OVP: Best Animated Feature Film (2020)
The Nominees Were...
Dan Scanlon & Kori Rae, Onward
Glen Keane, Gennie Rim, & Penlin Chou, Over the Moon
Richard Phelan, Will Becher, & Paul Kewley, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Pete Docter & Dana Murray, Soul
Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, Paul Young, & Stephan Roelants, Wolfwalkers
My Thoughts: Recently it's become something of a movement to talk about whether or not Disney has too much power in this category. In the past decade, Disney has won a staggering 90% of the time, only losing once in 2018, and in 2020, despite Onward being a bomb (a failing that, admittedly, was driven in large part due to the pandemic), it scored both of its eligible nominations, which led to in 2021 Disney getting 60% of the competition. There was a time in the 1950's when basically the entire Animated Short category was Disney-focused...this category seems to have become stagnant in that regard, and I'm curious what it'll take to break that.
But we look at the OVP in a vacuum, only focused on the year at-hand, and surely Soul was one of the best animated features of 2020 no matter your opinion on Disney. It's hard to imagine what this would've been like outside of the pandemic, given it is not remotely child-friendly. Beautifully animated & scored, it's very much a Pixar movie for grownups, giving us a profound meditation on the meaning of life, and even some meta humor about the after-life (that, I'm going to be real, doesn't quite work as well as the earth-bound storyline). The ending is gorgeous, one of the best from Pixar, and their best film since Coco.
Disney's other entry wasn't nearly as good. Onward suffers from being Pixar lite largely because it doesn't entirely know what to do with the modern-meets-fantastical world. You saw this in The Good Dinosaur too...trying to meld reality into something magical ends up feeling too cutesy, and this flick doesn't have enough depth to really pull off much of the picture. That said, it's still a "thumbs up" movie, thanks to both some amazing effects (both of these films really outdo themselves in terms of visuals, here largely with the way they create magical spell animation that feels like a step in a new direction for Pixar), and an ending that is WAY better than anything in front of it in the movie.
Wolfwalkers, the latest from Tomm Moore, stands apart as the first film by Moore that I genuinely loved. While all of Moore's films are gorgeous, this one I got really into the centuries old story, a fairy tale that doesn't feel like it's skimping on story. And the animation is glorious-the rich brown & green , with the plants and wolves switching seamlessly from realistic to something cribbed out of an illuminated manuscript...totally enchanting (I just wish I had been able to see it on a big screen).
Over the Moon was Netflix's contender in this race. The streamer has gained something of a foothold in animation in the last three years, frequently getting unique (though not always successful) animated features as it finds its personality. Over the Moon is a decent movie, one that is helped by a terrific song score (it's a crime that it wasn't nominated for Best Song), but the animation feels too sporadic for my tastes. I didn't like the hyper neon moon sequences, and it feels too alien to the animation style earlier in the film. Combined with a story that is so cliche it almost becomes hard to follow you keep expecting some change in the approach, and you've got another "shoot for the middle" entry from the streamer.
The final nomination is a sequel to a previous nominee (which is more common than you'd expect for this category). Farmageddon is another entry in the classic Aardman catalog, and generally I subscribe to their entries (even if I'm not quite as enamored as Oscar is). Farmageddon is adorable, using the largely wordless script to highlight its unique visual flare and making it cute without ever needing to be particularly weighty. While Shaun is always wonderful in these films, it's Lu-La, the innocent alien, who steals most of this movie and will make you proclaim "aww" by the film's sugary sweet ending.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with the same lineup as Oscar save for Farmageddon (they picked The Croods: A New Age), giving the statue to Soul. BAFTA went for only three nominees, picking Soul as their victor against Wolfwalkers and Onward. In terms of sixth place, I'll be honest-I don't think any film came close to the lineup. At the time, people were thinking that Calamity or Ride Your Wave would get out-of-the-blue nominations, but I think bereft of box office numbers, they forgot that Wolfwalkers and Over the Moon would've been the long shots in a normal year, or the "indie" titles that they went with here. If there was a sixth place, I think Croods: A New Age fits the bill; its predecessor was a nominee which helps a lot, and it was also the rare box office success during the pandemic.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There's no big film missing here, though if any year was proof that they should just go three-wide, it was 2020.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There's no big film missing here, though if any year was proof that they should just go three-wide, it was 2020.
Oscar’s Choice: The ravishing reviews and the late-in-the-season Disney+ release of Soul was enough to put it over the top.
My Choice: I am personally at the point where, if I had an actual ballot, I'd make a point of not voting for Disney unless absolutely necessary here, just because I think their monopoly on this category is unhealthy. That being said, we don't do the OVP that way-we pick solely based on the credentials of an individual race, and so the official winner here is Soul even if I probably would've voted for Wolfwalkers in real life just to spread the wealth. In bronze is Farmageddon, followed by Over the Moon and Onward.
And that's our Animated Feature film race. Is everyone signed up for Soul, or do we have another film to cheerlead for? What's it going to take to finally dethrone Disney in this category? And genuinely-who was the sixth place option here? Share your thoughts below!
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