Board 8 > Board 8 Ranks Animated Movies 3 - The Rankings

(+) Yeah! (+)

In this third incarnation of the series, our six brave souls watched through 40 high profile and/or influential animated films which was heavily focused on the last four years largely cause that's how long it has been since the last one. :p

Your rankers:

PrinceKaro
Inviso
Johnbobb
Ermine (Zigzagoon)
Evillordexdeath
red13n

The Films:

Fritz the Cat (1972)
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)
The Polar Express (2004)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
The Illusionist (2010)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Boy and the World (2013)
Anomalisa (2015)
The Peanuts Movie (2015)
My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
The Red Turtle (2016)
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Ferdinand (2017)
Loving Vincent (2017)
The Grinch (2018)
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)
Incredibles 2 (2018)
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Abominable (2019)
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)
Frozen II (2019)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)
I Lost My Body (2019)
Klaus (2019)
Missing Link (2019)
Spies in Disguise (2019)
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Croods: A New Age (2020)
Onward (2020)
Over The Moon (2020)
Soul (2020)
Trolls World Tour (2020)
Wolfwalkers (2020)
Luca (2021)
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
The Mitchells vs The Machines (2021)

The total scores of the movies:

34
45
46
46
52
57
72
74
86
88
98
102
110
112
113
119
120
125
127
131
131
134
141
142
143
146
153
154
154
155
155
156
160
160
167
171
173
179
181
208

That's a pretty hefty last place score guys, any ideas on what it could be? :3

First ranking should come later this afternoon!

Tag

Wow I COMPLETELY forgot about this, damn.

Tag

Snake5555555555 posted...

Wow I COMPLETELY forgot about this, damn.

Tag

I pinged you in discord about it recently and you didn't reply so I thought that it meant you wernt able to participate :(

PrinceKaro posted...

That's a pretty hefty last place score guys, any ideas on what it could be? :3

I do but I bully Ermine enough on discord as is

johnbobb is a villain

PrinceKaro posted...

I pinged you in discord about it recently and you didn't reply so I thought that it meant you wernt able to participate :(

Ah, don't worry about it. I'm not on Discord as much anymore so I didn't see it. Still excited to see the rankings play out!

40. Despicable Me 3

Karo: 31
Red: 31
Inviso: 32
Evillord: 35
Johnbobb: 39
Ermine: 40

Total: 208

Karo: After being fired from being a secret agent for arbitrary reasons, Gru finds out he has a long lost twin brother living in the fictional country of Freedonia, where the people are a sort of a gypsy-mediterranean kind of culture whose portrayal is honestly pretty racist. I guess I shouldnt really be surprised, given the thinly veiled insensitivity present throughout the franchise in the form of the pseudo-foreign Minions.
Gru's brother is named Dru, because someone thought it would be cute for the siblings to have similar sounding names. But, our protagonists full name is Felonious Gru, as in Gru is his last name. So now we literally have a character named Dru Gru. Good job, guys.
Anyway this brother is an aspiring yet incompetent villain who wants Gru's help in being bad, and Gru spends most of the movie with this idiot acting like a severely balding manchild and generally just ignoring the family he apparently loved so much in the other movies.
So the girls' antics are cute. The Minions' antics are annoying. There's a silly over the top antagonist. Havent we done this all before?
I don't care about Gru's love life, I don't care about his weird relatives, I cane about his relationship with the wonderful little girls that melted his cold heart and set him on the path to become a less-than-despicable person. Y'know, the thing that made the first film a joy to watch and set it firmly in stone as the best movie Illumination ever made. Really, if there ever was a movie that didn't need spinoffs it was Despicable Me. So you can be absolutely sure we are going to get fucking five of them. Thanks, Hollywood.

Red: Do you want lots of Gru, Gru 2, and minions? No? Well too bad because now you are getting two movies in one as we're out of ideas of what to do with the minions and they are relegated entirely to a side story from the main plot. A main plot which I will note leaves this franchise nowhere except having Gru with an out of nowhere sibling and everything else as completely status quo where you assumed the second movie left everything. For a franchise with a lot of wiggle room for world creativity this is a sequel that really feels creatively bankrupt.

Inviso: This is not the first movie on this list (nor do I think it will be the last), where I dont think its a good movie, but by virtue of it being SLIGHTLY interesting, and at least able to maintain its pacing throughout the runtime, I have to rank it perhaps overly high. Its still not great though. I dont want to make a direct connection to Ice Age 3, because Im writing this write-up after watching Ice Age 3, whereas I did THAT write-up prior to watching Despicable Me 3, but its very similar in its story structure. The plot very much feels in the vein of we have all these characters, and therefore we need to give them each individual storylines for no reason.

Grus plot is kind of flat and cookie cutter, namely randomly getting a twin brother (which seriously hearkens back to the trilogy rules elucidated in Scream 3), who helps him steal a diamond in an unknowing effort to get Grus job back. See, Gru and wife Lucy get fired for failing to capture a supervillain (even though they do prevent his diamond heist from succeeding in the first place). Note, said character who fires them does not exist in the rest of the film, and feels completely pointless as an addition.

Lucy, meanwhile, has hamfisted efforts to be a good mom to the girls, culminating in her rescuing them from the supervillain of the movie. Grus twin brother is weirdly a loser, despite having every reason to be successful outside of the supervillain business. And then the minions decide to abandon Gru and spend the movie regretting that decision before swooping in at the last minute. Oh, and the girls have a subplot about finding a real unicorn, and two scenes of Margot inadvertently getting engaged to a random kid, which plays more into Lucys plot than anything else.

Its all kind of dumb, but this movie is carried on its back by the charisma of Trey Parker as a goofy-ass supervillain. Hes certainly more memorable than the villains of the first movie, by virtue of being a child star who lost his fame when he went through puberty, and wants revenge on Hollywood for canceling him. As such, his entire set of mannerisms is that of a guy whos stuck in the 80s, and its wonderful. Every scene with him emulating Michael Jackson, or trying to relive his glory years, is a joy to watch, and makes up for how scattershot the rest of the film is by comparison.

Evillord: This is just a collection of hyperactive moments designed to appeal to really little kids strung together with a paper-thin plot, so it's hard to watch from a grown-up perspective. Trey Parker probably had fun playing a supervillain out to destroy Hollywood, but I had to cope with the movie by closing my eyes during his scenes and pretending I was watching South Park.

Johnbobb: I don't think any series has gone as steadily and significantly downhill as Despicable Me. The first was good! And then with every sequel and spinoff, they drop all the stuff that worked about the previous films and double down on the worst aspects. This isn't cute, it isn't funny; it's just a mind-numbing waste of time.

Ermine: Fuck this movie.

Somehow the Minions were less awful in their own movie than this one here.

I don't want to write any more, it already wasted an hour and a half of my time. It sucks.

Outlier Rankings:

Karo: 9
Red: 9
Inviso: 8
Evillord: 5
Johnbobb: 1
Ermine: 0

Ermine somehow manages to start out at zero, becoming the lowest outlier for probably the first time in his life.

Will this hold up? Time will only tell.

Hell ya

Jesus Christ, like...of all possible movies for the bottom slot...how is THIS the worst thing you watched, Ermine >_>

I expected one of the Illumination movies to be last place, but I would've guessed either of the other two before DM3.

Minions annihilated.

Holy shit Ermine and I agreed on something what

Like the whole writeup and everything

Zigzagoon posted...

Minions annihilated.

as they should be

39. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Johnbobb: 24
Ermine: 26
Red: 28
Evillord: 30
Inviso: 33
Karo: 40

Total: 181

Johnbobb: man this is one of the most early 2000s animated movies out there. The soundtrack is about as good as you could hope for it to be, the animation is just horrifying enough while not being unpleasant to watch, the comedy is low-brow and goofy but still funny. Making the various theme park rides into spaceships is still a stroke of creative genius (even moreso by making the rides continue to act as they would on earth, even if that makes no logical sense). The movie, much like the show that later follows it, throws reason out the window in favor of goofball antics, and it's just a good, dumb time.

Ermine: The robot dog is very cute.

I laughed once. When the slime guy was trying to take apart robot dog and Jimmy is on speaker saying that Goddard was going to explode and he's like oops my bad. Good delivery.

Rest is very unremarkable.

How do kids breathe in space?

???

Also, for being such a genius, why did it take Jimmy over 24 hours to realize his parents were abducted and didn't just go to Florida?

Red: Generic children characters with generic genius but also incredibly stupid main character go on an adventure to save their parents from mind controlling aliens. Nothing is particularly awful here, but also none of the characters are stand outs at all. The aliens eventually are super incompetent and Jimmy about as generic an animated movie main as you could get. His apparent super intelligence becomes harder to buy when he is also insufferably dumb at the same time.

Evillord: I think I had this on VHS as a kid. A lot of the humor is honestly really dumb and juvenile, which is a funny contrast with its big-brained main character but doesn't make it a lot of fun to watch as an adult. Between the stiff 3D animation and the shitty soundtrack, it ends up feeling low-energy, even when the kids are partying or fighting. Still, characters like Hugh and Carl Wheezer have their charm, and I liked the part where the kids were hung over from going on the 10-year-old version of a bender.

Inviso: This was bad. There are some animated films that cater to kids, but are still mature enough to make them palatable to the adults taking their kids to the movies. This is not one of those. Every aspect of this film is childish and filled with plot holes that no kid is going to care about. But as an adult, its extremely frustrating, and its made worse by a cast of elementary school children who piss me off with their over-the-top eccentricities. Jimmy is annoying, but not as much as Carl or Sheen, and Cindy is literally there to be the female rival. Its just really obnoxious, and the only reason it ranks as high as it does is because the plot kept moving forward at a decent pace, and at least the concept is interesting, even if the execution was godawful.

Karo: Jimmy is this young genius who is for some reason is still in elementary school when he is knowledgeable enough to be able to build like a fucking robot dog and shit. His parents don't seen particularly concerned how their son launches himself into the stratosphere or plays around with hazardous technology on a regular basis.
So the story is that Jimmy tries to contact extraterrestrial life by sending a toaster into orbit, and ends up getting every adult in town abducted by aliens. So all the kids go into space without spacesuits and defeat an entire alien civilization, and the film ends on the touching note of everyone belching for like two minutes straight.
The film wants you so so much to see Jimmy as an endearing character, the problem is that he is just not endearing in any conceivable way. He is an obnoxious tool who seems to get off on showing up all the other kids in school with his superior intelligence, and it is hard to feel sympathy for him even when he gets bullied.
As for the supporting brats, you've got the fat, stupid, asthmatic kid whose entire character is being one of those three things, the horrible abusive girl who spews verbal bile whenever she opens her mouth, the skinny stupid kid who is somehow even stupider then the fat one, and the juvenile delinquent who feels a bit too old for his class and seems to exist solely to impart to the children watching the film just how cool it is to be a juvenile delinquent. Jesus fucking Christ, you wouldnt think there would be group of characters so terrible that they would make the cast of Chicken Little seem lovable, but we just may have done it here.
It is not helping that youve got an idiotic plot accompanied by irritating music and some of the worst CGI animation to ever grace a theater screen. Everyone is misshapen blobs of human flesh that are so grotesque that even the slimy alien vomit pile people are far more pleasant to look at.
I do give Nickelodeon a lot of guff, but their strength lies in unique art styling. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it always seems different. But then they go and make this, which is the most generic, white bread, I want to suck Pixar's dick early 2000's CGI trash ever.
This is nothing more than a cheap cashgrab targeted at CG-mania, and you don't need to be a genius to figure that out, boy or otherwise.

Outlier Rankings:

Red: 20
Johnbobb: 16
Inviso: 14
Evillord: 14
Ermine: 13
Karo: 10

woah, that's a good chunk lower than I expected

not that I expected it to be a top 10er or anything

These are two movies that I could have dropped lower and probably ended up at the high point of potential rankings from me. So not surprising.

Every time my number 40 (which I thought for absolute sure would be dead last with everyone, and apparently has at least one top half placement) is spared at the expense of a bad, but otherwise innocuous movie, I die a little inside. I could understand 38/39 for these two, but Jesus CHRIST how is my number 40 not down in the 230-240 range for this list?

I thought Jimmy might be coming up next and I have another idea what might be coming up next as well lol

Re-watching Jimmy Neutron for this list was kind of disillusioning since I remember liking it as a kid. Still kind of surprised to see it this low.

It is very much a "Targeted very specifically to kids" movie.

I also remember not hating the movie as a kid and am surprised to see it this low.

Inviso posted...

Every time my number 40 (which I thought for absolute sure would be dead last with everyone, and apparently has at least one top half placement) is spared at the expense of a bad, but otherwise innocuous movie, I die a little inside. I could understand 38/39 for these two, but Jesus CHRIST how is my number 40 not down in the 230-240 range for this list?

This made me really curious at first because imo all the worst movies on the list are inoffensive but creatively bankrupt, so for a second I couldn't even guess which one you might mean. Then I realized there's only one movie here capable of evoking this kind of hatred. If I'm right your #40 might have secured a top 10 spot on at least one list lol

I could definitely see people enjoying the expected 40.

Evillordexdeath posted...

This made me really curious at first because imo all the worst movies on the list are inoffensive but creatively bankrupt, so for a second I couldn't even guess which one you might mean. Then I realized there's only one movie here capable of evoking this kind of hatred. If I'm right your #40 might have secured a top 10 spot on at least one list lol

Surely trolls world tour isnt in your top 10!!!

Well I don't want to give away too much, but I will say Trolls was one of the most memorable movies of the project for me.

Tag!

You're it!

38. The Polar Express

Johnbobb: 19
Inviso: 27
Karo: 28
Ermine: 31
Evillord: 34
Red: 40

Total: 179

Johnbobb: This has always been my go-to Christmas classic, although I'm admittedly not a Christmas movie classic kind of a guy. But Polar Express has always been the one least likely to make me groan in true humbug fashion, because everything about this janky-ass uncanny valley Tom Hanks pajama dance-off is just fun the whole way through

Inviso: This didnt have much in the way of plot, largely because it was telling a whimsical tale of childhood wonderment and keeping the Christmas spirit. That being said, its a fine movie. Its nice and saccharine, and thats what you want for a Christmas movie, I guess. I wouldve preferred some plot, but at least it had some maturity to it, rather than going full bore on the childishness some writers think of when writing animated films. I will say that the plot goes off the rails (pun intended) when the train stops, and the characters are just moving around Santas village. Yeah, theres not a LOT of substance to this film, but the style is decent enough. I hate the know-it-all kid, but at least Tom Hanks is largely awesome in his various roles.

Karo: A cynical young boy gets taken aboard a magical train ride up north to meet Santa, with a short detour through the uncanny valley.
Once on board, he meets several other children, one of whom is like this most offensive stereotype of a 'nerd' that you could possibly imagine and oh god it hurts please throw him under the train already, the pain, the pain.
After a surprisingly eventful choo-choo trip, we end up at the north pole and learn about the true meaning of Christmas, which is apparently getting lots of presents and blindly believing in the existence of a fat old guy.
In most aspects it is one of the most impressive looking CGI movies of its era, but there is one area that mars this pretty christmas postcard, and mars it so badly that it bleeds out magic like a deflating balloon. I am of course, talking about the children.
Nothing quite ruins all the wonder and escapism like seeing all these weird hyper-realistic motion capture kids and watching their soulless faces stare blankly off into the void between dimensional space. Because these eldrich mannequin children were not nearly creepy enough already, someone thought it would be a good idea to have most of them motion captured by adult actors.
If the people were in live action this movie would be an instant holiday classic, instead of relying on sketchy fad technology that looks more dated with every passing year.
The film is a magical ride that I still hold a lot of fondness for despite it seeming worse and worse every time I see it. It is best watched with the mindset of a little kid, or even better, with an actual little kid. Just be sure to keep a large bottle of holy water nearby to flick at the TV to make certain the children of satan stay safely in the screen.

Ermine: A fun idea, plagued by the awful characters and overall design and animation. At times it looks quite nice, but god the characters just look off.

There are moments in this film where I think it actually could have been quite good, but before we even get a chance, we have guys jumping around pouring hot chocolate for everyone, or ugly ass engineers being completely incompetent. I want less of the "fun" and more of the "spirit". The balance was like 95-5 and the result is just a waste of my time.

Most of the music in this film is just christmas songs or original tracks that really don't do it for me, but 'Seeing is Believing' is actually really really good. Too bad it's never quite used properly. Like, imagine this film going harder on the darker undertones and tossing out most of the silly shenanigans, and then throw this theme on top of these quintessential moments. That's what I want.

Oh well.

Evillord: This movie looks good coming right off of Jimmy Neutron, but it feels like a case where talking about 3D Animation means noting technological progress rather than artistic inspiration. Its real problem is that it doesn't know when to chill out and develop its characters, so most of the run-time is a sequence of disconnected perilous escapades that don't mean anything and end up being boring. The ending was kind of cute though.

Red: This is a movie I'd probably "seen" a bunch prior to this list. It is always on TV. Somewhere, someone thinks very highly of this movie. It is aired all the time around Christmas like it is some Christmas special classic. But despite all those times I'd watched it, I'd never once seen it from start to finish. Or start to middle, or middle to finish, or really anywhere to finish. I'm pretty sure I'd tuned it out every time by the ending. I hate this movie. This movie has no business being an animated movie, they don't want to be an animated movie. Everything is made to try to look real at a time when animation wasn't really good enough to pull that off and even when they do it is typically pointless to begin with. But the most grating thing, every time I've ever watched this movie, why the hell does the very realistic human kid have a mandark voice. It drives me crazy. Every time he speaks I hope something will come rip his throat out and save us from the terrible voice. Oh and every character is inexplicably Tom Hanks. It doesn't even make narrative sense. They are just all Tom Hanks because did you know Tom Hanks is in this movie so you should all like this movie because it has Tom Hanks. This is also listed as a musical. All the musical numbers are awful. Some of them are completely out of place.

Outlier Rankings:

Johnbobb: 35
Inviso: 25
Red: 22
Karo: 20
Ermine: 20
Evillord: 18

Jesus Christ guys, wtf.

It looks like everyone might have their own least-favorite movie! Again a little surprised, though not really disappointed, to see Polar Express drop so soon.

Huh, didn't think this one would drop this low.

I hate that movie. If it didn't blind people with Christmas it'd get more hate.

what the fuck, I didn't think that one was getting anywhere near this low.

37. Ferdinand

Inviso: 19
Ermine: 22
Red: 23
Johnbobb: 33
Karo: 36
Evillord: 40

Total: 173

Inviso: This was actually the second time Id watched this, and somehow, I didnt hate it. It definitely has some dumb moments that feel like they were included solely to fill the runtime of the film (looking at the dance-off with the horses), but at the same time, its largely a sweet movie. John Cena does a good job of selling the character of a pacifist bull who just wants to sniff flowers and relax, and its interesting enough to me to have a large cast of characters who have their distinct personalities, and all slowly come around to Ferdinands way of thinking due to his shows of kindness. Even in the dumbest movies, if you give me a group of characters that I can distinctly separate, I will enjoy the film more, because that appeals to the categorical part of my brain. Now, maybe Im grading on a curve, but this was still nice enough to warrant this ranking.

Ermine: Definitely a mixed bag with this one here. I really wish that the movie focused more on the first quarter and dived into the relationships there. Like with the dog, Paco... who was one of the only interesting characteres. I think there could have been a fun and cool story there... but instead, our attention is turned to the most obnoxious goat character I've EVER seen. Thank god the rest of the characters treat her poorly because god she deserves it. Ferdinand himself is alright... and the story is how you would expect it to go, but man the supporting cast after the first like 20 minutes is just so lackluster. There are a couple of ridiculous scenes that actually do more for the movie than hurt it but eh, there's really not much here to care about.

Give me more Paco.

Red: Bull that really likes flowers has to come to terms with other bulls that no matter what they do in life they are destined to die. Characters are pretty generic and the movie is middling. Ferdinand goes on an adventure, had too many characters left at home to never return, and then is of course the bull chosen to fight because duh. This is pretty standard animated movie fair but on this list that is good enough to be middling by virtue of not being a crappy sequel.

Johnbobb: Why are the horses German? Why are the bulls American (except the one that is Scottish)? I know the real answer is that even in a movie taking place in Spain, the voice cast still needs to be mostly white for some reason, but it's just one of the many little things that keep this from being a better movie. Unfunny jokes (including a dance battle that goes on way too long and features dabbing stallions) fill a bland, by-the-numbers story that looks and feels like it belongs in the early 2000s despite coming out less than 5 years ago. It's inoffensive. It's colorful and has an obnoxious supporting character that squanders Kate McKinnon's comedic talents in an attempt to basically recreate the popularity of Dory in Finding Nemo, but without proper writing.

Karo: The story of Ferdinand comes from an old children's book (and subsequent disney short) about an effeminate bull who dislikes roughhousing and who would much rather just smell flowers. It was a sort of an 'it's ok to be gay' fable from a time where one had to be very cagey about saying those kinds of things.
So lets fast forward to 2017, where we get this new movie adaptation of the story. This is a time where gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, and LGBTQ representation in entertainment is fairly widespread, even now reaching into places such as children's cartoons.
So hey, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, lets start with the casting decisions. The lead role of Ferdinand is given to... wait for it... WWE superstar John Cena. Because when you think of a sensitive girly boy kind of character, the first name that comes to mind is clearly John fucking Cena. He makes Ferdinand come across more as a friendly doofus, and like pretty much every other character in the film he gets real irritating real fast.
They go in hard on pacifism being Ferdinand's chief motivation, along with some super safe 'just be yourself' morals to weave a toothless narrative that is sure not to offend anyone, not even if you are an inbred bible-humping troglodyte from Alabama.
I feel there was a great opportunity here to tell this story though a modern lens, but instead we just get this pitiful lump of bullshit. A mediocre dreamworks-styled movie full of uncharming characters and bull dance-offs that can find no real justification of its existence.

Evillord: I hated that fucking goat so much

Outlier Rankings:

Inviso: 43
Johnbobb: 39
Red: 36
Ermine: 35
Karo: 21
Evillord: 21

The goat was awful and unfunny and really dragged down an already not very impressive movie

Feels like every ranking is going to be a surprise on this one...

I've seen four of these, let's go.

I had seen...16(?) before starting the watches for this.

Didnt expect that one either to drop yet!!

Once again, yikes you guys.

At least everyones 40s are dropping :)

I'm glad we all agree that the goat is the worst.

When I finished all the movies and started putting together my list, I was only sure what I wanted my top 3 to be and that I'd rank Ferdinand dead last. I totally get why someone would rank it above a lot of the others on this list, and as much as I couldn't stand the goat I did think the moment at the very end where the little girl accepts her is really sweet, but considering some of the themes its story touched on I thought it was really disappointing that it just continued to be a mindless and spineless kids' movie despite them.

Okay, Jimmy Neutron wasn't good, but if you had it at the bottom, I'm pretty sure that's proof you didn't watch all of these movies.

Finally, proof that Ermine doesn't have an affinity toward certain characters just because of their species! I remember telling Charon he wouldn't like that goat... that said I didn't think he'd truly like a single character from that movie. I can't even recall who Paco is.

I feel like every time we do one of these lists, one thing holds true: I have a much higher tolerance for dumb, inane shit than most other people who participate in these rankings. >_> There's still absolutely zero excuse for my number 40 not being dead last among everyone, and so help me if this is on your heads Red and Karo.