Note: Walt Disney Animation Studios did not release a single movie this year.
The year kicked off in January with the US release of Studio Ghibli's latest endeavor The Red Turtle. This film actually premiered in 2016 and got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. However, it would ultimately lose to Zootopia.
There were actually three animated movies released in February. The first was a spinoff of The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie. It was a parody of the Batman films with humor from The LEGO Movie. In fact, it’s actually kind of similar to Megamind!
The second was the Swiss stop-motion film My Life as a Zucchini. Don’t let the cute character designs fool you: This film has some mature subject matter, a lot of which I can’t talk about on my blog. Like The Red Turtle, 'Zucchini' was originally released in 2016, and got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
The third was a Chinese-produced CGI film Rock Dog. It got mixed to negative reviews, but has become a semi-favorite among yours truly and Rachel. Her review is in the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLyhwmFy7sQ
In March, from director Bob McGrath (Madagascar, Megamind), DreamWorks released their 31st animated feature The Boss Baby. Despite receiving mixed reviews, Boss Baby managed to gross over 470 million dollars worldwide. There's even reports of a sequel in the works! Boss Baby also received the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, which angered many anime and Batman fans. Thankfully, it lost to Coco.
There were three animated movies released in April. The first was Smurfs: The Lost Village. Despite being truer to its original source material, this film actually ended up being Sony Pictures Animation's first box-office failure.
The second was the US release of the Japanese-produced Your Name, the most popular anime movie since Spirited Away. The film was actually shown in July 2016 at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles, California, and surprisingly, it got snubbed for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature!
The third was the Korean-produced CGI movie Spark: A Space Tail. Have we learned nothing from Space Chimps?
Once again, there were three animated movies released in June. The first, from DreamWorks, was Captain Underpants, based on the books by Dav Pilkey. Captain Underpants was made on a very small budget, 38 million dollars, and was animated at a different studio in France!
The second was Disney•Pixar's Cars 3. This film is actually enjoyable, and doesn't feature Mater as much as in the previous films. Anyway, Cars 3 got lukewarm reviews and grossed 383 million dollars worldwide.
The third was Despicable Me 3, in which Gru meets his long-lost twin brother Dru. The film is actually rather disappointing, with only 59% on Rotten Tomatoes rather than 81% (DM1) or 74% (DM2). However, that didn’t stop the film from grossing over a billion dollars worldwide.
July saw the release of Sony Pictures Animation's The Emoji Movie, which was basically a knockoff of Wreck-it Ralph, Inside Out, and The LEGO Movie. It got very poor reviews, with a low rating of 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Emoji Movie even won four Razzi Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Combo, and Worst Director.
There were two animated movies released in August. The first was The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature. In this film, Surly and the gang have to stop the local mayor from destroying the park to make room for an amusement park. It got slightly better reviews than the original, but still got rather bad reviews.
The second was Leap!, a French/Canadian CGI film that premiered in France back in late 2016, though it was originally called Ballerina. The movie concerns a poor orphan girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina and gets a chance to audition for the celebrated school of the Paris Opera Ballet.
There were two animated movies released in September. The first was another LEGO spinoff, The LEGO Ninjago Movie. While The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie got favorable reviews, this movie got rather mixed to negative reviews.
The second was a Polish animated film Loving Vincent. It is the first animated movie to be made entirely out of oil paintings, and was about a man learning about the death of Vincent Van Gough. It was no surprise that this film got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
In October, the popular Technicolor horses made their feature-film debut with My Little Pony: The Movie (even though there’s already a film of the same name from 1986). While this film will definitely please its fans, the film got a rating of only 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.
There were three animated movies released in November. The first was The Breadwinner, from the creators of The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. In this film, a headstrong young girl in Afghanistan disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family. The Breadwinner got great reviews, though not as glowing as Song of the Sea, and got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
The second was Sony Pictures Animation’s and The Jim Henson Company’s The Star. It told the story of the first Christmas from the point of view from the animals. Instead of being animated at Sony Pictures Imageworks like Sony’s other animated films, The Star was animated at Cinesite in Montreal. The film got mixed reviews, but managed to get the Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song and won the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture.
The third was Pixar’s second film for the year, Coco, inspired by Mexico’s Day of the Dead. The film got excellent reviews when it premiered, earned 807 million dollars at the box-office, and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.
in next week when we talk about animated movies from 2018, in which supers came out of hiding with Incredibles 2 and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Wes Anderson made his return to stop-motion with Isle of Dogs, the Internets' most hated cartoon superhero team made their big screen debut with Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, and Ralph and Vanellope returned for an all-new adventure on the world-wide web with Ralph Breaks the Internet.
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