Tim's Toons: Animated also-rans
Thursday, February 19, 2015 at 9:42PM Tim here. In his official Oscar predictions today, Nathaniel left out Best Animated Feature, but no matter. By this point, you'd have to hunt a while to find anybody predicting a winner other than How to Train Your Dragon 2, with a few Big Hero 6 holdouts just trying to pretend that things will be interesting. (Me, I'm thinking that we're about to see an unexpected explosion of write-in votes to make sure that Mr. Peabody & Sherman can finally get its due).
That level of predictability almost always ends up settling into this particular race (last year was an exception), which can make it hard, sometimes, to recall that the category has had a purpose beyond annually recognizing that yep, Pixar sure does make some pretty fine movies. So instead of prepping for Oscar weekend by celebrating winners, I want to pay tribute to some losers. The beautiful likes of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea are (probably) about the join the 36 films to have so far been nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar and lost out, and that's some fine company to be in. Here are some of my personal favorites.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003; lost to Finding Nemo)
Even after 11 years, the jazzy "Bellville Rendez-vous" remains one of the most memorable original songs in 21st Century filmmaking (it also lost a competitive Oscar). It's a brilliant component of a movie that I'm generally inclined to regard with fetishistic adoration, and will start recommending to people on even the slightest pretext. Like this one, for example. It's one of the most essential animated features of the last 15 years, easily, combining warped slapstick humor with an elegiac sense of melancholy, expressed in a scratchy graphic style that turns everyone into a grotesque caricature while given all of them full, vibrant personalities. Not bad for a film with less than a dozen spoken words in its entire running time.
Persepolis (2007; lost to Ratatouille)
Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her own graphic novel memoir is a little redundant, perhaps. But taken on its own terms, this story of life during the Iranian Revolution, told in soft lines and crisp black-and-white, is terrific animated cinema both aesthetically and politically. Overtly feminist stories and animation for an appreciative adult audience are both rare, combining them is rarer, and using it all in the service of putting a human face to life in Iran that doesn't pander or beg for special pleading makes this one as bold as any animated film I can ever name. And yet it's so sardonic and brisk that it never feels capital-I Important in a boring way. A total success that deserves infinitely more attention than it's ever received in the U.S.
Kung Fu Panda (2008; lost to WALL·E)
When the first How to Train Your Dragon came out in 2010, it was greeted with critical hosannas as the movie that finally proved that DreamWorks Animation could make a movie that as every bit as good as its best competition. But then, the studio had already proven that with this brightly-colored, poppy tribute to Asian landscape paintings and schlocky '70s kung-fu movies. It's silly as hell, and the jokes have all the smirking anachronism of DreamWorks at its worst. But it's also funny and disarmingly sweet, and the company's fixation on all-celebrity voice casting never worked out as well as it did here, with Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, and Ian McShane among the many familiar faces we don't see.
The Princess and the Frog (2009; lost to Up)
The financial success of the following year's Tangled immediately swallowed up the small splash made by Disney's first-ever animated feature centered on an African-American protagonist. And then the behemoth of 2013's Frozen left it almost totally forgotten as the first attempt in a generation to make a classic Disney Princess musical. Neither of which is at all a fair fate for an earnest attempt at correcting the company's long history of representational yuckiness with a warm suite of Randy Newman songs, top-notch voice acting, and beautifully old-school 2-D animation. It's a sop to the studio's fans, sure, but as a fan, I am greatly pleased to have it in my life even now, far more than either of its bigger successors.
What are your favorite nominees to have missed on on the Best Animated Feature Oscar?
Reader Comments (19)
The Boy and the World
Giovanni’s Island
The Lego Movie
Rio
The Adventures of Tintin
Metropia
Mary and Max
Ponyo
A Scanner Darkly
Chicken Little
The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie
Team America (if it counts)
The Powerpuff Girls Movie
Waking Life
Oh sorry, I read the question wrong. Thought it said animated movies that weren't nominated. And I meant to put a 2 after Rio, but only because of that adorable evil frog.
I'm often okay with the winning choice out of the nominees (Belleville being a notable exception - Finding Nemo is a classic, but my love of Belleville is extreme). When I've been disappointed it's usually because something I liked a lot didn't even get nominated (The Adventures of Tintin, and more than that, Waltz With Bashir and now The Congress).
Monsters Inc lost out to Shrek, a travesty to me then and a travesty to me now, and I actually liked Shrek. Pixar may have diluted the quality of the original with the lacklustre sequel, but the original Monsters Inc remains potent and timeless in a way that Shrek does not.
As painful as the loss of Persepolis may be, I can't begrudge Ratatouille its win. In what is likely an unpopular opinion here, Ratatouille wrestles for top Pixar movie in my list along with The Incredibles and Toy Story 3.
My other favorites that missed out on the Oscar: Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Paranorman, The Secret of Kells,and Ernest & Celestine. UP's first five minutes pretty much nailed the door shut on the rest of its very strong competition that year -- seriously, Coraline, The Secret of Kells and Fantastic Mr. Fox would have all been amazingly worthy winners -- and while I don't think UP was the best animated movie of that year, its victory is not something I'm bitter about.
The 2009 lineup in Best Animated is one of the best lineups in an Oscar category ever.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Persepolis
The Triplets of Belleville
Howl's Moving Castle
Coraline
The Illusionist
Frankenweenie
I have a soft spot for stop-motion and Ghibli in general, and also for the European nominees. Not the biggest fan of Pixar/DreamWorks/Disney - I like some of their movies very much, but CGI animation is too sterile and the storytelling too formulaic to be my favorite.
The most disappointing outcome has been Up winning over Fox and Coraline.
AR- 100% agreed. It is my favorite slate of nominees to come out during my lifetime (and in the first, longer draft of the essay, Fantastic Mr. Fox was also on my list).
Paranorman.
Persepolis is SO good.
My favorite is definitely Wreck-It Ralph, although I'm afraid I may have to add Kaguya-hime no Monogatari on the list later this week.
Paranorman. I've rhapsodized about it before, but it's a good moving rendered great by an astonishing climax/ending.
Good movie, not moving. dammit.
One of my favorite animated films since this category was added wasn't even nominated. Tangled is such a beautifully earnest picture. Though in 2010, it's hard to squeeze out Toy Story 3, the original HTTYD and The Illusionist. Damn the 3 Picture Rule.
One of my favorites wasn't nominated either: Waltz with Bashir.
And it should've won in 2008...it's better than Wall-e.
At least I can look back and give thanks that the Academy actually recognized Spirited Away, the very best win in this category's history. I can't believe they honored it.
Lilo & Stitch, which I still honestly believed deserved the trophy over Spirited Away. They're both exceptional animated films, but I felt Lilo & Stitch had a more honest angle on family, loss, and love. Spirited Away had the better quality animation.
I think it's interesting to think about the films that would've been nominated but came before the animated category was introduced...
Anastasia comes to mind for sure, Mulan, Hercules
Cats Don't Dance?
ParaNorman and Coraline for sure. I'm a big Laika fan so far, so I'm even rooting for an impossible win for The Boxtrolls.
As Philip H. said above, I often think about what films would have won if this category existed earlier...surely Chicken Run, Toy Story 2, and A Bug's Life for the three years prior? It's fun to think about.
My favorite also-ran is Fantastic Mr. Fox. It's cussing great!
The Illusionist is the big one (along with Triplets, as Tim said.)
2009 was a wonderful year though, and about half of that slate could have deserved a win in a weaker season.