Top 5 Animated Films

1.  Beauty and the Beast
2.  Spirited Away
3.  Fantasia
4.  The Incredibles
5.  Triplets of Belleville

Honorable Mentions:  Princess Mononoke, Hoodwinked, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story, Shrek, Aladdin, WALL.E, Rejected (assuming short form is acceptable)

I tried really hard to not have the whole thing be Disney and Pixar movies.  It's sort of sad how much of a stranglehold they have on the American animated movie scene.  For that matter, it's sad how much of a stranglehold kids movies have on the animated movie scene.  Here's hoping that one middle east documentary animated weird thing I don't know the name of turns out good.

Beauty and the Beast gets on the list because it's awesome.  I've probably seen this movie or Aladdin more times than any other film because of my childhood.  Not only is it representative of the kickass Disney animation of the 90s, but it's got damn good music.  Damn good.  The lyrics are clever, witty, and fit with the music all the way through.  The Gaston song alone is one of the greatest musical accomplishments of the 20th century.  Plus it's funny.  I've seen it a couple times since becoming a teen / "adult", and it's still good.  That's hard to do, guys.  Movies that entertain all ages and both genders, movies with a fantastic score, and good animated movies are all hard to come by.  This is all three.



I like to brag that I saw Spirited Away before it was cool.  My parents dragged me to an uptown showing of it when it first came out, and I was drawn in by it from the first scene.  I'd seen Princess Mononoke (also great) before, but I went into Spirited Away not knowing who Miyazaki was or that he'd been in charge of both films.  Watching this movie is like dreaming:  it ebbs and flows perfectly while you're in the middle of it, each scene transitioning to the next smoothly.  But when you look back on it later, very little about it makes logical sense.  Fun ride.  The atmosphere is great; it's tense but kiddie, romantic but casual, epic but personal.  Oddly creepy at points, too.  That black spirit with the mask is scary as shit when he's running around eating all the frog dudes and spirits.  Now that I think about it, I wonder how I got through all the creepy images I saw in these animated films as a kid.  That creepy doll head on the spider body toy in Toy Story, Jafar at the end of Aladdin, guys like that mask spirit eating everyone, that fucking talking broccoli from Sesame Street... Everyone had that one image that scared their pants off, you know?  I probably repressed mine.

Fantasia... Oh Fantasia.  I lied before.  I definitely remember watching this movie more than any other.  It's great, wandering animation to great, classic music.  The parodies still make their way into pop culture.  Every piece is a whole world imagined for us, and there seems to be a boundless world beyond the screen.  Sometimes you move from image to image like you're on a roller-coaster tour of the coolest place you'll ever go.  Other times the movie broods along with the music.  Still others feature crazy dancing mushrooms, hippopotami, brooms, or whatever else is handy.  Crazy cool scenes, and a great way to make sure your kids get classical music cemented into their head at an early age.  And so unique!  Who else has done anything like this?  I'm sure there's stuff out there, but this is old and unparalleled in its concept.  Ridiculous.

Pixar needs representation on the list, and sorry kids, but Finding Nemo just didn't do it for me in the same way as it seemed to for most of popular culture.  Not a bad movie by any means, but not the best of the Pixar pieces.  I could hand the slot to Toy Story, the first Pixar kids movie as we know them and a groundbreaking landmark.  I could give it to WALL.E, which is current and would definitely be up there if the whole movie was as absurdly good as the first 20 minutes.  I could just screw it and give out all 5 slots to Pixar movies, because frankly they might deserve it.  But no, I chose one.  And no, it's not any of those.  I chose The Incredibles.  It's such a hilarious parody of both the superhero genre and suburban family life.  That final sequence starting with our heroes escape from the evil lair is just one scene that looks like its an action sequence but is actually commentary on suburbia after another.  First they're driving down the highway fighting over which exit to take, then they're fighting over the remote control to stop the evil robot.  Then there's the superhero parody stuff.  The cape monologue, the myriad of homages in everyone's powers, the villain's discussion of "monologing", the way our heroes actually use their powers together to awesome effect (think that scene where Violet covers herself and her brother in a ball while he runs really fast so as to bring her with him)... It's both smarter than classic superhero stories while showing respect at the same time.  Plus, superheroes are awesome, and so is Samuel L Jackson.  And The Underminer!  Best.  Villain.  Ever.

And finally, we have The Triplets of Belleville, a film that only stands up against the crazy Disney / Pixar competition because it's so unique.  Each character is a parody of themselves, each scene almost like a song in the rhythms of its pacing and sound effects.  The whole thing has a beat to it.  All that and more, all without a single line of dialogue.  It's not a silent movie by any means; quite the contrary.  Sounds are a key part of the atmosphere.  It's just that no one every says anything, and this somehow helps everything move along.  Nothing needs to be said.  Man.  I think of that maitre d' and just crack up every time.  Every character is super-stylized!  Everyone is a self parody.  I know I said that already, but I like that line.  Everyone is a self parody.  Even the boats are self parodies.  They're giant things with billowing smoke stacks, each ship raised hundreds of feet from the ocean by a crazy tall body.  So unique.

Honorable mentions to Shrek for having an awesome script and Hoodwinked for making a movie just a few notches below Pixar for a tiny fraction of the cost.  What can I say, I'm a sucker for stories told from multiple points of view.  Also A Nightmare Before Christmas for just being awesome.  A unique animation style coupled with a stupid number of good ideas and a story that seems so obvious you wonder why it hasn't been done before.  Of course, it'd be on the list if it hadn't been done before; it's just Grinch crossed with "depressed guy with his heart in the right place accidentally screws everything up".

Wait a minute, why didn't I think of How the Grinch Stole Christmas before?  Maybe I need to reevaluate...