DVD Review: Clever and recent Disney shorts

For several decades from the ’30s on, animated shorts — and live-action shorts as well — were produced to precede features, as part of a package built around the feature.

Gradually, they were phased out, and, when features became universally distributed as standalones — if you don’t count the 15 to 20 minutes of commercials, trailers and PSAs — that market dried up .. .with the exception of the occasional short from Disney and other major animation studios, who spliced them onto the front of their animated features.

This new home video release brings together a dozen such cartoons from the last 15 years. They’re from a variety of Disney animation teams and directors; two won Oscars, another three were nominated.

Because of the differing animators, there is a range of styles, some of which would have been impossible in the old days, both technically and commercially.

The oldest, “John Henry” (2000), is the most conventional, in both story and art, and the least interesting.

At the other end of the scale, some have stories based on more modern subject matter: the 2007 “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater” revives the notion of Goofy as the befuddled Everyman, now facing an electronic challenge.

“Paperman” (2012), one of the Oscar winners, uses new techniques to create a soft, nearly monochrome look.

The other Oscar winner, “Feast” (2014), is very Disney, combining comedy with an irresistible main character (a doggy). “Tangled Ever After” (2012) and “Frozen Fever” (2015) are essentially follow-ups/omitted stories from (obviously) the full-length “Tangled” and “Frozen.”

The most inventive of all is “Get a Horse!” (2013), which combines bits from several ’30s Mickey Mouse cartoons into one story, which we first see framed as though we’re sitting in a movie theater.

But then Mickey manages to escape Peg-Leg Pete by popping forward off the screen and into the “theater.” While the characters are black and white in the old material, they turn to color whenever they’re off the screen.

They all pop back and forth between the “fictional” world and the “real” world in increasingly clever ways. It’s basically Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo” in six minutes.

The supplementary material is slim by Disney standards. Each short is introduced by its makers for about a minute; and there’s “@Disneyanimation: The Short Story About Shorts,” a seven-minute discussion with actor T.J. Miller and a half a dozen of the filmmakers.

Walt Disney Short Films Collection (Walt Disney Home Video, Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Anywhere combo pack, $39.99)

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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).