Today, animation is led mainly by Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and Blue Sky, with other works popping up here and there from independent studios like Pathe, Laika, or Aardman. Strangely enough, many of the studios listed above seemed to be on break during the year of 2011. A majority of the films on this post came from relatively unknown animation studios: Rango and Tintin both came from directors who are consistently accustomed to doing live-action films, and both of these experiments in animation worked out to varying degrees of success. I suppose that's what you could call this: a year of experimenting. Disney tries a return to its roots with Winnie the Pooh, Gore Verbinski tries to make an adult-geared animated Western, Spielberg tries to bring a beloved comic book series to life, and Pixar doesn't try at all. Let's celebrate the successes and mourn the failures of the folks that set out to do something new: for everyone that missed it, here are the beloved cartoon matinees we remember from 2011.
1. Winnie the Pooh
Director: Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall
Starring: Jim Cummings, Tom Kenny, Craig Ferguson, Bud Luckey, John Cleese
Release Date: July 15, 2011
Running Time: 63 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
Following the 1977 Disney release The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne's beloved children's book characters exploded into one of the most popular and long-running franchises in the history of kids' movies, comprised of Pooh's Grand Adventure, The Tigger Movie, Piglet's Big Movie, and Pooh's Heffalump Movie, along with several spin-off television shows. And though none of these films are necessarily bad, it seems like the franchise has come a long way from its origins. The personalities and histories of these characters have been so butchered and mistreated that Pooh has become more of an amorphous market toy than an actual lovable character. So naturally, when the 2011 Winnie the Pooh was released, nobody cared- I think we all just assumed that it was just another unnecessary installment to an unending stream of goofy kids' films laced with contrived plots and forced sentimentality. However, having seen it, the exact opposite seems true- the title kind of says it all. There's no new spin; there's no gimmick. It's just simply Winnie the Pooh. This is Disney's apology for everything Winnie the Pooh has become. This wipes the slate clean, bringing us back to the old, basic, storybook stuff. Its friendly design and clever script show that it truly understands the spirit of the first film, the spirit of the characters, and above all, the spirit of their literary source material. Here, we are brought no overarching plot, but rather the escapades of a single day. It's a collection of small stories (really, more like two small stories), but there's still continuity. The stories of Eeyore's tail and Christopher Robin's misunderstood note are more or less derived from the original book, but they still leave room for much of the inventive and original. Every minute of this film is fun to watch not only because of its mile-a-minute humor but also because of its beautiful animation. Yes, it is short- only about an hour in length- but that just makes it a perfect film for a quiet afternoon where kids may be too tired or time-pressed to have the attention span for a normal-length kids' film. And not only that: it's a perfect film as a representation of the classic characters; here we see each of the nine different Hundred-Acre-Wood residents get lines and moments that bring them to the spotlight, which is a lot for the condensed time-span that the film places itself into. What's more is that the perfect voice actor was chosen for each of the characters, so they come off as even more richly colored than as we've always remembered them. We even have John Cleese narrating; interacting with the story in a peculiar play off of the fourth wall- of course the old film did this, too, but everything that this movie borrows it improves upon with a visual style that makes it distinct as an animated feature. Winnie the Pooh uses the best that modern animation has to offer, but it knows how to use those tools in moderation, producing images that are visually just as sublime as the rest of the film. At its core, the emotion of this film is both nostalgic and straightforward- kind of like what Milne's stories were always meant to be. Kudos to you, Disney, for this under-sung gem.
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty
Release Date: March 4, 2011
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: 4/5
Rango is a film with a reputation as wild and fast as its harsh atmosphere. Upon its release, it seemed to come out of nowhere. Nickelodeon Studios? What good thing have they ever done? I mean, we're all trying to get the awful computer graphics and despicable characters of Barnyard out of our heads, so how on earth did these people scrounge up enough funding to produce something as good-looking as this? For a few minutes, it seemed everyone was talking about it, and then it disappeared from conversation forever. This isn't uncommon with good movies, but something like this should have left more of an impact. Only a year later Pixar was beaming with pride about how they had separately animated every single one of Merida's strands of hair- for crying out loud, the Rango team did the same thing with every animal in this film- and all of the characters in this movie are animals. If I were to rank this film on visuals alone, it would most certainly be a five-star masterpiece. All of the creatures look like their natural counterparts- the scales, the fur, the feathers- but their mannerisms are human and realistic enough that they're able to do the things that they do such as wearing clothes, building and living in Wild-West towns, and having chase scenes on horseback (although technically they're riding tiny birds). The movements of the animals are subtle- almost roto-scoped from the voice actors' performances; and though it's not something most people pick up on, it's still a strange relief from the broad exaggeration that's used in most animation. There has never been animation like this, nor will there be animation like this again. Rango is darn outright beautiful- but it's also ugly. No, I'm not talking about the story. A domesticated lizard's glass terrarium smashes on the side of a desert highway and he stumbles upon a small dusty town called Dirt where he runs into a wall of political intrigue and a community desperately in need of a hero. How could you go wrong with a set-up like that? Yeah, it has its slip ups, but though the plot is in knots by the end, there's still a good resolution that holds things together pretty well. Where this film's real fault lies not in the brilliant visuals, the intriguing story, the thrilling adventure, or in the fantastic characters: rather, it is (and I really hate to say this) the PG rating. And while I could just go ahead right now listing everything that I hate about the loathsome despicable MPAA Ratings System, this time, I actually blame the filmmakers. Gore Verbinski, the director of the whole project, mentioned the work of Ralph Bakshi to give an idea for what he kind of wanted the film to be- a film that was targeted towards adults instead of children. So why didn't that happen? I'm not saying that the film should have been R-rated or anything like that. But they really should have just thrown a few more curse words and adult references into the movie to land it at a safe PG-13, so families wouldn't accidentally take their five-year-olds to see this long string of thinly-veiled sex innuendos, because we all know that the PG rating means, like, nothing these days. Either that, or they should have turned the notch down a bit on the dark humor and social satire and made it a full-out PG film. But the writers were too stubborn and the entertainment industry was all too eager to pass it off as a family picture to make money, so voila, we have this mess. Rango is so confused in its own level of humor that it really doesn't know who its audience is- in which case, it's a lot like Antz, but more disappointing because it had greater potential. I guess even as a PG-13 film it'd still be too cynical and crude to really succeed at emotional coherency. I guess it's just trying to be as bold and brutal as Westerns typically are, and if so, then it achieves that goal, but at the cost of its immortality. Rango will always be a landmark in animation history, but it will never be as beloved as any entry by its rival studios, who are churning out memorable classics that don't need to act grown-up to be appreciated by all ages.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg
Release Date: December 21, 2011
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: 3.5/5
As an pre-teen, I was never really into comic books or graphic novels. Belgian artist Herge's Tintin books were the sole exception. They were intelligent and gripping international detective stories that balanced a world of juvenile imagination with the world of adult reality, creating a thrilling blend of mystery and adventure, with an end result that's not unlike what the Indiana Jones franchise would look like if its leading man sported a sweater and a trench coat. So when I heard Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Steven Moffat were bringing it to the big screen, it goes without saying I was on the edge of my seat. This kind of story, this kind of action/mystery world-traveling hijinks is exactly what we need right now, how could it be anything less than stellar? And while The Adventures of Tintin wasn't bad, I can't say it didn't leave me with a conflicted reaction. Surprisingly, the film has Spielberg behind the wheel as director, and it's the only animated film to wield that badge, though it's hard to classify it as an animated film as it's predominantly motion-capture. And though it comes awfully close to looking like the awful CGI of Robert Zemeckis' more recent endeavors (The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol) it doesn't quite plunge into the uncanny valley- it just takes a little dip. It looks good, it just... could look better... a lot of live-action directors don't realize that you don't need motion capture to translate actors' mannerisms and expression into animation- I mean, think of Robin Williams in Aladdin or Jim Carrey in Horton Hears a Who!- you could still see the voice actors in their animated counterparts, but the good acting didn't get in the way of the characters. The world of Tintin certainly feels more real in this film, which is good- the set design, the direction- it's all fantastic. Watching the characters themselves, though, is a little... uncomfortable, like watching people whose face has been ripped off and replaced with fake rubber skin-mask. (Well, I suppose it's not all that intolerable). What really bothered me about the film, though, is the plot. With a little tweaking, the complex and intriguing plot from the book could have made an excellent three-act movie. The script's combination of two Tintin books "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "The Crab with the Golden Claws" messes up both of the stories and necessitates a forced and rather obvious climax, quite unlike Herge's curving and roundabout plot developments. When Tintin stumbles onto a centuries-old mystery centering around an antique model ship, he comes across a character who is so obviously the villain of the story that someone might as well plaster up a sign saying so- it's more upsetting when you take into account he wasn't a villain in the original book. I suppose it would be hypocritical of me to violate my own code of conduct and lambast a movie for butchering the plot of its source material when it captures the spirit of the source material so well. All of the characters are there, and they're as likable as ever, though a bit lazily developed. And the adventure is high-stakes, humorous, and involving. But even if you ignore the novel completely, the movie's marvelous good points such as its artistry and velocity can't entirely obscure the flimsy and muddled storyline. Still, it's impossible to deny the strong appeal of Tintin's content, and further impossible for me to stifle my anticipation for the sequel.
Director: Kelly Asbury
Starring: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Jim Cummings
Release Date: February 11, 2011
Running Time: 84 minutes
Rating: 2/5
This film is really awful. Awful, awful. No; it's truly a pain to watch. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't derived from the most cliched and overdone love story in the history of the universe... it's more of a loose inspiration, I suppose, but when you replace the bard's moving words of genius and replace them with goofy butt jokes, all you have left are a bunch of lawn ornaments that make you want to punch yourself in the face every time they speak. I mean, for goodness' sakes, even the title of the film is a stupid pun; that alone should scare you away. The idea is dumb: yes, all of the characters are porcelain gnomes. Big whoop. This results in an even dumber aesthetic that adds nothing to the gimmicky gimmick of the whole movie. The old Romeo and Juliet story is familiar to everybody, so to describe the tale of the family feud that keeps two lovers apart would be pointless- and it's obvious that the play's well-known tragic ending won't hold up in a children's movie, so adult audiences will sort of just meander through the overly happy film in a disinterested half-asleep daze. We endure the clumsiness of talking plastic flamingos, and we have to wonder- what kind of God punished these household objects with consciousness? Oh, that's right: the film's creators. And we are rewarded for sitting through the mind-numbing humor with more mind-numbing humor. The selling point is weak, the jokes are weak, the characters are weak, the style is weak, and the story is weak, despite its source material. But on the other hand, it's a far cry from infuriating. It's a dumb kids' film, but like most dumb kids' films, it's mostly harmless. I don't think anyone can say Gnomeo and Juliet ever really hurt anyone, unlike, say, this movie down here:
Director: John Lassetter
Starring: Larry the Cable Guy, Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, John Turturro
Release Date: June 24, 2011
Running Time: 106 minutes
Rating: 1.5/5
Okay, everyone. This is one of my least favorite movies of all time, and possibly one of the greatest travesties towards cinema, ever. Everything bad about sequels is encapsulated within this train-wreck of a film- okay, maybe I need to calm down a little. This movie is no different than any other bad kids' movie sequel, I suppose, but that's pretty much everything that's wrong with it- unless, of course, you consider its cultural context, which is unbelievably important to consider when talking about this movie. This is the movie that ruined Pixar. Pixar, the only animation studio out there with a truly perfect track record. And this- Cars 2- is the one movie that comes along to ruin their winning streak. This is not the Pixar movie that needed a sequel (for more on that, see The Incredibles). What's more upsetting to me is the amount of planning and care that went into earlier Pixar movies. It takes a great deal of time and thought to make a movie like this, especially one that's this well animated. So why the hell didn't anyone shoot this down? Is it because John Lasseter has such a fetish for cars that one movie with these characters just wasn't enough? Like I said, the team of storytellers at Pixar are fantastic. Assuming John Lasseter approached them in one their brainstorming meetings and said "Hey guys, let's make a sequel to Cars with an environmental message about alternative fuel, where a majority of the film is about Mater learning a lesson about friendship through a high-stakes mistaken-identity subplot with spies," then why didn't anyone else in the room tell him it was a dumb idea? Was he holding them at gunpoint or something? Did he win some sort of wager? This sequel is something resembling direct-to-video quality, with a plot that no one cares about (McQueen competing in an international racing championship) and a subplot that people care about even less (Mater becomes a spy, by accident, etc.). Doesn't that piss anybody off? That Mater is the main character of this movie, not McQueen... I mean, Mater is fine and all as a side character, but seeing him for most of this movie, bungling things up, clueless to his circumstance, making idiots out of government spies, and frustrating us with his Larry the Cable Guy voice- it's all one big joke! You can't take the message seriously because the comic relief character is intended to be the emotional center of the message, ergo, there is no emotional involvement in this movie, period! The whole environmental theme is just so obvious and in-your-face, and there's nothing in this entire story that's even visually interesting- there is nothing that makes you wide-eyed with wonder and beauty like there is in every other Pixar film- there's no appeal. And the humor... it's dumb, just seriously. Every little detail of Cars 2 is just an embarrassment to anyone that worked on it, all just further proof that evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
-Julian Rhodes
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