Oscarless Animated Films Part 4

Oscarless Animated Films Part 4: Teacher's Pet (2004)

This movie tells the story of a blue dog named Spot (Nathan Lane), who dresses up as a boy each day so he can go to school and meet up with his owner Leonard (Shaun Fleming). When Leonard's teacher, who also happens to be his mom, gets nominated for a special contest in Florida, Spot hitches along for the ride. Apparently, there's a 'wacko' named Ivan Krank (Kelsey Grammar), who may have the ability of helping Spot become a real boy.

I know what some of you are thinking. "Why did you choose this movie?" Well, I chose Teacher's Pet because, like I said back in this post...

http://asateriale.blogspot.com/2016/03/movie-review-teachers-pet.html

This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine. Also, 2004 was a rather rough year for animated features. Don't believe me? Well, let's go back to 2004 and see what other animated films were released that year.

In April, there was Disney's 45th animated film Home on the Range, which, at the time, was Disney's last hand-drawn film.

In May, there was Shrek 2, which would go on to gross over 900 million dollars worldwide.

In June, we had the US release of Europe's first CGI movie, Kaena: The Prophecy. While I don't hate it like other people do, I feel 'Kaena' had plasticky animation and a confusing plot.

August saw the US release of the critically panned Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie. I honestly haven't seen it, but I heard it wasn't that good.

In October, DreamWorks released their fourth CGI film Shark Tale. While it earned more than enough money to pay off its budget, the film got rather negative reviews. However, my mom likes it.

In November, we jumped into action with Pixar's sixth feature film, and their first PG film, The Incredibles. This film got very good reviews when it premiered, and is arguably the best animated film of that year.

Also released in November, the ever popular anthropomorphic sea sponge starred in his first movie, simply called The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. I'm actually not that fond of this movie because I feel the physics of the SpongeBob world don't belong on the big screen.

And finally, in December of that year, Robert Zemeckis's first motion-capture film, The Polar Express, was released. It was based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg. While it had dazzling effects, the realistic motion-captured human characters had rather dead-looking eyes and faces.

Honestly, there's not much else I can say about Teacher's Pet, since not much is known about behind the scenes of the movie, and the series in which Teacher's Pet is based on is yet to be released on DVD.

I know what else you might be thinking. "Teacher's Pet had creepy and awful-looking character designs!" Well, director and series creator Gary Baseman has a rather wacky and unique art style. You can see it in board games like Cranium, Hullabaloo, Super Showdown, and Doodle Tales.

Besides, I don't remember anyone complaining about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs having awful character designs.

Do these designs look suitable for a CGI movie made on a 100 million dollar budget set to be released in theaters worldwide?

I also remember reading in a book that Walt Disney didn't like the character designs in 101 Dalmatians. All I am asking you to do is watch Teacher's Pet with an open mind and heart.

By this point, you are probably asking yourself "How come you've included all these random films, but not The LEGO Movie?" I didn't pick The LEGO Movie as an Oscarless Animated Film because I felt lots of people talked about it already. Also, back in 2015, when directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller found out 'LEGO' did not get the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, Phil tweeted that he made his own Oscar out of LEGOs.

That's all I have to say about this week's Oscarless Animated Film. Tune in next week when I talk about the most successful and popular anime film since Spirited Away, Makoto Shinkai's Your Name!