless toy snowman in a glass house, and Bill Plympton's goofball "25 Ways to Quit Smoking," from the man who gave us the unforgettable "How to Kiss" and "Your Face."

The most heartfelt and correct of the bunch, however, is the eloquent Soviet work, "The Marathon: Soviet Tribute to Mickey Mouse," which superbly captures Mickey's persona and timeless charm in a manner that is at once artistic and supremely entertaining.