OVP: Best Animated Feature Film (2019)
The Nominees Were...
Dean DeBlois, Bradford Lewis, & Bonnie Arnold, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Jeremy Clapin & Marc du Pontavice, I Lost My Body
Sergio Pablos, Jinko Gotoh, & Marisa Roman, Klaus
Chris Butler, Arianne Sutner, & Travis Knight, Missing Link
Josh Cooley, Mark Nielsen, & Jonas Rivera, Toy Story 4
My Thoughts: We move into the back-half of our 2019 awards today with Animated Feature Film, a category that would've looked much more unusual a year ago than it does now. That's because in 2019, Netflix became a dominant force in this category. In 2020, Netflix of course appears poised to be a dominant force in EVERY Oscar category, but that's a conversation for a different series. For today, let's start our discussion of 2019's animated films with both of Netflix's movies, beginning with the most adult of these otherwise youth-oriented contenders.
I Lost My Body is not a film for children. It's an unusual tale that involves a young pizza delivery guy who is meant to be charming, but generally acts in a predatory way to a young woman, and about a random dismembered hand that seems unrelated (and wanders around the city like Thing from The Addams Family) that of course ties into the story. The movie isn't bad, it's worth noting, but it's also not great-the animation flows, but it's more avant-garde than meaningfully artistic, & the story meanders (the love story is totally unnecessary, and downright creepy given the main character's behavior). This is perhaps a good reminder that even under the new "full Academy" voting rules that movies like I Lost My Body can still get nominated, but it's not impressive more as it's unique.
Klaus was Netflix's other contender, and is a much more conventional story about a postman who inspires a muscular Santa Claus to get back to the business of Christmas. The tale itself is pretty contrite-it's more of a Dreamworks/Fox Animation tale than a glittery Disney/Pixar (which is the bread-and-butter of this field), and wouldn't have been nominated without some truly jaw-dropping animation trickery. The film uses lighting effects to make the film feel both hand-drawn but have the glow of a computer-animated film, and it works brilliantly (this is worth seeing if you're an animation fan). However, the story itself is a big nothing, and frequently runs on tangents that just don't work, so I can only give it so much credit here (the category is "best animated film," not "prettiest animation," after all).
Missing Link is an unusual film in that I kind of wonder if it would've had a similar struggle to Soul had the latter made it to the box office. This movie is ostensibly for children, not for adults (it's not a I Lost My Body situation), but there's nothing in the film, not even the Bigfoot Sasquatch, that would indicate that it's for younger audiences (which would explain why the film bombed, and why Soul might've struggled in a non-streaming environment). That said, it's a good movie, with playful animation (love the frequent combinations of orange-and-green), and the vocal work is solid. The movie stretches too much (it's too long), and the third act becomes convoluted, but overall it's another winner in the Laika canon.
We come now to the box office successes in the bunch, and both are sequels to franchises that have never missed with Oscar. We'll start with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the final(?) installment in the well-regarded trilogy. From what I can tell critical reviews of this in conjunction with the other films were mixed, but for me...this is the best of the series. I loved the gorgeous animation (so much light & color), and the story itself actually feels like it has stakes. The ending is a teensy bit of a cheat, but it does have gravitas & a strong environmental message that feels like it gets across to children and (hopefully) their parents. It also completes the story-it doesn't feel like a constant taffy-pull extension, which is nice considering...
...that the final nominee is Toy Story 4. Listen, I have not been shy on this blog about how unhappy I was that this movie got made. It felt like greed from people who didn't need the money, and an extension of a story that had a perfectly strong ending. But if I'm being honest, the movie itself is not bad-this is an unnecessary film, but it isn't Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The movie is funnier than your average Toy Story (god bless Keanu Reeves, stealing the whole picture), and the ending will have you sobbing uncontrollably. But it's also a cheat, and oftentimes trades on nostalgia (and sometimes even repeats previous film's plot points) rather than creating new memories. It's a movie that didn't need to happen, but it's not as bad as some would claim (including me in my more cynical moments).
Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes, never one to stick to convention, threw a truly big wrench into the year with its nominations, giving the trophy to Missing Link (a surprise), who beat How to Train Your Dragon III, Frozen II (the other film Disney really wanted to be nominated), and The Lion King, a movie Disney insisted wasn't animated, and didn't submit here despite, well, it being animated. Lion King's ploy appeared to be due to the Academy wanting to win it a VFX Oscar (since animation is oftentimes discriminated against in that category), and it almost worked (it was nominated, but it still lost), though one wonders given that the remake was drubbed in some critical circles whether it would've made it here to begin with. BAFTA didn't go with Lion King, instead giving their trophy to Klaus over Frozen II, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon (which I don't believe was eligible last year at the Oscars due to release dates, and is instead eligible at the 2020 ceremony), and Toy Story 4. All-in-all, the sixth place was clearly Frozen II, and that such a mammoth picture didn't make it is a testament to the quality control problem at Disney last year.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I would've kept it to three films, but the Academy got the right three films nominated, as neither Lion King nor Frozen II were worthy, and Farmageddon appears to have been a 2020 release so I can't include it.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I would've kept it to three films, but the Academy got the right three films nominated, as neither Lion King nor Frozen II were worthy, and Farmageddon appears to have been a 2020 release so I can't include it.
Oscar’s Choice: This would've been such a cool moment for Oscar to honor Laika, or perhaps to give a trophy to honor the How to Train Your Dragon series, or even give something to the revolutionary digital wizardry of Klaus. So of course in a year where they were weirdly Disney-averse in their nominations, they made up for it in their trophies and gave it to Toy Story 4.
My Choice: It's occasionally worth reminding everyone that this is a series where I just pick based on the nominees, not based on any extenuating circumstances (like how often I have rewarded a specific studio or if someone is "overdue"). One of the larger points of this Oscar Viewing Project is that I want to see if I make some of the same "mistakes" voting with my heart as the Academy does (when they are frequently criticized for not awarding figures like Alfred Hitchcock or Richard Burton when there's only so many trophies to go around). That being said, I think that How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is genuinely the best film in this lineup, and it would get my statue. Though I'm a bit ashamed to say it because I chastised the existence of the film so often, Toy Story 4 would be second, followed by Missing Link, I Lost My Body, and Klaus.
There you have it-the Animated Feature category. Are you over with me concluding with the dragons or would you side with Oscar concluding with the toys? How much credit should technically marvelous (but otherwise middling) films like Klaus be treated in a category like this? And if Disney had allowed it into the field, would Lion King have scored a citation? Share your thoughts below!
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