Those of you that have read some of our other posts may have picked up that we love us some animated films. Which is why it makes our blood boil when a few bad apples ruin the rightfully high reputation that animation has built up. We’ve decided this week to bravely and foolishly watch some of the worst animated movies ever made in an effort to save you good people from the horror yourself. So without further ado, here are what we think are the worst animated films that ever had the misfortune of being made.
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
This movie manages to gather a fairly talented cast before abruptly squandering them with an insipid, forgettable romp through the setting of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. The only thing that is less exciting than this film is the bland musical numbers strewn carelessly throughout. It’s almost poetic how such a magical, colourful basis for a movie can end up so indifferent and unimaginative. The animation is sub-par which the kids might not notice too much but still makes us twitchy, the premise is rushed and the ending is improbable - just another unnecessary adaptation in the growing roster of Wizard of Oz-themed movies.
Mars Needs Moms
Based on the book by Berkeley Breathed of the same name, this movie unfortunately takes a simple premise, tries to make it to complicated and then cuts corners with the plot so hard that nothing feels consequential anymore. The visuals are of that Polar Express style motion capture variety which are actually pretty stunning at times yet unfortunately rather uncanny and creepy more frequently than expected…
The overbearing message (other than the power of family and love or whatever) is that men are pretty much slobs so women need to be relentless nags. Great message for the kids there, good job.
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
With none of the originals’ refreshingly low-budget charm and occasional wit, this sequel is just obnoxious. There is an attempt to appeal to the adults in the audience which can be a fantastic move if you’re Toy Story, less so when you’re cramming inappropriate pop culture references into a movie about fairy tales. I’m just going to say it, there are too many fart gags. Even a for a child, this must get wearing pretty quickly, let alone for the mums and dads who have paid real money to watch this awful movie.
They basically tried to do the Shrek thing but with a catalogue of fairy tales lining up to be spoofed already barren at best, this falls disastrously flat.
Space Chimps 2 3D: Zartog Strikes Back
Somebody obviously didn’t tell director and producer John H. Williams that space was the final frontier, this sequel did not need to get made. Ironically given the hard fishing which goes on to ‘wow’ the audience with 3D visuals at the detriment to the film itself, the characters are flatter than The Netherlands. There has been an attempt at wringing out what little original personality the characters had in the first movie but with dated animation, poor writing and only the faintest most transparent attempt at a plot, this is a rather bumpy crash landing for the almost promising intellectual property.
Children should be honored with a plot, good writing and engaging characters, what they end up with here is not even worth a child’s time.
Doogal
I’d like to start by warning those of you who are of an age who still remember with fondness The Magic Roundabout tv series, do yourself a favour and take extra care not to infect your childhood nostalgia with this awful, awful film. Let me be clear, Doogal is the American localisation of the French-British film The Magic Roundabout and what makes Doogal especially tedious is that the script was edited to be jam packed full of pop culture references and misjudged gags which fall flat at best.
The plot to find three diamonds and stop the evil Zeebad is poorly paced, the key frame animation is rudimentary and none of the visuals are particularly engaging or convincing. The original version is not quite so monumental a mistake but still, we wouldn’t inflict it upon our worst enemy.
The Legend of the Titanic
Legend, so it didn’t really happen? Phew! Well, I’d hate for anybody to make a lighthearted animated movie about such a tragic disaster and loss of life… Oh, oh no. At least there’s cute little anthropomorphic mice that help me forget about drowning in an icy sea.
A vapid and hackneyed love story is draped carelessly over the framework of the Titanic’s maiden voyage, punctuated with fantasy elements which basically amount to talking animals which harbour an assortment of cultural stereotypes stooping at times to outright racism. I know that the disaster of the shipwreck is awful but at least try to honor the memory of the dead by keeping some factual basis in your movie: the passengers and crew are saved by friendly whales, dolphins and a muscular octopus called Tentacles… Sigh.
At least this is the only animated movie about anthropomorphic mice on the Titanic… Wait, what?
Titanic: The Legend Goes On
Yep! There’s another one, again the main characters are human but there are a healthy roster of animals here too, including blatant rip-offs from 101 Dalmatians, The Aristocats, Alice in Wonderland and more. Seriously, this movie has so many characters and they’re all introduced in such rapid fashion with little to no personality or originality that you’re left feeling lost.
The frame rate hurts your eyes and the animation is choppy and skittish. Every scene looks like it had two animators constantly fighting over each character, disagreeing over which emotion they wanted to convey. The lip synching is atrocious, making the unexpected and ill-timed dialogue and sound effects even more jarring and confusing.
Also there’s a dog that does a rap. The less said about him the better.
Foodfight!
Yes the exclamation mark is part of the full title but you could just as well assume that we think this movie deserves the ranking of #1 so much that we ruefully shout it’s name from the rooftops in a desperate warning to others about this stinker. Dex Dogtective (horrible pun) is a detective/club owner/food mascot who lives in the supermarket world: Marketropolis. He and his gang of friends have to save his city from being taken over by the evil Brand X and save the day. With a voice cast stuffed with household names including Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, Hilary Duff and Wayne Brady, how this unforgivable lapse in taste got made is an absolute mystery.
Brand X are such a thinly veiled Nazi metaphor that they make stormtroopers seem subtle. The only thing more blatant than the baddies is the flagrant and unapologetic product placement of real food brands. Suddenly when the extreme saturation of licensed characters is taken into account, you can see why this movie survived - they needed to make use of all of these characters for advertising purposes. The animation looks frankly unfinished, with what look like bad quality placeholder textures and the most awkward motion capture throughout. The humour isn’t like the clever hidden adult jokes which we spotted in some Disney films, it’s just grossly misjudged and crude double entendre.
In short, Foodfight! has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If a mate asks you if you want to watch it even “for a laugh”, snap the disk in half, drop kick the dvd player out of the window and possibly consider breaking the friendship off there just for good measure.
Is that it? Can we stop now? Yahoo! Thanks for reading, remember that we sacrificed ourselves to bring you this list so that you could save yourselves from this rubbish... If you’ve had to sit through something you think might be worthy of this list, send us a message and let us know. See you next week!
