The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In almost all cases, Talking Animals refers to the numerous species of animals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, dinosaurs and the like that feature in Animation. The bevaviour of these animals, while incorporating the characteristics of the animals in question, has been anthropomorphised along the lines of human behaviour and the animals allowed to talk. The first of these appeared in the animated shorts of the 1930s and 40s with characters such as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, and others. These spread over to feature films and have become a staple of animation ever since.
The majority of films about Talking Animals films are animated, although there are some occasional live-action equivalents – the most well-known examples being The Muppets and Planet of the Apes franchise, or the assorted CGI talking animal films from Babe (1995) onwards.
There are two different types of animated talking animals. The first type are those that inhabit their own world. In these films, animals are anthropomorphised. That is to say, they gain human-like features, walk upright, wear clothes and speak, while in many cases they are seen holding down human jobs and living in homes. Or else the film is a work where everyday animals in regular farm or pet situations have a secret life where they speak. This is usually a fantasy world removed from the real behaviours of the featured animals – a world free of predators, while those animals that are predators by nature are never seen eating other animals, and where different species live in harmony.
The other type of film is when talking animals interact with humans. This can happen through some magical means, or where the animal is a companion such as the Donkey in the Shrek films. Some science-fiction works show species gaining the capacity of speech due to science (in particular genetic-engineering) or Evolution. In works of fantasy, talking animals occur with regularity in fairytales and Fantasy Otherworlds where they will live alongside humans – a perfect example being Narnia.
The discussion will also group a small subset of these films – the most popular of these being a number of Aardman Animation films – dealing with anthropomorphished animals that displays human-like behaviours but do not talk.
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
A rather slight film spinoff red-furred Elmo, the popular character from Sesame Street. A film designed for very young children.
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
This was a live-action version of the popular story given a reasonable budget and where Pinocchio is brought to life with a blend of CGI and animatronics
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
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
As part of the ongoing firesale, Disney offer up a live-action remake of their animated hit. where a mismatched Guy Ritchie delivers a mediocre rehash of what was an overrated classic in the first place
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
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
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
Studio adaptation that freely mixes elements from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and features an all-star cast line-up, this works far better than the purists would have it
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
From Irwin Allen, the creator of Lost in Space etc, a tv version of Alice in Wonderland, conceived as an all-star musical that comes out as ponderous and leaden in Allen’s hands
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
Tim Burton takes on Lewis Carroll but Carroll gets lost beneath Burton doing his usual quirky eccentric thing and a plot that seems to want to turn Alice’s adventures into a modern epic fantasy
Obscure animated children’s movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that commits the sin of modernising and Americanizing Alice
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
A live-action film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that conducts a passable run through of Lewis Carroll with the supporting characters populated by an all-star British cast
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
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
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
It may say how doomed the Western world is that people have paid to watch three films so far all centred around these annoyingly cutsie helium-voiced chipmunks. This is marginally less annoying that the preceding two
The squeaky helium-voiced Chipmunks are brought to life via CGI in this live-action film, featuring the chipmunks causing chaos, cracking smart-ass one-liners and lots of pee and poop jokes. The results are excrutiating
The end of Western civilisation is surely upon us that studios have devoted multi-million dollar resources to making four of these films and that audiences flock to them despite universally terribly reviews. Ok so maybe I hated this one marginally less than the preceding three
The first of the sequels to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Marginally less grating than the first film but that’s being relative – all the things that one hated the first time are back
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This is not an adaptation of the Arabian Nights but the title has been appropriated for a collection of quasi-fantastical tales and even documentaries about the Portuguese Austerity Crisis over six hours in length
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
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Runaway hit produced by George Miller of Mad Max fame that conducts what in any other terms would be an animated talking animals film in live-action with CGI and animatronics. The results are utterly charming.
For this sequel to the hit talking pig film, producer George Miller of Mad Max films fame steps into the director’s chair. However, the cuteness of the original promptly becomes buried under careening slapstick
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
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 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
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
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
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
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 animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
An incredibly silly animated film set around the antics of talking barnyard animals. Directed by comedy writer Steve Oedekerk, this is almost entirely centred around gags involving animals doing parodies of human things
Animator Don Bluth conducts a spinoff from his previous film Anastasia, focusing on the adventures of the talking bat sidekick
The fifth and final of the original Planet of the Apes films. After four well worthwhile entries up to this point, a tired air infects this production as it assembles the elements in a haphazard clutter
Excruciating sequel to The Beastmaster that transports Marc Singer’s Dar to contemporary L.A. The whole film is wrecked by an attitude that seems unable to take the proceedings seriously.
Don Coscarelli, director of the culty Phantasm, made this as part of the early 1980s sword and sorcery fad with Marc Singer as a muscular hero who has the ability to communicate with animals
Obvious but likeable attempt by Disney to replicate the success of Mary Poppins with Angela Lansbury as a good witch taking a group of children on a series of nonsense adventures
Appealingly nonsensical DreamWorks animated film written by Jerry Seinfeld who also voices a bee who befriends a human woman and then stands up against the exploitation of bees
The second and most underrated of the Planet of the Apes films. For a time it repeats the original but gains considerable imagination and a striking satiric bite with the introduction of the mutants
This comes with a head-scratching premise – a biopic of pop star Robbie Williams but where Robbie is portrayed as a CGI ape. Essentially, the rock star biopic by way of one of the Planet of the Apes reboot films
One of the most inane talking animals film ever – the tale of a spoiled Beverly Hills dogs who has to make her way home after being abandoned in Mexico. Filled with excruciating slapstick and animals spouting smartass one-liners
Louis Malle’s one and only venture into the French New Wave – a baffling work set around social collapse as a young girl wanders a farmhouse encountering unicorns, talking animals and various surreal happenings
A low expectation Disney animated film that proves an entirely charming winner centred around a dog tv star who believes it is a superhero. In essence, this is a talking animals variant on the Don Quixote story
This adaptation of a Harlan Ellison story is a B-budget delight that zings with witty dialogue and a young, unknown Don Johnson giving a very funny performance as the titular boy roaming the post-apocalyptic landscape with his dog
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
Gil Kenan dips into motion-capture animation to make this charming and likeable Christmas film that in effect tells a Santa Claus origin story, one that works without drowning in saccharine sentiment
The first of two Brave Little Toaster sequels, this plays more along the lines of a regular animated film formula but has its charms
One of the flop Disney animated films of the 2000s, set among the Inuit with the head-scratching premise of a warrior who is transformed into a bear
The second film from Pixar. One of their slighter and usually overlooked works, this is nevertheless an enjoyably eccentric reworking of The Seven Samurai set amidst a circus troupe of talking insects
The second of the Care Bears films, light, insubstantial and rather sweet as pre-adolescent creatures of indeterminate gender romp around in their cloud kingdom banishing bad feelings
The third of the Care Bears film conducts a crossover with Alice in Wonderland, although it is an adaptation that is liberal in its treatment of Lewis Carroll to say the least
From the era of Disney live-action comedies, this involves assorted slapstick tomfoolery as various parties try to aid or capture a telepathic alien cat that is stranded on Earth
Adaptation of the Dr Seuss book made following the success of Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The book is dragged down into noisy slapstick chaos, capped by a badly unrestrained Mike Myers as The Cat
Studio Ghibli anime in which a girl saves the life of a cat only to be drawn into a world of cats where a cat prince decides she will be his bride
The film version of the smash Andrew Lloyd Webber musical phenomenon was widely ridiculed. Seen, it is a colourful and absorbing entity and by no means as bad as its rap gives it
Here the cutely appealing idea of a talking animals film conducted in live-action a la Babe has been blended with a tongue-in-cheek spy adventure. The results are enjoyably silly
Cats & Dogs was amiable but this sequel struggles against the irritatingly cutsie elements that have come to dominate this mini-genre of live-action talking animals films
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
Charlotte’s Web gets the Babe treatment and is turned into a live-action film with CGI barnyard animals and name actors. Here the enormous charms of the original are replaced by cute and mawkish cues
Head-scratching animated oddity from Disney that adapts the talking animal fairytale only to throw in a series of bizarre plot elements that end up as an alien invasion story
The first full-length Claymation film from the UK’s Aardman Animations. With typical Aardman eccentricity, this is a parody of a WWII escape film conducted with talking chickens
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
A live-action adaptation of the Winnie the Pooh characters. This is a mix of Hook with Christopher grown up and having forgotten about the animals and the Paddington films with the animals conducting slapstick chaos in London
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
The second of the Narnia films. Director Andrew Adamson seems so intent on copying Peter Jackson that the film becomes all epic fantasy flourishes and battle scenes to the exclusion of all else – even much of C.S. Lewis’s book
The film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s book sought to appeal to audiences for the Lord of the Rings films but between Lewis’s heavy-handed Christian allegories and Andrew Adamson’s inexperience as a director fails to fly
Another lacklustre entry in the banal Lord of the Rings Lite franchise from C.S. Lewis’s books, a plodding run of the mill fantasy adventure for the most part. The mediocre reception killed off interest in the series
Another cheap Disney made-for-video-release sequel. This at least offers the novelty of an alternate retelling of Cinderella but everything transpires predictably
A Disney animated film whose classic stature has been overrated. The fairytale is too familiar to hold much interest, while the cutsie talking animals get to take over proceedings
The fourth of the original Planet of the Apes films, this cuts back on the humour and makes a stark parable for the Civil Rights movement with the apes rebelling against humanity in a revolution
Ralph Bakshi’s satiric animated depiction of African-American life in 1970s conceived as a parody of Song of the South was greeted with such controversy that it nearly derailed his career
The welcome return of stop-motion animator Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and at his wildly imaginative and darkly menacing best in an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman
Another film spun off from a Disneyland attraction, this hardly inspiring effort features a Country and Western band made up of talking bears and follows them as they set out on a reunion tour.
The Planet of the Apes series excels itself and stages a massively exciting inter-species war. The CGI/mocap apes come with an extraordinary range of nuance – quite whether it is performance or animation is up for debate but the results are outstanding
George C. Scott is a marine biologist who has taught dolphins to speak but faces the military want to take his research. A serious work that all hinges on whether one is willing to accept the idea of dolphins talking in squawky voices
Superheroes have overrun screens. It is starting to seem a little too much when we now get an animated film about animal superheroes who form their own Justice League
The first full computer animated film from Disney. It feels like someone decided to give the Jurassic Park dinosaurs their own film, mixed up with the plot of The Land Before Time
The movie parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, which consist of crude, witless gags run over replication of scenes from films of the last twelve months, are painfully unfunny. This doesn’t even spoof the disaster movie