Tuesday, May 30, 2006

List of the Week: Computer Animation

Cars comes out in a few weeks, and my kids are more excited for this than anything they've ever seen. "Look Daddy! Car race movie!!!" In anticipation of (hopefully) another gem from the good people at Pixar, here is my list of the top-ten computer animated movies.


1. Finding Nemo - This is the creme-de-la-creme of the Pixar library. Wonderful story, great characters, perfect voice cast, and it looks spectacular.
2. Toy Story 2 - The first was great and this one improved upon it in so manys.
3. Shrek - I'm in the minority, I think, of people who liked the first one better than the second one. I think it was just so unique and distinguished itself from the Pixar films, that as the original, it really set the tone that was continued in the sequel.
4. Toy Story - Another amazing film. It's crazy, though, how the animation seemed so incredible at the time, but now, compared to the latest CGI flicks, it seems so primative.
5. Monster's Inc. - I love the story so much, and the adventure of it all, that it makes up for some questionable casting (Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly). I'm not a fan of gimmick voice-casting, just to get big names. The voice actor has to fit the part. You want to remember the character, not just who did the voice. If it's a super recognizable voice, it usually doesn't work. John Goodman and Billy Crystal, however, work perfectly. I'm sure it's darn near impossible to get the perfect mix.
6. A Bugs Life - Another great pixar Flik (ha! get it?). A great case of perfectly cast voices. Kevin Spacey is the main villain, but you don't think "spacey" you think "Hopper".
7. Shrek 2 - Maybe it's over-saturation that drops it this far, because the kids watch it so darn much in the car. This is one of the best adult-inside-joke movies in the genre.
8. The Incredibles - Another fun story with perfect voice-casting. Bravo for NOT hiring Patrick Warburton for Mr. Incredible, but another deep-voiced actor: Coach! (Craig T. Nelson). Samuel L. Jackson is my favorite voice in the movie, with Jason Lee a close second.
9. Antz - Too "adult" many times, if I remember correctly, but I know that I enjoyed it.
10. Ice Age - You can tell that the quality really drops off by the end of this list. The first one was unique and fun and had a great adventure story, but it fell victim to the gimmick casting problem with Ray Romano.

Honorable Mention:
Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie. It was good, but it was so far below the Veggie Tales episodes, that I just can't rank it any higher.

4 comments:

jeric2003 said...

Oooh. Good list, except Nemo would be at the bottom for me, and Ice Age was one that I hated.

I think I would move up the Incredibles and Monster's Inc too.

Nick said...

Why did you hate Nemo?

Cate said...

I agree with you, Nick. I enjoyed the original Shrek more than the sequel. Good list!

jeric2003 said...

Didn't hate Nemo. Nemo is visually stunning, yes, but I just liked the rest a LOT better. I felt like other stories had more cleverness and never quite felt sold by Albert Brook's vocal performance.