The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Animation refers to films in which the films are drawn individually by hand, each frame moved slightly to give the impression of movement. Animated films from the mid-1990s onwards have been increasingly drawn by computer to the point that today the art of hand-drawn animation is a dying art form.
The first animated film was Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the success of this has spread until animation now covers a sizeable percentage of contemporary box-office earnings.
Animation in the American mainstream is almost always sold as being for family audiences (although there is a reasonable amount of animation for grown-ups, particularly outside the US, this has by and large not been financially successful). Content frequently deals with fantastic topics such as fairytale adaptations, the lives of anthropomorphic talking animals or adventures featuring young protagonists.
See also: For animation from Japan see Anime. Films in which animation is blended with live-action are discussed under Toons. For animation using three-dimensional models see Stop-Motion Animation, for animation that uses models molded in clay see Claymation. For films that remake prior animated works in live-action see Animation in Live-Action.
Here the Barbie films turn to Mark Twain’s classic (non-fantasy) tale of rags and riches and spins it as a fairytale This has the same blank, plastic style of the early Barbie films and is otherwise bland
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Alexandre Dumas’s classic adventure story is turned into an animated vehicle for Barbie with genders reversed and an absurdly upbeat Girls Can Do Anything vibe. Being a kid’s film, the girl Musketeers are no longer allowed to wield swords
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
One of the unquestionable classics from Disney’s Golden Age of animation between 1939 and 1942. This is an absolute delight for its unalloyed innocence and tragically affecting emotions
One of the better video-released Disney sequels churned out during the 90s/00s, this finds some of the innocence of the original even if it never scales the same heights
One of the better animated films produced by Amblin, this is based on the true story of a husky rescue in Alaska, albeit turned into a film where the dogs now talk
Next to Hayao Miyazaki, Michel Ocelot is the greatest animators of all time but one of the least widely recognised. Here he conducts a beautifully made Arabian fairytale
A real oddity among the Batman animated films – one where the basics of the Batman mythos are translated into Aztec culture at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadors
One of the less successful films of the Disney renaissance of the 90s/00s. Disney has never done well with animated SF. That aside, this a very nicely animated Steampunk adventure
Another shabby Disney video-released sequel, in this case to Atlantis the Lost Empire. The result looks like three episodes of an unsold tv series slapped together to sell as a film
This animated theatrical remake of the old Astro Boy cartoon series is nicely made, although the film often feels over-simplistic in its scripting and use of cliches
One of the sillier among the animated Asterix films maintained at a high-level of slapstick and with badly dubbed voices that do not suit the characters
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
The best among the films made from the Asterix comics. This delivers the characters and the visual humour the way they should be, plus leaves the sly satiric wit of the originals intact with side-splitting results
One of several animated films based on the popular comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix made by Dargaud Films
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
Luc Besson has made some phenomenal action films but I just can’t seem to get into his trilogy of children’s films. This was the third. A silly effort written down to a very juvenile level and padded with inane humour
This was the second of Luc Besson’s Minimoys films, partly animated children’s films set in a world of miniature creatures. Here the charms of the first film seem thinly stretched
Lightweight Luc Besson directed children’s fantasy with a young boy shrunken down to miniature size to engage in a series of CGI animated adventures among a race of fairy-like people. Several sequels followed
Studio Ghibli tackle Mary Norton’s classic books about a miniature family that live inside the walls of a house. Norton’s essential Englishness translates surprisingly well to anime and the results are quite magical
One of the better animated films made by Disney during the lean years between Walt’s death in 1966 and the studio’s return to form in the late 1980s. Not the best but it recaptures some of the classic charms of works like Lady and the Tramp
Film spinoff of the cult animated tv show. This feels like a film overtaken by the effort of trying to be surrealistic, wacky, scatological etc more than it is ever a film that creates gag that are funny
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
Richard Linklater makes a charming animated film about a kid selected for a secret Moon Landing. Most of all a film with a lovely nostalgia for growing up in the era of the Moon mission
The first animated film from DreamWorks, a rather charming effort that takes place in an ant nest with Woody Allen perfectly voice cast as a nebbish ant who decides to defy the crowd
Sweet and tender anime about a young girl who has a curse placed on her that causes her to lose her voice and how this actually allows everyone around her to voice things they don’t say.
An animated film about a child who is cruel to ants only to be magically reduced down to their size and then have to become their saviour against an exterminator
To accompany their two Matrix sequels, The Wackowskis hired seven anime directors to each make a short film set in The Matrix universe. The results are often quite remarkable
From the director of Tron, an animated film produced to commemorate the 1980 Olympics, a series of skits with various talking animals participating in different Olympic sports
Actor Andy Serkis directs an adaptation of George Orwell’s satiric talking animals fable. However, the decision to update the story comes unstuck in spectacularly awful ways
Animated adaptation of George Orwell’s fable that was intended as a satire of the Soviet Union. Being rendered as cutsie children’s animation necessarily bluntens the book’s bite
A film based on a mobile app surely counts as a world first. Mostly this is the equivalent of switching one’s brain off and spending an hour-and-a-half watching cartoons for the single digit age group
One of the earliest works of anime director Mamoru Oshii, later famous for Ghost in the Shell. This is a plotless, almost dialogueless work about a young girl journeying across a strange planet that is more surrealism than SF
Considerable return to form for animator Don Bluth even if the story of the Russian Royals he is telling is based on a hoax and manages to entirely excise any mention of the Communist Revolution
The second animated film from Don Bluth made under the aegis of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin. This tells the American immigrant story, albeit casts it with cartoon mice
Amblin make a sequel to An American Tail minus the involvement of Don Bluth this time. The story now becomes an amiable animated parody of a Western
A contender in the animation stakes that never rises above formula and cutsie slapstick. Against its many competitors, it offers up only B-budget animation
An Italian-made homage to/parody of Fantasia offering an anthology of animated tales. This is witty and more adult in tone, yet perfectly charming and delightful in its own way
Another of the DC animated films, based on a work that reinterpreted Superman. This is somewhat bitsy in condensing a 12-issue series to a 73-minute film but holds some moments of great writing
One of the better animated films from Don Bluth that sets up a likeable arc in the relationship between a redeemable mobster dog who returns from Heaven and a young girl
This is a video-released sequel to the Don Bluth animated film with dogs again returning from the afterlife. This is churned out with passable effort
Obscure animated children’s movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that commits the sin of modernising and Americanizing Alice
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
Anime version of the classic tale Chinese legend Journey to the West made Osamu Tezuka, this comes with a fast-paced action and is undeniably likable
The second of two video-released sequels to Disney’s Aladdin that brings back Robin Williams as the genie and goes madcap with the pop culture jokes
A popular hit among the 1990s renaissance of Disney animation, this is a glib work that allows the original story to be overrun with hip-jokes and Robin Williams being Robin Williams
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
Steven Spielberg makes a solid effort to bring Hergé’s much loved comic-book character to life in this motion-capture animated effort. This plays free and easy with the original stories but generally gets the spirit of the comics right
Cinematic revival of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle series having the two animated characters emerge into the real (live-action) world. A film that you feel should have been funnier and more energetic than is
Likeable entry from the 1940s period when Disney was putting out animated anthologies, this conducts adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
An animated film revival of The Addams Family. You feel that a PG-rated film sold to family audiences is a bit tame for the Addams’ dark humour, nevertheless this gets much of the kooky silliness.
The animated revival of the Addams Family was a mixed affair. All of the same creative personnel and voice talents return here for a sequel, which takes the Addams Family on a road trip
Animated film in which a girl befriends a Yeti. Essentially a rewrite of E.T. that never much rises out of banal formula. On the other hand, I do have an issue with a children’s film pushing blatant political propaganda
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
South Korean anime that is set in a future world where people are obsessed with shit. This comes with a demented energy and a filthy-mindedness that is determined to outrage
This was the first anime film made in CGI, an ambitious SF film involving a time travel plot and a struggle against a machine-dominated future