Open Season (2006)
Feb 11, 2007Animation/Talking Animals
Passable animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, although the story arcs too closely resemble every other animated film for it to have much in the way of notability
Sony Pictures Animation
Surf’s Up (2007)
Jul 29, 2007Animation/Surfing Penguins
This came out several months after Happy Feet and has a similar plot involving surfing penguins. Though the lesser film and far more predictable, it is likeable
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Nov 2, 2009Animation/Inventor Creates Rains of Food
Phil Lord and Chris Miller, later directors of The Lego Movie, create an animated film that is a delight with its nonsensical visions of a town inundated by weather phenomena made of food
The Smurfs (2011)
Aug 10, 2011Cute Blue-Skinned Creatures
Live-action version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. In its favour, it is at least slickly polished and comes with far less in the way of irritating smartass humour that one expected
Arthur Christmas (2011)
Dec 15, 2011Animation/Santa's Son
An animated collaboration between Aardman and Sony Pictures Anomation. This has a good deal of eccentric charm that overcomes one’s dislike of the cloying sentiment of most Christmas films
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
Sep 28, 2012Animation/Hotel for Famous Monsters
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)
May 12, 2012Aardman Animation/Gonzo Pirate Adventure
Amiable effort from England's Aardman Animations that doesn't quite scale the heights of their other films but still has an entertainingly nonsensical charm that is far more enjoyable than most Hollywood competition
The Smurfs 2 (2013)
Aug 11, 2013Cute Blue-Skinned Creatures
The first film was vaguely passable but this is an agonising piece of commercial product that has reduced everything to lazy slapstick sequences, cutsie laughs and smartass lines played for the single-digit age groups
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013)
Sep 27, 2013Animation/Island of Living Food
The original film was a good deal of fun; this sequel feels like it is simply a repeat of the same but slightly different. Still there is a good deal of creativity to the visual puns and living food creatures
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
Jan 23, 2016Animation/Famous Monsters Comedy
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged - these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn't even get to drink blood
Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017)
Jul 10, 2017Animation/Cute Blue-Skinned Creatures
For their third Smurfs film, Sony have dispensed with the live-action/CGi animation mix of the previous two films and made a wholly animated film. Its' the Smurfs in their more natural element but the film is never more than 3D eye candy for the moppet audiences
The Emoji Movie (2017)
Dec 4, 2017Animation/The Lives of Talking Emojis
An animated film that bizarrely speculates that the emojis in your text messages are actually living entities that have lives inside the phone. A not-too-well-thought out concept that leaves you with strange questions about its world
Goosebumps 2 (2018)
Apr 14, 2019Evil Ventriloquist's Dummy Amok
The second film spun off from R.L. Stine's popular horror stories promotes the wonderfully evil ventriloquist's dummy Slappy to principal nemesis. The rest of the film is predictable but Slappy deserves his own series
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Apr 29, 2018Talking Animals
Beatrix Potter wrote genteel stories of talking animals in the English countryside. This is a film so astonishingly awful in its treatment of the source material - it feels like someone drunkenly urinating on Beatrix Potter's gravestone for lulz. The No 1 contender for Worst Film of 2018
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)
Nov 25, 2018Animation/Famous Monsters Comedy
I'm not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Mar 9, 2019Animation/Comic-Book Superhero
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
Vivo (2021)
Aug 13, 2021Animated Musical/Talking Monkey
Animated film about a talking and singing monkey from Cuba that travels to the US on a quest
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Jul 2, 2023Animation/The Machine Revolution Comedy
A surprise delight, an animated film that overspills with madcap creative energy concerning a misfit family on a road trip who come up against the machine revolution
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022)
Jan 29, 2022Animation/Famous Monsters Comedy
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
Fixed (2025)
Jan 31, 2026Animation/Talking Dog About to Be Fixed
An animated film from Genndy Tartakovsky, director of the Hotel Transylvania films, that is a really quite filthy and hilarious story of a dog about to have its testicles removed who goes on one last adventure