The Year in Animated Features

Jerry Beck muses about 2002’s slate of animated feature films.

High and low in 2002: Animation master Miyazaki's Spirited Away is the likely Oscar winner, while one wonders why Peter Pan II: Return to Neverland was even made. Spirited Away: © 2002 Nibariki. TGNDDTM. All rights reserved. Peter Pan II: Return to Neverland: © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

When all is said and done, 2002 will be considered an excellent year for theatrical animated feature films. By my unofficial count, a total of 19 fully animated films were released in Los Angeles county in the previous calendar year, and I saw ?em all.

Yes, I even saw Hey Arnold! The Movie ? but despite that, any year that can boast the charming Lilo & Stitch, the emergence of a new CGI powerhouse (Blue Sky) and a brand new Miyazaki masterpiece can't be all bad. Though my personal checklist of released titles (see http://www.cartoonresearch.com/movies2002.html) doesn't quite jibe with the Academy's official tally, the level of artistic quality I saw this year was quite impressive. And on the financial end, the total estimated U.S. box office gross for animated features last year was well over half a billion dollars ($569,695,919 to be exact) ? and that doesn't include revenues from home video sales and merchandising.

The year began with the national release of Disney Television's Return To Neverland, starring Peter Pan. This is one of the many "cheapquels" (thank animator Brian Mitchell for coining that term) churned out by the studio, ostensibly for home video, but one or two are given a bigger budget (and fuller animation) for a theatrical "window."

Return To Neverland is capably made, but it begs the question: Why? Why was this made? Do we really need a sequel to Peter Pan? Or Cinderella? Or 101 Dalmatians? Or Lady & The Tramp?

No, we don't. But they make money.

When we were kids, Disney re-released a classic film every seven years, for a new generation of kids to see with their parents in a theatre. With cable TV, DVD, VHS and the Disney Channel there is no longer any theatrical life left in the original classics (oh, but wouldn't I like to see The Three Caballeros or even Sleeping Beauty on the big screen again).

Disney knows that there are enough young parents who'd still want to experience the tradition of taking their child to a Disney classic cartoon ? just as they had. Thus, Jungle Book 2: Electric Bugaloo. These safe sequels do have a audience ? but as soon as Mom gets wise to the Disney marketing patterns, she'll opt to wait home for the DVD ? and take the kids out to see DreamWorks/PDI's latest piece of new wave high-tech eye candy instead.

Speaking of high tech eye-candy, Ice Age opened in the early spring and introduced us to a new creative force ? Chris Wedge and his Blue Sky Studio. What a delight this film turned out to be. The script, the music, the animation and art direction, superb. I particularly liked how they designed and animated the human characters ? stylized, yet real.







Comments


i loved the pictures of animations eu amei as fotos com animações i don't understend inglish i'm sory eu não entendo inglês me desculpe i love lio & stitch eu amo lio e stitch thank you! obrigada!
dani medeiros (not verified) | Mon, 07/04/2005 - 00:00 | Permalink
I was reading your commentary for 2002 while on a friends computer this morning before work... I think you made some very good points here and were right on about quality and rehash. Two things-I think people have to understand is 3D or anime is not what makes a film great. Animne has become a bore as all characters in all films look the same and there is bareley any animation and mostly camera moves-non synced mouths are annoying and also to people who can't animate themselves. I didn't see the 3D Ali Baba but maybe that should be shown to studio execs to let them know that maybe it's not a good idea to send projects overseas. People here that have the skill can do the job and would probably do it for less with pride and honour especially now that the economy is bad. I am glad the veggie tales did allright. It is time there is something made for kids that is a G film. The last PDI film wasn't the best thing to show to kids - donky relieving themself( joke didn't work)in the fire etc and some of the Pixar stuff is not G either (Although Pixar is a story champion) and anything PG can't legally be shown in an elementary school setting-what does that tell you? I think we should save spike and mike/Tom Green humor for the college party crowd and maybe remeber these projects sell themselves, the story writers "values" and their toys to kids and we should remember this. If the quick crude unsucessful joke were taken out noone would miss them at all and the studio would be better for it. There are a lot of stories out there but using already designed characters is cheap cheap cheap and are probably helping to float studios in these hard times. We should, look at so many other children's books if money is to be spent for untapped stories-Hans Christian Anderson and maybe the original Dolittle book series(if you want sequel material) that are bareley tapped. It is sad that the only Dr. Dolittle was slaughtered by Eddie Murphy last time. I don't think the talented person who wrote that series of books would be pleased if he viewed the butchery. If you looked at the original musical film it is a pure classic and like Disney greats a pleasure to pay to see again and again and always sells to advertisers when on tv-no problem. It is too bad many of these films are made over and slaughtered and thrown in the home video trashcan where and kids can never see the quality version because the first time with Mr. Murphy set a bad tone and that was about enough. Also what is going on with voice talent? Yuck. Lets get some people/voice back on film with mirroring the talent of Mel Blanc, Sterling Holloway, Paul Frieze, and well I forget his name-the fellow who was the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland-Disney version. Today's voice acting needs a shakedown and a little less canned TV actor quick fix-does nothing for the characters and is so stale. You should never say "Oh thats Rosie O'Donnel's voice" whenyou see the character on screen-then it kills the character. There are people out there that can do it-time to find round II. Music-Time to loose the pop music on the animation features. That Brian Adams was hard to choke down. Time to stop to sit down and listen to the bambi soundtrack. I really hope Disney pulls through because they are basically a good company with a lot of good people for the most part trying to make it work. They have been the launchpad for the development of modern day animation but maybe we need to get the people at Genentech busy at unfreezing and cloning Mr. Disney now that it seems possible because it looks like we might need his expertise once again on a few things. Lets hope Home on the Range does well so we can keep our industry and 2D churning which in turn will help keep our economy up as far as it can in these hard times.
Secret Character Animator (not verified) | Tue, 01/28/2003 - 01:00 | Permalink

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