Friday, August 19, 2016

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2010

The Contenders:

How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3 (winner)

What’s Missing

There are a couple of misses I think right off the bat for 2010’s list of animated features, and for a year that only has three nominees, these seem to be omitted for no good reason. The first is Tangled, widely thought of as one of the great exemplars of Disney’s resurgence. The second is Despicable Me, which features one of the truly great parent/child relationships in animated movies between Gru and the three girls he adopts. Since there were only three nominees and two movies that clearly deserved to be considered, I have to wonder exactly why there were only three nominations. As for other possibilities, I haven’t seen enough of Megamind or any of Arrietty or Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole to know if I think they should be here.

Weeding through the Nominees

3. As much as I love Jacques Tati, The Illusionist is clearly the third-place finisher of these three movies. In fact, it would be my fifth-place finisher with the addition of the two movies I mentioned above. This isn’t to denigrate the movie that The Illusionist is; I enjoyed it. It’s not something I could see watching frequently, though. It would be my last choice for a rewatch. The bottom line is that as charming as this can be in places, I can’t help but think that it would have been better as a live-action film the way it was originally intended.

My Choices

2. How do you decide between two movies that are virtually perfect? There’s only one way I can decide to do that here—which one would I rather watch again right now. Based on that, I have to put Toy Story 3 in second place. This is a nearly-perfect movie, though. It uses the established world of the Toy Story franchise and even goes back to the first movie to resolve issues that occur in this one. I am genuinely worried that a fourth Toy Story film will tarnish what the first three built. Bottom line, I love this movie, but it’s not the one I’d more likely rewatch.

1. No, the rewatch favorite is How to Train Your Dragon, a movie that does absolutely everything right. It sticks enough to the story that we think is going to happen to be easy to follow for a younger audience, but more than most animated movies, ramps up the stakes and goes places by the end of the movie that are truly surprising. Even the moments that we expect to happen—Hiccup’s rejection by his father, for instance—have a surprising depth and detail that makes them real rather than just plot-necessary moments. I’m not upset that Toy Story 3 won, but I’d be a shade happier if it was How to Train Your Dragon.

Final Analysis

9 comments:

  1. This should be a quibble but it annoys me so much that I've only watched How to Train Your Dragon all the way through once, despite how often my niece and nephew used to watch it: the gratuitous Scots accents (and only for the adults).

    I've watched Tangled three or four times. That would be my pick.

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    1. I liked, but didn't love Tangled. It was a good step for Disney.

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  2. Totally agree Tangled and Despicable Me deserved noms. I'd have given one to Megamind also, especially since I haven't seen The Illusionist. I like Rise of the Guardians a lot more than most, but that's a 2012 flick.

    I like HTTYD, but I have to completely disagree that it is on the same level as Toy Story 3. I like Dragon a good deal, but no. I think Oscar had it right. For me, it's TS3 then a large gap to whatever is 2nd.

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    1. We'll disagree. I think How to Train Your Dragon is about as perfect as a film gets. The accents do bother me a little, but the story works on a lot of levels. It's very much the story I expected in a number of ways, but it does things that animated movies don't normally do. I'm not at all upset (or surprised) at the win for Toy Story 3, but Dragon would get my vote.

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    2. Hehe...brought me back to 4 Ways a Best Picture days, Dell!

      And I'm with Dell on this...100%

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    3. Well, as I said above, based solely on the "which would I rather rewatch" criterion, Dragon wins.

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    4. Oh, and I typed Rise of the Guardians above but meant Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (I've changed it).

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  3. Yeah, I would have given it to Tangled or Dragon in this case!

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    1. Thank you, oh agreeing-with-me voice-of-reason!

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