Best Animated Film: 2011

[Sabin]

I'm mixed on Chico and Rita. I liked what it was doing although it never quite came to life for me. It felt like I was watching an outline for a movie and less a movie itself. Okri is right that it really springs to life with the "meet-hot" of “Besume Mucho.” In that moment, I felt the unique animation style really served it well as a tool for imagination. But beyond that, it never inspired me to think of these drawings as anything real. I honestly wonder why it had to be an animated film. It felt like a live-action film to me and it never really does anything with the animated form that cries out for it, except maybe portraying them as old.

But I did generally like the span of it, the music is great, I'm glad it exists, but it never got out of first gear for me. It's respectable.

So, Rango it is and onto the next one.

[Sabin]

OscarGuy wrote
There all solid films and while you guys don't seem to like KFP2, I loved it a lot. I think the animation is gorgeous and the storyline, while familiar, flowed well and Gary Oldman plays one of the best animated villains of the series. Puss in Boots was adorable, but slight. Rango I liked, but I can't remember loving it. I think Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably my choice, but my memory's a bit faulty.

I liked Kung Fu Panda 2 all right. It's a gorgeous looking film. But I found it a bit darker than I needed a Kung Fu Panda film to be. I think one of the charms of the first Kung Fu Panda is that Po is a funny fish out of water. And for me, one of the key elements of what I'm looking for in this franchise was lost a bit. There's nothing funny about how haunted Po is and I don't think the franchise can sustain that shift in tone.

I didn't mention Gary Oldman's malevolent peacock. He has a fantastic design and moves around in a fun way. But they tried to demonstrate that both he and Po shared similar wounds and I didn't think those two subplots dovetailed together at all. But again, fantastic design, animation, and voice performance.

Okri wrote
A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita are both surprisingly wan. I have to admit I don’t completely love the animation style of A Cat in Paris – it’s less purposeful than you’d expect (consider something like Phantom Boy for comparison) – the wavy arms, the tentacular gangster - fun but not much else. It’s only 65 minutes so it’s not too long or anything.

You know... I'm being pretty kind on A Cat in Paris. It's a harmless piece of children's entertainment. A friend of mine has a child who watches it constantly, enrapt. I'd certainly rather the kid watch that film than something mindless that might inspire ADHD. But it's pretty dull and -- you're right -- not purposefully constructed. I'd say that at 65 minutes it's hard to hold many flaws against it, but I found myself resisting my gut reaction when I was writing it up, which is that I didn't much care for it, but it was short and it's independent, so... whatever.

[OscarGuy]

I have not seen A Cat in Paris or Chico and Rita.

Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, Rango.

There all solid films and while you guys don't seem to like KFP2, I loved it a lot. I think the animation is gorgeous and the storyline, while familiar, flowed well and Gary Oldman plays one of the best animated villains of the series. Puss in Boots was adorable, but slight. Rango I liked, but I can't remember loving it. I think Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably my choice, but my memory's a bit faulty.

[Okri]

I fucking love this line-up. Not because it's a great line-up, but because it's the clearest example we had gotten [to this point] that the feature film branches (foreign, animated, documentary) of finally taking their remit seriously. The alphabetical announcement meant we got the surprises right away - indeed, the way Nick Davis described it after nomination day was “fuck you and also fuck you.” Yeah, I prefer Arthur Christmas to at least two of these films – it’s sweet and charming. But this line-up delights me to no end. The films… not so much. But I almost don’t care.

A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita are both surprisingly wan. I have to admit I don’t completely love the animation style of A Cat in Paris – it’s less purposeful than you’d expect (consider something like Phantom Boy for comparison) – the wavy arms, the tentacular gangster - fun but not much else. It’s only 65 minutes so it’s not too long or anything. Chico and Rita has a lot on its plate, but it’s lesser for that, not more. Indeed, it packs way too much repetitive incident (and honestly, the titular relationship is really not that interesting). It peaks early with the meet-hot of “Besume Mucho” and there is so much that is actually interesting in the film, but the move isn’t interested in exploring it too deeply. The music is obviously fine.

Kung Fu-Panda 2… okay, take a quick glance at the 2011 box office. Now take a look at any year in the decade leading up to it. You could convince yourself, if you needed to, that Hollywood would still make “original” movies – yeah, stretching the definition sometimes, but if you needed plausible deniability… well, you had it. Now check out 2011. Not only is there only one film in the top ten that isn’t a sequel (and that’s fucking Thor…. Yes… Thor), two of the top three are films from that trend of splitting the “final” movie in half (because they had too much story to tell…..). Anyway, there’s nothing special about Kung-Fu Panda 2. As Sabin mentions, it’s merely laying the groundwork for a third film. Which, given my opening….

I’m surprised at how nimble Puss in Boots was. I actually think it’s better than any Shrek movie. The fairy tales are nicely integrated, it’s pleasant to watch and the Spanish influences are certainly fun. Again, it doesn’t need the appellation “best” but it is what it is.

Rango is my choice. The specificity of the choices throughout delight. I wish it was a little more committed to its spine, but the details in the margins are so enjoyable that it’s hard to begrudge it too much.

[Sabin]

A year probably more significant for what didn't make it in than for what did. Cars 2 became Pixar's first big miss in this category and proved to be a sign of things to come as the company tried to balance between singular visions and feeding the Mouse House. And while The Adventures of Tintin won the Golden Globe, it proved that this branch had limited appetite for mo-cap shenanigans despite Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's involvement. The branch also overlooked Arthur Christmas, by the winning team of Aardman as well as Happy Feet Two, the sequel to a previous winner. They ignored hits like Rio and The Smurfs as well as the warmly received Winnie the Pooh, but a very significant film that time has forgotten is the total failure of Mars Needs Moms, which lost over $100m, the worst financial loss for a Disney branded film, and resulted in the shutdown of Disney/ImageMovers Digital, a layoff of 450 employees before the film's release.

I vaguely recall Puss in Boots’ inclusion in this category being something of a joke at the time, if not an argument against the category’s existence at all. There’s no reason why a Puss in Boots movie should exist — let alone be nominated for Best anything — and yet due to corporate mandate it must. And because it was a rather dire year for animated films, it reaped the benefits of being merely fine. I think it’s a bit more of interest than its reputation but not much more. The big problem with Puss in Boots is actually its saving grace. This story doesn’t make good use of the character’s appeal. The appeal of Puss in Boots is that he is both dashing and adorable. He knows this and he uses it. Nothing in this movie really makes adequate use of this quality, especially considering that it so nonchalantly takes place in Fairy Tale Land so the fact that he is a swashbuckling cat isn’t remotely seen as abnormal to anybody. So, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. On the other hand, this is a character who works in little doses. I’m not sure it’s possible to get a feature length story out of Puss in Boots and clearly those involved with this film felt the same, which is why this prequel isn’t really a prequel at all. It’s just a Puss in Boots story with an origin story sequence plugged into it. This isn’t really a good or a bad thing. It’s just… a thing.

So, is it good? It’s fine. It’s totally themeless. It has a bit of the Lord and Miller energy to at least the first act and Puss is always cute to look at. It’s a passable bit of family entertainment but it doesn’t warrant attention.

I had the opposite reaction from Kung Fu Panda 2, which absolutely engages with the characters, ideas, and themes from the first film. The problem is I would say they do so to a fault, in that they forget to make Po funny. The balance between action and comedy, which is pretty great in the first film feels a bit off in this one. The presence of Guillermo Del Toro as the executive producer might have something to do with it. There are some vibrant animation choices in this film, far more than I was expecting from a Kung Fu Panda movie. It’s probably the best animation of the lot. And in the final moments, I realized why they had taken the approach that they did (without giving any spoilers away) in laying groundwork for the third film. Credit to everybody involved for not phoning it in, but I think it’s a little miscalculated.

I was looking forward to A Cat in Paris. It has a compelling look to it and it tells a nicely offbeat story. It’s not really about a cat but about the lives tangled up in a burglar’s caper. There’s a bit of fun to how it mixes genres. We get a little bit of a detective story. A little bit of a gangster story. And with its pretty images, it’s pretty easy to just sort of trance out and take in the mood. But I was also a little bored by it. At times, it feels like watching a dream but not a terribly ambitious dream. I feel like a handful of real creative choice could’ve been made to make it a more memorable experience. I have shockingly little to write about it. It’s almost certainly a better film than Puss in Boots but all I really have to say about it is that I admire it but wouldn’t want to see it again.

I’ll be watching Chico and Rita before casting my vote but I’d be surprised if I don’t end up voting for Rango, which I've just rewatched and enjoyed just as much. It's not a great film but it's an entertaining one. The biggest problem with the film is that Rango himself isn't a great character. He is reactive and his identity crisis is never as wacky as it should be. He ends up coming across as a improv session in a recording booth. But the film's fondness for the western genre, language, and its total willingness to get ugly (shockingly ugly!) compensate for me. It's really quite surprising that anyone put $135m into a film this ugly! Yes, it comes across as a lot of references in a blender but the concoction was -- and still is -- fresh enough to make this a no brainer for me.