Movie Review: We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story

Movie Review: We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story                                                                         1-27-17

In 1993, Jurassic Park premiered, and earned a ton of money at the box-office. However, Universal was worried that, because it was rated PG-13, it wouldn't perform as well. They asked Steven Spielberg and his team at Amblimation if they could make a family-friendly film about dinosaurs, and the result is this rare fossil (no pun intended).

Based on the book by Hudson Talbot, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story is about a Tyrannosaurs Rex named Rex (John Goodman). He, along with a pterodactyl named Elsa (Felicity Kendel), a Triceratops named Woog (Rene LeVant), and a duck-billed, and buck-toothed, dinosaur named Dweeb (Charles Fleisher) have been feed a brain-altering cereal by the wise Captain Neweyes (Walter Cronkite). He transports the Dino quartet to the 1990s AD so they can be viewed at the Museum of Natural History in New York and make thousands of kids happy. However, he warns them about his wicked brother Professor Screweyes (Kenneth Mars), who specializes in scaring people. When they arrive in the Big Apple, Rex meets a young boy named Louie (Joey Shea), who ran away from home, and a girl named Cecilia Nuthatch (Yeardly Smith), who mourns over her working parents, with the dinosaurs trying to fit into the 20th century, as well as avoiding Professor Screweyes.

I am aware that not many people like this film, but there are some good things to point out. For one thing, the character animation is spot-on, almost Disney quality, and arguably better than Don Bluth's movies at the time.

Another thing to admire about We're Back! is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade sequence. There are several famous faces that make cameos as parade balloons, like Snoopy and Woodstock, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Woody Woodpecker, and even Spiderman.

Keep in mind that this was before Disney bought Marvel. The song that Rex sings in the sequence is also quite enjoyable.

I also find the two principal human characters, Louie and Cecilia, to be quite relatable. Louie represents resilient kids who are going through the I'm-not-a-baby-anymore phase, while Cecilia represents the obedient kids who always listen to their parents.

It should also be noted that this was the first voice-acting role for John Goodman, who would later voice Pacha in The Emperor's New Groove and Sully in Monsters Inc.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story may not be a perfect film, but it's a suitable film for children who have a passion for paleontology. Think of this film like the 'Good Dinosaur' of the 90s.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

My DVD Collection 2.0

Hi, everybody! Remember how back in August, I showed you my DVD collection?
http://asateriale.blogspot.com/2016/08/my-complete-dvd-collection.html
Well, I felt it deserved a bit of an update. First, these are some Muppet DVDs that don't have any room on my shelf. The new arrivals are Muppets Magic From The Ed Sullivan Show and Best of The Muppet Show Volume 5 (Vincent Price, Alice Cooper, and Marty Feldman).

These are movies on DVD I feel so-so about, though I have a guilty pleasure for Teacher's Pet. The new member in this batch is Despicable Me 2, mainly for my dad.

These four are all movies on DVD I got quite recently. I ordered Banjo the Woodpile Cat through Amazon back in August, I bought Fantasia 2000 at a yard sale back in October, I got Hugo the Hippo, a very strange Hungarian animated film, for Christmas, and Kung Fu Panda on New Year's Eve.

These are movies that I feel not many people like, yet I own them on DVD.

These are movies I plan on watching in the next week, or at least, on January 9th. However, I do not own The Rescuers or The Tale of Despereaux; They are rentals from the library. That night's movie was The Rescuers.

These are some more Muppet/Henson DVDs.

The new arrival in this section is A Muppet Family Christmas, which is rare on DVD.

The next three sections are the main meat of my DVD collection (but not literal meat). The new arrivals in these three pictures are Finding Dory, Zootopia, The Great Mouse Detective, and Lady and the Tramp.

 Once again, my DVD copy of Atlantis: The Lost Empire shares the same case as Frozen.

The black DVD case below Zootopia and above The Little Mermaid is Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Well, that's all I have for today, and tomorrow, I'll post my review of Steven Speilberg's We're back! A Dinosaur's Story.

Movie Review: Monster Trucks

Movie Review: Monster Trucks                                                                                             1-14-17

In Part 1 of Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time, I stated that I hoped Chris Wedge would redeem himself with Monster Trucks. This film was co-produced with Nickelodeon, who had previous experience with live-action films like Harriet the Spy (1996), Snow Day (2000), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), and Hotel for Dogs (2009). Is this film worth seeing? Let's find out.

Monster Trucks tells the story of a teenage boy named Tripp (Lucas Till) who works at a local junk yard. One day, he finds a large cephalopod-like creature with a whale-like head and an appetite for oil. Tripp names the creature Creech, and Creech decides to live underneath Tripp's truck, taking the place of the engine. With his friend Meredith (Jane Levy), Tripp discovers that Creech is a species of primordial subterranean underwater creature, and that two others of Creech's species are being held captive at the local oil refinery! Now Tripp, Creech, and Meredith must find a way to rescue the captives and save Creech's kind.

Now what do I think of Monster Trucks? To my surprise, I actually enjoyed it! There have been quite a few tasteless live-action films with CG characters, but few of them match the quality of Creech. He is almost as seamless and fluid as Hank in Finding Dory!

Creech also, personality-wise, bares some resemblance to Toothless from DreamWotrks' How To Train Your Dragon.

If I were to complain about one thing, I feel like the film drags a little bit at times. However, it's still, to me at least, an enjoyable film that I'd pick over Ice Age 5 any day of the week.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time Part 3/3

10. Happily N’Ever After (2007)

In this awful-looking Shrek rip-off, Cinderella’s stepmother Frieda (Sigourney Weaver) takes the wizard’s magic scepter and turns the happy endings of Fairytale Land into unhappy endings. Now it’s up to Cinderella (Sarah Michelle Gellar), along with the wizard’s flunkies Munk (Wallace Shawn) and Mambo (Andy Dick) to set things right. The animation is even worse than Valiant (both of them, along with Space Chimps, came from Vanguard), the story is a mess, the comic reliefs are annoying, and, like I said earlier, is a rip-off of Shrek.

9. Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (2014)

In this unofficial sequel to the immortal 1939 classic, MGM's The Wizard of Oz, the Jester (Martin Short), brother of the Wicked Witch of the West, steals the Witch's magic wand and causes chaos all over Oz. The Scarecrow contacts Dorothy (Lea Michele) back in Kansas and brings her back to Oz. Now she and Toto must embark on a quest to return to Emerald City to stop the Jester. On her quest, she meets a slew of new characters like an owl named Wiser, a marshmallow soldier named Marshall Mallow, and a Princess of China (the fragile material) who acts like a brat. Legends of Oz is a mockery of its original source material with a clumsy script, mediocre animation, corny pop-culture references, songs that don't move the plot that much, and new characters that are unoriginal and annoying. Because of the film's poor quality, Legends of Oz even won the Razzi Award for Worst Supporting Actor, the first animated feature to win a Razzi since Thumbelina in 1994. Also, what are CARS doing in Kansas in the year 1900?

8. Delgo (2008)

In this CG animated adventure, there are two races: the reptilian Lochni and the fairy-like Norhin. When the evil Norhin Sedessa (Anne Bancroft, who passed away in 2005) threatens on unleashing war upon both tribes, it’s up to a Lochni named Delgo (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Norhin Princess Kyla (Jennifer Love Hewitt) to save their world from unspeakable destruction. While Delgo isn't as horrible as other people say it is, the film suffers from overused plot elements, animation weaker than DreamWorks, and one of the most annoying animated characters ever in the form of Filo, a friend of Delgo’s. Also, the designs of the characters and creatures look like a cross between Star Wars, The Dark Crystal, and, even though it wouldn’t be released for another year, Avatar.

7. The Ten Commandments (2007)

In the trailer for this movie, they say that 'one of the greatest and most inspirational stories of all time is now an animated movie event for the entire family.' However, that already happened nearly a decade earlier with DreamWorks' masterpiece The Prince of Egypt. In fact, this movie feels more like a knockoff of The Prince of Egypt without the heart and emotion, animation that makes the film look like it came out of the straight-to-video bargain bin, and a rushed story with no time for character development. The Ten Commandments became one of the lowest-grossing animated films of all time, grossing only over a million dollars on a 10 million dollar budget.

6. The Nut Job (2014)

The Nut Job is a film about a selfish squirrel named Surly, who wants to rob a nut shop with his rat friend Buddy. This film is high on this list because Surly is such an unlikable character. He wants to keep all the nuts to himself and goes through almost no character development. Also, many of the character designs look like they were stolen from other films. Here are some examples.
Surly looks a bit like Hammy from DreamWorks' Over the Hedge...

Buddy looks identical to Remy from Ratatouille...

Precious the dog looks like (but not really) Luis from Rio and Rio 2...

And Raccoon's cardinal looks like an Angry Bird!

I still don't know how this film earned enough money to green light and generate a sequel. That's like DreamWorks making a sequel to Shark Tale or Bee Movie!
5. Elf Bowling: The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike (2007)

Did you know that Santa Claus started out as a toy-stealing pirate? Yep, that's right. In this train wreck of a film, after a fight with his brother Dingle, he and Santa get frozen for a long time. Both Santa and Dingle wash up in the North Pole, get defrosted by an elf named Lex, and he brings them to a toy factory. Santa becomes a member of a secret elf society and agrees to deliver toys to every child in the world once a year, which would become Christmas. Over the years, Dingle has gotten jealous, and wants to take over Christmas. The animation is horrible, the voices are annoying, and the story feels like a mish-mash of Jim Henson's The Great Santa Claus Switch and Rankin/Bass's Santa Claus is Comin' To Town. There's also a fair amount of potty humor and fowl language, which is unusual for a PG-rated film these days. I find it sad that this was one of the final projects for Joe Alasky, the voice of Plucky Duck in Tiny Toon Adventures and Grandpa Pickles in The Rugrats, to be involved with, as he passed away in February of 2016.

4. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)

Hoodwinked was originally an animated film released in 2005. It took the story of Little Red Riding Hood and turned it into a detective story. The animation was hideous, but was backed up by some clever writing. A sequel popped up in 2011, called Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil. In this film, Red, Granny, and Wolf join the Happily Ever After Agency. After trying to rescue Hansel and Gretel from a witch, Granny gets kidnapped, and now Red, Wolf, and Twitchy (the squirrel) to save Granny and retrieve a secret recipe. While the animation has improved, the film suffers from random pop-culture references and a Shrek-like story that ruins the original characters that we've grown to love from the original film.

3. Kaena: The Prophecy (2003)

Kaena: The Prophecy was Europe's first CGI animated feature, and took place on an alien planet called Axis. The soil on the planet is drying up, making it hard for the villagers to find food. Now it's up to Kaena, a rebellious high-spirited teenager, to go above the clouds and save her planet. While the character Kaena is likable, the film suffers from plasticky animation and a confusing plot.

2. Doogal (2006)

Based upon the French animated TV series of the same name, The Magic Roundabout was about a shaggy dog named Dougal, who, with the help of his friends Brian the snail, Ermintrude the cow, and Dylan the rabbit, must save the world from being frozen by the evil Jack-in-the-Box Zeebad. When The Magic Roundabout made it to the US, Butch Hartman, creator of The Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom, Americanized the film by renaming it Doogal, replacing many of the British voice actors with American celebrity voice actors, and putting in pop-culture references and potty humor. That’s like taking Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers and having the characters voiced by Jay Leno, as well as putting in numerous references to American pop culture like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the 80s TV series), Field of Dreams, and Law and Order! Also, why do they have American actors voice the characters if the original movie already had an English dub with British voice actors?

And the worst CGI movie of all time (aside from Foodfight) is...

1. Norm of the North (2016)

If The Wild was Madagascar done wrong, then Norm of the North is Madagascar in reverse. A polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider) wants to visit New York City so he can convince a real-estate agent to stop plans from building a city in the Arctic. Why would anyone want to move to the North Pole? Not only is it too cold for humans to live, but the weight of the houses would cause too much pressure on the ice and they would sink! And why are some of the wild animal characters wearing clothes? There's an albatross wearing glasses, reindeer wearing hats and playing poker, a polar bear (but not Norm) wearing a mic around his ear, and lemmings that wear construction gear and use measuring tape. Also, the lemmings in the film act just like the Minions in Despicable Me, except even more annoying.

Norm of the North is bad in almost every way possible with a ludicrous plot, poor animation, paper-thin characters, and disgusting jokes.
Well, that's it for Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time. Next month, on February 10th, I'll do Top 10 Best Stop-Motion Animated Films of All Time!

Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time Part 2/3

20. Escape From Planet Earth (2013)

This film is basically Planet 51 in reverse. On the Planet Baab, a blue alien named Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) sets off to planet Earth after hearing about SOS signals coming from that planet. He gets captured by General Shanker Saunderson (William Shatner), and now, it’s up to Scorch’s brother Gary (Rob Corddry) to save him. The film has generic character designs and a plot point that makes me laugh: Aliens from across the universe have been captured by humans to build impossible inventions, like Smartphones, the Internet, and even animated films. There’s even a Pixar reference with a caricature of John Lasseter!

19. Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie (2013)

Walking With Dinosaurs was a hybrid feature that would bring viewers to how Earth was like 70 million years ago. The film was originally going to have no dialogue, but the executives at 20^th Century Fox, who distributed the film, felt like the viewers would emphasize with the characters more if the dinosaurs would talk. At the last minute, Justin Long, John Leguizamo, Skyler Stone, and Angourie Rice recorded voices for four of the dinosaurs. The end result was a movie with beautiful animation interacting fruitfully with live-action landscapes, but is dominated by a clumsy script with infantile humor. However, when Walking With Dinosaurs was released on Blu-Ray in March 2014, there is an audio option called the ‘Cretaceous Cut’, which featured the film without the dinosaurs talking.

18. Free Birds (2013)
 

This movie is basically a cross between Chicken Run and Back to the Future. Reggie (Owen Wilson), a pardoned turkey, has been picked by Jake (Woody Harrelson) to go back in time with him to the 17^th century to stop turkeys from being on the Thanksgiving menu. Free Birds may not be as horrible as later films on this list, but it has a corny plot and tone with some mediocre animation. Thankfully, Reel FX Creative Studios, the animation house behind Free Birds, redeemed themselves with The Book of Life, which made it into my Top 30 Best CGI Movies countdown. Also, like Rachel said in this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHrcO_sou7g
Jake and Reggie landed in the wrong time period. Turkey was not a major course at the first Thanksgiving. In fact, turkey didn't become a Thanksgiving tradition until at least the 1940s.

17. Arthur and the Invisibles (2007)

If you thought The Ant Bully was bad (which I don’t think so), then Arthur and the Invisibles is even worse. The story is about a young boy named Arthur (Freddie Highmore), who is in danger of losing his home from real estate agents. Through his deceased grandfather’s clues and a book about tiny creatures called the ‘Minimoys’, Arthur finds the tribe, turns into a Minimoy himself, and sets on a journey with Princess Selenia (Madonna) and her brother Betameche (Jimmy Fallon) to save Arthur’s home. If you look back at my review of The Ant Bully, you can tell that I partially enjoyed it, but Arthur and the the Invisibles bored me half to death. My thoughts of The Ant Bully are in this link below.
http://asateriale.blogspot.com/2016/03/movie-review-ant-bully-2-27-16-in-2006.html

16. The Wild (2006)

What would happen if you combined The Lion King and Finding Nemo, two of the most popular animated films of all time, and put in a drop of DreamWorks' Madagascar? You get an animated film with out-of-place designs and forgettable side characters. The Wild is about a lion named Samson (Kiefer Sutherland), who lives in the Central Park Zoo with his son Ryan (Greg Cipes). Wanting to be like his father, Ryan escapes to Africa. Now it's up to Samson, along with his friends Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi), Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard), Larry the anaconda (Richard Kind), and Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo) to escape from New York to Africa, as well as saving Ryan from being eaten by wildebeests who are tired of being at the bottom of the food chain. While The Wild may be more pleasant to look at than Madagascar, the film suffers from uneven storytelling and an odd choice for an antagonist: a wildebeest voiced by William Shatner.

15. Fly Me To The Moon (2008)

Fly Me To The Moon is said to be the first animated film to be created for stereoscopic 3D. The film takes place in 1969, and young fly Nat dreams of being an adventurer like his grandfather. Along with his friends, IQ and Scooter, Nat hitches a ride on the Apollo 11 rocket ship heading to the moon. However, the Russian flies are jealous, and will do anything to prevent Nat, IQ, and Scooter from coming home. Fly Me To The Moon has a juvenile script that feels like it was written by a ten-year-old, animation that mirrors the early days of Pixar, and lots of corny fly puns.
14. The Hero of Color City (2014)
 
A good way to describe this movie is like Toy Story with crayons. Whenever Ben, a young human boy, goes to sleep, the crayons in his room come to life. When the cowardly Yellow gets left behind, she meets an unfinished drawing named King Scrawl, and follows her to Color City. Tired of being just white, Scrawl blocks the Colorfalls, where the crayons get their color. Without the falls, the color from the crayons would fade away. Now Yellow, along with cool Blue, timekeeping Green, sassy Red, and twins Black and White to find Scrawl and save Color City from disappearing. The Hero of Color City has a poorly-written plot, bad animation, unlikable characters, jokes that don't make sense, and degrading songs, though there's only three in the whole film. It's hard to believe this movie was even released in theaters!

13. Strange Magic (2015)

Oh, George Lucas. Why did you have to be involved with this Frozen knockoff? Based on William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Strange Magic is about a fairy named Marianne, who wants to search for true love, and finds it in the most unlikely place. Strange Magic is a mess with a forgettable plot, unoriginal characters, and unnecessary pop-culture tunes, though the animation is near Pixar quality.

12. Alpha and Omega (2010)

Alpha and Omega is an animated tale about two different wolves: a carefree omega wolf named Humphrey (Justin Long) and a reindeer-hunting alpha wolf named Kate (Hayden Panettiere), who have nothing in common. When they are taken from their home in Canada to Idaho, the two wolves have to journey back home together, whether they like it or not. I am aware there are some people that love this film, but I’m personally not too fond of it. The animation is mediocre, the story is clichéd and predictable, and the side characters are annoying. Also, this was one of the last movies for Dennis Hopper to be involved with, as he passed away before the film's premiere.

11. Barnyard: The Original Party Animals (2006)

The plot of Barnyard was basically a cross between Toy Story, The Lion King, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with farm animals. The story is about a carefree cow named Otis who has to protect his farm from coyotes. However, he spends more time on having parties and pranking humans. The film has no coherent storyline, bad character designs, and unfunny jokes. In fact, I think I’d prefer Home on the Range, which was also about farm animals, over Barnyard. To make matters worse, there was a Barnyard TV series, called Back at the Barnyard, which had worse animation, no continuity from the original film, and the absence of Daisy, the cow who was pregnant in the original movie.

Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time Part 1/3

Well, with every best list, there's a worst list. It's been a year since I started my blog, and one of the main reasons was to show you my original 'Top 30 Greatest CGI Movies of All Time' countdown, as a tribute to Toy Story's 20th anniversary. Well, here are the Top 30 Worst CGI Movies of All Time.
For this list, I once again made rules for myself. First, the movie has to be 100% 3D CGI, with the exceptions of Walking With Dinosaurs and Arthur and the Invisibles. Second, the movie had to be released in theaters in the US. And finally, the film has to have a score lower than 60% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I did not include Foodfight because I believe that one was direct-to-video (and amen to that). Another reason I excluded it is because many people have already included it in their worst animated films countdowns.
I also did not include Ice Age 5: Collision Course because I have not seen it, and I'm kind of afraid to.
I also didn't include Cars 2 because there are some people I know that like Cars 2.
Now, let's start the countdown!
30. The Lorax (2012)

The Lorax was originally a book written by Dr. Seuss in 1971, and was about a Grinch-like character named the Once-ler, who comes to a forest and cuts down the trees for their soft silk-like leaves. However, as he cuts down the forest, The Lorax, a creature who speaks for the trees, tries to warn the Once-ler about his consequences, but he doesn’t listen. A year later, a TV special based on the book would air on television, with involvement from Dr. Seuss. It was one of the many follow-ups to the cult TV classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas! In 1966. However, this version of The Lorax mangles the original source material and turns it into a WALL-E knockoff with awful songs. This Lorax was produced by Illumination Entertainment, the same studio that previously did Despicable Me. You can tell because the humans in Despicable Me and The Lorax look exactly the same. Also, the forest creatures were diminished to Minion knockoffs, despite coming from the same studio. To make matters worse, The Lorax, this time voiced by Danny DiVito, was degraded from someone we could relate to, to an annoying little pest.

29. Shrek the Third (2007)

In our favorite anti-fairytale ogre’s third big-screen adventure, Fiona’s father, who was turned into a frog at the end of Shrek 2, was walking on his last leg. This means Shrek has to become king. However, Shrek doesn’t want to be king, and goes on a quest with Donkey and Puss in Boots to find the king’s missing nephew Arty. Before the three set sail, Fiona tells Shrek that she’s pregnant, and it worries Shrek even more. Meanwhile, Prince Charming rallies up the other fairy tale villains to take over Far Far Away, kill Shrek, and marry Fiona. Shrek the Third focuses much more on comedy than story this time around, and it does more harm than help. The jokes are disgusting, the plot is a mess, and to be completely honest, the fight with the princesses and the guards is quite stupid.

28. Mars Needs Moms

In Robert Zemeckis's final motion-capture film, Martians are kidnapping moms from Earth so they can raise baby Martians, while the male Martians act like Neanderthals. If you think about it, it’s kind of a knockoff of The Jimmy Neutron Movie. At least Jimmy did it better because in his movie, the parents of Retroville were kidnapped because the Yokians, the alien race behind this scheme, needed suitable delegates to be fed to Poultra, a gigantic three-eyed alien chicken. The Yokians could elect themselves, but they’re nothing but slime in special oval-shaped robot suits. What kind of food is that for an alien chicken? In Mars Needs Moms, however, the message seems rather sexist. Why can’t the female Martians raise the baby Martians along with the male Martians? I find this sad because Robert Zemeckis is the man behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit, my favorite movie of all time, and it’s sad to see him go from films like Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future to a movie about Mars kidnapping moms.

27. Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012)

In the unlikely herd’s fourth ‘chilling’ adventure, Scrat reaches the Earth’s core, without burning to a crisp for some reason, and causes tectonic plates to close in like walls in spy movies. Manny, Sid, Diego, and Sid’s grandmother get separated from Ellie and Peaches (Manny’s new wife and daughter) and set sail on an iceberg to get back home. The antagonist of this movie is a pirate baboon named Captain Gutt, with a ragtag team of pirates like an elephant seal named Flint, a kangaroo mistaken for the Easter Bunny, a flat badger who uses himself as a flag, and a female saber-tooth tiger named Shira. Also, WHERE THE HECK ARE THE HUMANS?! There were humans in the first Ice Age, but where are they in the sequels? Blue Sky Studios or 20^th Century Fox, if you’re reading this, please make Ice Age 5: Collision Course the final Ice Age. I just want to see Blue Sky make more quality films instead of unnecessary Ice Age sequels. This situation honestly reminds me of the Rocko’s Modern Life episode ‘Wacky Delly’. I'll explain why at the end of this post.

26. Igor (2008)

Igor is a film about a hunchback named Igor (John Cusack), who works for the evil Dr. Glickenstein (John Cleese). With the help of his companions, Brian, a  robot who isn't very bright with a human's brain, and Scamper, a zombie rabbit, he secretly helps his master make a monster for an evil invention convention. However, Igor's creation Eva (Molly Shannon) is as gentle as a lamb. When Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) hears about Eva, he wants to steal her so he can enter her in the competition and take over Malaria. Igor isn't horrible, but it has awkward character designs, pop-culture references that will fly over viewers' heads, and a storyline that feels like a feature-length episode of Phineas and Ferb.

25. Chicken Little (2005)

Chicken Little was Disney’s first CGI feature to have no involvement with Pixar, and boy was it bad. The movie was a DreamWorks wannabe with three different plots that didn’t mix well: a bully plot, a baseball plot, and an alien plot. I don’t bother explaining the story because it gives me a headache. It’s just sad to see Disney, one of the most reliable animation studios at recreating classic tales, stoop down so low. When the film premiered, it got very negative reviews, but grossed over 300 million dollars worldwide. It’s even been rumored that John Lasseter was horrified by Chicken Little. That’s one of the main reasons Disney purchased Pixar in 2006, and Lasseter became part of Walt Disney Feature Animation, which would eventually be renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios. Thankfully, Disney hasn’t made a CGI film as bad as Chicken Little since.

24. Shark Tale (2004)

Shark Tale is DreamWorks’ worst reviewed animated feature to date, and starred a fish named Oscar (Will Smith). Oscar works at The Whale Wash, a car wash for whales, and is usually a slacker. He owes a puffer fish named Sykes (Martin Scorsese) 5,000 clams, but wastes it on gambling. Sykes tells his jellyfish flunkies Ernie and Bernie to tie Oscar to a rock as his punishment. Meanwhile, a shark named Lenny (Jack Black) is being taught by his brother Frankie how to hunt, because Lenny doesn’t like eating fish. Frankie gets killed by having an anchor dropped on him, and Oscar is declared a ‘shark slayer’. Since Shrek was a parody of fairytale films, Shark Tale was meant to be a parody of mob films, like The Godfather and Taxi Driver. How many kids do you know have seen The Godfather? Also, the fish characters don’t even look or move like fish. Look at this scene from Finding Nemo and this scene from Shark Tale. It’s quite clear that ‘Nemo’ had better character designs and character animation.

This is Finding Nemo...

And this is Shark Tale...

To top all that, Shark Tale even got an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature! How could Shark Tale get a nomination, but not something like Teacher's Pet? I personally think Teacher’s Pet should’ve been nominated instead that year.
23. Planes (2013)

From the mind of John Lasseter himself, Planes, a spinoff of Cars, was going to be direct-to-video. However, when a screentest was shown to Disney, they felt like it was suitable for theaters. Instead of being produced by Pixar, who were busy with Monsters University and Inside Out at the time, Planes was produced by DisneyToon Studios, the studio that did almost every unasked Disney sequel and the Tinkerbell films. Anyway, Planes is about a crop-duster plane named Dusty, who dreams of becoming a racer. With a stroke of luck, Dusty gets to race in a big race around the world with Ripslinger, who thinks Dusty is nothing but a crop-duster, and will stop at nothing to prevent Dusty from winning the race. Planes is an animated film that should’ve stayed direct-to-video with an overused plot, one-dimensional characters, and stereotypes in every country they visit.
22. Space Chimps (2008)

Oh, Glob. These movies just keep getting worse and worse. Space Chimps, the third film from the short-lived animation studio Vanguard, is about a trio of chimpanzees who journey into Outer Space to retrieve a missing space probe. They land on a planet inhabited by aliens that… Well, they look like a cross between the Smurfs, the Care Bears, and the Grinch.
 
The bully of the bunch is named Zartog, and uses the probe to torture the other aliens. Space Chimps has amateurish animation, a ridiculous plot, characters flat as cardboard (but not literally), and is full of pop-culture references and monkey puns. In fact, because of the film’s poor quality, I once had a dream that my grandmother gave me Space Chimps on DVD for my birthday, and what followed was a sequence of galaxies within galaxies, slot machines with never-ending screens, and stuffed animals that sang ‘Schneedlehow Schnuff-time’.

20. Planet 51 (2009)

Planet 51 is an animated film about a human astronaut named Chuck Baker (Dwayne Johnson), who crash-lands on a planet inhabited by Shrek-like aliens. The aliens all freak out, except for a teenager named Lem, who hides Chuck in his bedroom, so the alien government won't find him and test him. Planet 51 is a mess with an overly familiar storyline, stock characters, and pop-culture references that don’t mix well, though the animation is half-decent.

I compared Ice Age's sequelitus to the Rocko episode 'Wacky Delly' because, in that episode, Ralph Bighead has finally finished The Fatheads, which ran for 893 episodes. Ralph personally wants to quit the animation business so he can make real art. However, the TV executives, who are literally a bunch of pigs, demand Ralph to make another TV show. Ralph comes home and tells Ed and Bev Bighead, along with Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt, about the news. Heffer says that making a cartoon looks so easy and that his next show could be about deli meats. However, Filburt says that an idea like that would get Ralph Bighead fired. This gives Ralph an idea: He lets Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt create the new show, called Wacky Delly, hoping it will be so bad that the network executives will have no choice but to cancel it and fire Ralph. The result is this.
 
Wacky Delly actually becomes a big hit, and Ralph tries everything to sabotage the show, even by melting the polar icecaps so they can hopefully flood Bighead Studios, which actually doesn't work. Ralph eventually confesses to Rocko that he wanted to get fired so he could make real art. Rocko, however, encourages Ralph to make the best cartoon it could be, instead of running away from it. However, when Ralph actually does make a quality episode of Wacky Delly, parodying the mushroom dance from Fantasia's The Nutcracker Suite, people actually hated it, and Wacky Delly was cancelled.
 
Ralph gets fired the next day and says "You cretins! You don't know what art is! I'LL SHOW YOU!" After 10 years, Ralph Bighead finally finished his masterpiece: a replica of a fruit bowl carved into a mountain.
Back to the Ice Age side, I feel like in this situation, Ralph Bighead represents Chris Wedge, founder of Blue Sky and director of Ice Age 1, Robots, and Epic, Rocko represents Carlos Saldana, director of Ice Ages 2 and 3 as well as the Rio films, Filburt represents Steve Martino, director of Ice Age 4, as well as Horton Hears a Who and The Peanuts Movie, and Heffer represents Mike Thurmier, director of Ice Age 5. Also, the pigs in this situation seem to represent Fox, as the Ice Age films make an insane amount of money worldwide. I just hope that this situation ends with a happy ending and Chris Wedge gets to make his masterpiece, in the form of 'Monster Trucks'.

Okay, maybe not a masterpiece, but it's gotta be better than Ice Age 5. And in case you're wondering, Blue Sky WILL NOT be involved with Monster Trucks, but will be directed by Chris Wedge. Blue Sky's next feature, Ferdinand, based on the book 'Ferdinand the Bull' by Munro Leaf. will premiere Christmas 2017.