As a member of the Washington Area Film Critics Association, it is my solemn duty during each and every awards season to engage deeply with art, to catch up on movies I'd missed, to truly experience the grand breadth of human wisdom and experience projected up on the big screen.
More specifically, it generally means I have to watch a bunch of cartoons in relatively short order.
I don't make it to a great deal of animated films throughout the year—it's not really my favorite genre, and since I get to pick and choose what I review most of them fall by the wayside—but in order to make an educated choice for Best Animated Feature, I have to bite the bullet and push through. Over the past 24 hours, I've screened Zootopia, Trolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings.* Those three, plus Finding Dory (reviewed here), Moana (out this week and unseen by me thus far, so mentioned no further in this piece), and Sausage Party (a puerile bit of silliness that I won't waste your time slamming), will likely make up most, if not all, of the nominees in the best animated film category at the WAFCAs.
So what should we make of the state of the animation nation? It is strong! I guess. Let's be honest: Pixar is in a bit of a funk, churning out sequels like Finding Dory (and Cars 3 and Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 in forthcoming years) and misfires like The Good Dinosaur. Don't get me wrong: When Pixar is on its game (see, for instance, last year's Inside Out) it's the best in the business.
But from a pure hit-to-miss ratio, I have to think that the House of Mouse (a home that features Frozen- and Wreck-It Ralph-themed rooms) has supplanted Pixar. The most entertaining mainstream animated feature released this year was undoubtedly Zootopia, a sort of cartoonoir about a bunny cop (Ginnifer Goodwin) who teams up with a shady fox (Jason Bateman) to help us all learn about tolerance and acceptance. Aw.
Leave aside the film's questionable science—has Slate published "What Zootopia Gets Wrong About The Food Chain And Instincts" yet?—and instead focus on the humor, the animation, the voice work. Zootopia occasionally leans a bit heavily on reference and allusion for my taste: some of the callbacks, as to previous Disney hit Frozen, are clever; others, such as the invocation of The Godfather, are hackneyed and obvious. But it does so in service of an interesting, original story that will keep parents glued to their screen as their children laugh at the animalistic antics.
And the references in Zootopia aren't nearly as annoying or ubiquitous as those that festoon Trolls, the latest release from DreamWorks Animation. The home of the Shrek and Kung Fu Panda series, the words DreamWorks Animation often sends a shudder down my spine.
Watching Trolls reminded me why. Poppy (Anna Kendrick) is the princess of a band of trolls (as in, the little dolls with the crazy hair) that have escaped from their homeland, where they were eaten once a year by the evil Bergens (who look something like animated versions of the pig-guards from Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi) because eating a troll is the only way a Bergen can experience happiness. They're just that tasty, you see. Princess Poppy puts her peers in peril when she throws a massive party that leads to them being captured; she and Troll Branch (Justin Timberlake) must save their friends and also teach the Bergens how to experience joy sans troll tarts.
The story is banal, a mishmash of a generic hero's journey and Cinderella (the trolls help a scullery maid win the hand of the Bergen prince). But it's also extremely annoying, festooned with atrocious pop ditties that sound as if they've been stolen from a wedding DJ's playlist and then remixed by the Black Eyed Peas. Also, there's a troll who farts glitter. So, you know. It's got that going for it.
I was pleased to wash the taste of troll out of my mouth with Kubo and the Two Strings, a stop-motion animation feature from Laika (which also produced Coraline and ParaNorman). A child in feudal Japan, Kubo (Art Parkinson) can make origami magically dance and tell stories. He and his mother, Sariatu (Charlize Theron) fled from their home after Sariatu's father, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), ordered Sariatu's twin sisters (Rooney Mara) to kill her and blind the boy. Kubo must flee again when the King learns the boy's location.
It's a fairy tale of sorts, filled with magic and wonder. Along the way to fulfilling his destiny, Kubo teams up with a talking monkey and a samurai beetle and a sentient bit of origami: They help him find the sword, armor, and helmet he needs to defeat the mad king and win his freedom. Or perish in the face of unrelenting evil. One of the two. No spoilers here.
Laika's works remain my favorite thanks to the stop-motion animation the studio employs. Though Kubo is enhanced by computer animation a bit too much for my liking, the studio's profound influence on animation is clear: one can't help but watch Troll, for instance, and notice the texture characters are given and the slightly less-smooth manner in which everything onscreen moves, a clear effort to ape the realistic look and feel of the character design in films like Kubo and Coraline.
*Who says journalists don't work hard?