Oscar Volley: No matter who takes Best Animated Film, we’re all winners!

The Oscar Volleys are back for some post-nomination talks. Today, Cláudio Alves and Nathaniel Rogers discuss Best Animated Film...

FLOW | © Janus Films / Sideshow

CLÁUDIO: Last year, I got to go to the Annecy Animation Film Festival and was lucky enough to watch Gints Zilbalodis' Flow shortly after its Cannes premiere. I loved it on the spot, besotted by complicated camera choreography and the cuteness of its feline lead, but couldn't imagine what was to come. Looking at my original review, I even mentioned hopes that it'd get international distribution, which, at the time, wasn't guaranteed for the small Latvian production. Goodness, how things have changed. It turns out that Flow was the tiny film that could, storming through the awards season like a meowing underdog. Beyond becoming a cause célèbre for its home country, the film overcame Pixar's blockbuster hit Inside Out 2 to become The Wild Robot's biggest competition for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. 

And the best part is that, whichever of the two wins, we'll have a fantastic champion in our hands, something both of us know shouldn't be taken for granted. Isn't it wonderful?

NATHANIEL: It is bliss, yes. Both films are in my top 20 of the year (top ten list coming very soon)…

Even though I prefer Flow, The Wild Robot will be a great winner and in most years, I would be rooting hard for it. Either will make the best winner since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Even better, neither hail from Disney and/or Pixar, who've collectively hogged 65% of the wins in this category! That's a horrifying and shameful number, no matter what you think of any of the individual films. Disney and Pixar have both offered up outstanding winners over the years, don't get me wrong, but that points to lazy voting any way you slice it (no actor or studio or director or whatever is the Best in anything every year... or even 65% of the time!). Frankly it makes me angry with the Academy for not taking this particular medium seriously and really considering their options each and every season. 

INSIDE OUT 2 | © Walt Disney Motion Pictures

But you started so positive. I'm sorry! I promise I feel joy about this category. We will come back to the delicious double feature of Flow and The Wild Robot. But looking at the whole shortlist, I want to say that it's always a relief when you get a wide variety of artistic sensibilities and animated typologies in one shortlist. In the 24 years of this category we've had some strong lineups so even if voters are inarguably lazy about winners, they have exhibited awareness and appreciation of the global beauty and brilliance that this medium can offer. 

It's such a good quintet that I feel a little weird that my least favorite is easily Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl since that duo has brought me so much joy over the years.

CLÁUDIO: I want to keep things positive - as opposed to our Best Supporting Actress volley - but I'll have to disagree with a lot of the things you're saying. As you know, I adore The Boy and the Heron and don't particularly think either the Latvian or the Dreamworks movie supersedes it in terms of quality or sheer ambition. They'll make great winners, but this isn't a category lacking for those, even though their addiction to certain studios is a vice that must be broken for the Oscars’ sake.

And as much as I like this quintet, it's not an especially good reflection of the best animation of 2025. For my money, Kiyotaka Oshiyama's Look Back and Naoko Yamada's The Colors Within are experimenting with the medium in ways none of AMPAS' nominees could even dream of, stretching the limits of traditional 2D and transcending literalism. Chicken for Linda! is another stupendous exercise in the endless possibilities of this medium, while Art College 1994 really challenges our preconceived ideas about what kinds of stories belong in animation and what should be left to live-action cinema. Finally, at a time when genre movies are gaining popularity with Oscar voters, it's sad that the decade's best sci-fi flick couldn't get any traction. Mars Express is better than Dune – there, I said it.

Still, I'm curious about that last statement of yours. For me, Inside Out 2 is far out the worst of these, but you have more issues with "Wallace & Gromit versus AI versus cinema's greatest psychopath." Could you elaborate on that?

NATHANIEL: I would happily replace Inside Out 2 or Wallace & Gromit with Chicken for Linda in a flash. It's so much fun and so much its own thing that I wonder if it perplexed some viewers... there's not a lot of comparison points for it since it's not much like traditional CG or traditional 2D. At any rate I urge people to see it. Plus, it's only 73 minutes and it uses that time in a perfect escalation into chaos and community... something I don't think would have worked with a longer film.  (I haven't seen the others you loved most from the eligible title list). When I say that Vengeance Most Fowl is my least favorite I should point out that I don't mean by much. It's kind of a toss-up between it and Inside Out 2. They both have their moments but I'm of the camp that animated sequels are, almost without exception, pale and unnecessary imitations of the original. Toy Story might be the only animated franchise that inarguably avoided that curse but then it still overstayed its welcome with a fourth movie that was. you guessed it, a paler imitation of the others so... yeah, I struggle with animated sequels!

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL | © Netflix

In the case of Wallace & Gromit, I started the film on a total high -- that Cape Fear-esque montage of Feathers McGraw in prison was heaven -- but I grew impatient with all the killer gnome antics and eventually I felt as if I'd seen it all before. Maybe three shorts and one incredible feature was enough for me with W&G? I love Feathers McGraw (who doesn't?) but I craved a fresh opponent since it's been so long since I've seen this endearing duo onscreen. The gnomes were cute until they weren't. I do think the final multi-part chase somewhat redeemed the middle especially in terms of Feather's disguises. Anyway, I freely admit that it was possible I was in a bad mood when I saw it. I never want to root against Aardman!

As for Inside Out 2, I felt much the same. A lot of good moments and cute funny character bits but overall it felt like a retread of material that was fresh and exciting the first time around. That said, I did get what I craved (aka new characters!) and the voicework of Ayo Edebiri as Envy and Maya Hawke as Anxiety was a duet I could really sing along to. I just loved both of them and the movie made me feels emotions in that manufactured but still pure movie-movie way that can be so entrancing in children's films (even if you'd balk at the manipulation in a live-action film). I wish the whole movie were as good as those two new characters.

That paragraph reads so grumpy. I promise I enjoyed all five nominees and think it's a good lineup. I have to know your thoughts on Memoir of a Snail. I was all over the place with that movie sometimes absolutely loving it and other times quite angry with it. It really goes to dark places. In the end I really admired its capacity to absorb, rethink, and reshape the dark negative energy it surprisingly confronts you with throughout. As it turns out I needed wise weird Pinky (Jacki Weaver) in my life because life is messy and unfortunate and sad sometimes but you should still live it to the fullest! Stop motion is my favorite style of animation and in terms of execution I found the animation entrancing and passionate. By contrast there was something about Wallace & Gromit this time around that felt too polished, like it had been run through a computer to remove any beautiful Aardman fingerprints. Was I imagining this?

Anyway, talk to me about snails and Pinky and Grace and Bert.

CLÁUDIO: A few things before I get into that Australian oddity. Look Back is even shorter than Chicken for Linda, clocking in at 58 minutes. The amount of narrative sprawl and heady concepts it crams in there without feeling inorganic is astounding, and I think you'd appreciate the storytelling economy. But regarding your comments on the feel of the new Wallace & Gromit, I think a lot of it is just due to shooting in digital rather than film. The handmade claymation still has its textures, fingerprints, and all, but the cinematic image looks much smoother to its detriment. At Annecy, I got to see some of the "actors" for Vengeance Most Fowl, deconstructed from the animation skeleton up, and there's still a great emphasis on the tactile imperfections of the medium. It's how the camera captures those details that has changed most drastically.

Which may sound a bit like an empty notion when one glances at Adam Elliot's latest and finds the same aesthetic qualities of his previous work preserved and perpetuated. Though less successful than Mary and Max, Memoir of a Snail still looks the part, all stop-motion stylization teetering on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall into a gorge of unwatchable grotesque. And, honestly, I'm glad Elliot remains so focused on these bizarre tones and vision, going for full Dickensian misery with a sentimental side a mile wide, ready to pile on so much pain that you reach a point where it becomes darkly funny.

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL | © IFC Films

Watching Memoir of a Snail reminded me of nothing more than an afternoon spent in the carpentry shop at college, working on a project with fellow theater students. We were a tight-knit group, and, that day, the repetitive labor of building stuff led to a conversation on our past, our childhood. And one girl had a horrible time growing up, the sort of thing worthy of an Adam Elliot narrative. But she didn't tell her story in search of pity, even if that may have been the immediate reaction of some of us. As the absurd bad luck kept coming, there was even some humor there, straight from the gallows. Part of it was how tired we were, part of it was the absurdity of life, but we all ended up laughing ourselves silly with her, right until we were gasping for air with tears forming in the corners of the eyes. Coming down from that high, the experience brought us together, providing a ghoulish sort of warmth and closeness that Memoir of a Snail evokes, skirting the usual tenet of empathetic cinema for something stranger but no less affecting.

I think a lot of why the film works is due to Elliot's genuine affection for his characters, even as he makes them live through their own personal Books of Job. I found it especially telling how he allowed his leads a concrete happy ending that could have felt like an easy way out if not for the path there being the antithesis of easy. It's very off-putting and bleak and exhausting but also generous in oblique ways and life-affirming, anchored by some brilliant bits of voice acting. Then again, I know I'd have revolted against this entire enterprise if not for the animation and art direction. As it is, those aspects brought me down to the movie's bizarro wavelength and got me to re-appreciate a penchant for miserabilism I often can't tolerate in media. Does any of that make sense to you? I fear I might be a bit incoherent in my defense.

NATHANIEL: No no, this makes perfect sense to me. I too feel I would not have enjoyed Memoir of a Snail at all were it not for the overall design choices and the painstaking personality-filled animation. This is a weird call back but this critical conundrum push-pull reminds me of people who complained loudly that the gargantuan acclaim of the first 15 minutes of Pixar's Up would have won horrid "this is manipulative sentimental crap nonsense" reviews had it not been in the context of an animated family film. I was maybe even one of those people, I don't recall. Remember in the early days of the Best Animated Feature category that animated movies could still place in the Best Picture lineup? I wonder, from opposite sides of the coin, if that could ever happen again AND I wonder if it almost happened with Wild Robot this year. 

CLÁUDIO: I'm not sure. That Best Original Song slot seemed much more secure than the Sound nod it eventually nabbed, pointing at a potential weakness. But it DID get the Sound nom few predicted along with a Score nomination AND it was shortlisted for Best Visual Effects. There was clearly a lot of love for Dreamworks' latest family film hit within the Academy's ranks. And why not? It's a beautiful work whose studio has been campaigning hard since last summer. Lately, I've even started to wonder if it can snag itself a win for Kris Bowers' compositions. Before the controversy, Emilia Pérez was my prediction, but now I'm torn between Wild Robot and Conclave, with The Brutalist as a strong possibility after BAFTA.

I don't believe either of us is predicting a Flow win in Best Animated Feature or Best International Film, but it would be a perfect capper for this chaotic season if The Wild Robot somehow took Score but lost to the Latvian picture in the other race. Then again, one should never underestimate the number or passion of cat people. We are everywhere, and we will mobilize to get this kitty an Oscar! Also, in my delusional mind, this would make Nick Taylor's cat, Shadow, an Academy Award winner. That baby boy is the spitting image of Zilbalodis' cartoon star. Who, by the way, was voiced by an orange cat. If that's not range, I don't know what is. Give them an Honorary Oscar, too, for that matter. Dogs can't have all the fun with that Palme Dog prize. Justice for feline thespians!

THE WILD ROBOT | © Universal Pictures

Previous Oscar Volleys:

• BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, with Cláudio Alves & Nathaniel Rogers
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, with Eric Blume & Nick Taylor
• BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY, with Abe Friedtanzer & Eurocheese
• BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM, with Eric Blume & Nathaniel Rogers
• BEST COSTUME DESIGN, with Cláudio Alves & Nick Taylor
• BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING, with Cláudio Alves & Eurocheese

Comments

[Mike in Canada]

Reassuring to read some respect for Wild Robot. I love both it and Flow, but I slightly prefer Wild Robot, and I feel like it's getting a bad rap as "the Hollywood movie that will beat Flow."
They're both very special movies.

[Robert G]

This is one of the best categories at the Oscars this year. Any winner would be a great winner. I'm pulling for Memoir of a Snail because I really like Adam Elliot's style, but I'm not going to be mad when Flow or The Wild Robot win. Inside Out 2 is a solid sequel and any Wallace and Gromit film is a moment for celebration. I'm thinking Flow might eek this one out, but The Wild Robot has the bigger presence in the category.