With Monsters University currently sitting atop the box office, we've decided to update our ranking of the films of Pixar Animation. For a studio with such a successful track record, there is great and there is good, but there is very little if any bad. So bear that in mind as you read the following list… Even the worst of Pixar is usually better than the competition's best! Let us know in the Comments below how you would rank the Pixar films!
Cars 2 benefits from cherry-picking the best elements of the first movie and switching genres completely by taking Lightning McQueen and Mater out of Radiator Springs and dropping them into the middle of a fast-paced, dynamic spy flick. What's lost here, for the most part, is the warmth and heart that we adore, and expect, from most Pixar offerings. It gets left in the dust.
This is also a darker film where several car characters do meet an untimely, and sometimes grisly, end. But the fast pacing here works in the films favor, as the slightly morbid moments flicker in and out as quickly as race car laps. Cars 2 isn't the usual intimate magical experience you expect from Pixar fare, but it's still a high-octane adventure the burns fast and furious.
It should come as no surprise that 2006's Cars is near the bottom of this list, as it and its sequel are the least loved of all the Pixar films and yet, as we noted above, when it comes to Pixar, the worst is still so much better than most of the other junk being churned out by Hollywood. Directed by Pixar honcho John Lasseter and the late Joe Ranft, the film tells the tale of Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar who learns that winning isn't everything. Which, one supposes, is easy for Lasseter and his team to preach, now that they've basically won everything themselves.
The film, while quite entertaining and clever, just doesn't quite meet with the high standard that Pixar has set for itself over the past 15 years or so. As we noted in our original review, "Cars is hardly the bump in the road that some predicted. It's still a fun movie, it's cute and has enough going for it to draw in audiences. The unfortunate aside on Cars is that, unlike Pixar films past, this may be the first entry by the studio that parents will want to avoid re-watching alongside their kids, opting instead to plop their kids in the back of the mini-van with a set of headphones. Even the kids may opt to go back to that worn copy of Finding Nemo or Incredibles quicker than expected."
A Bug's Life was the second Pixar film after Toy Story. A take on the old Ant and the Grasshopper parable, A Bug's Life was a great sophomore effort for the young company, even if it didn't quite match the magic of Toy Story. Still, it outdid DreamWorks' Antz by a yard, so that's saying something. Dave Foley is Flik, an outcast ant who, after his colony is threatened by villainous grasshoppers, pulls a Seven Samurai and recruits a bunch of other loner insects -- well, actually they're just circus performers who are out of work. But they are, of course, up to the task.
With this film, Lasseter and co-director Andrew Stanton once again proved they had let the genie out of the bottle with the Pixar formula, a mix of kid-friendly comedy, adult-friendly knowingness and nostalgia, and state-of-the-art computer animation. Throw in elements like Kevin Spacey voicing the lead baddie Hopper, Randy Newman offering up the film's music once again, and a sophisticated element of characterization. How else could bugs be made to be so lovable?
The first Pixar film to follow a female protagonist (the arrow-shooting princess Merida), the first one to be set in the past (medieval Scotland), and their 13th film to open at No. 1, Brave wisely forsakes the well-worn relationships of other animated fairy tales – the wicked stepmother/stepdaughter dynamic or father/daughter bond or the princess and prince romance -- in favor of the more complicated, yet loving bond between a headstrong mother and her equally stubborn daughter. And yet despite that smart choice, Brave still never becomes more than a traditional Disney princess tale.
The narrative is surprisingly rote for a studio whose mantra is that story is everything, and it’s chock full of the usual “girl power” tropes and comeuppance moments one would expect. Brave is a technical marvel (Merida’s wild curls, the misty Highlands, immersive 3D), but it’s ultimately a lesser effort from a studio known for breaking new ground. Grownups may appreciate the artistry that went into making Brave, but they’ll likely yearn for the transcendent Pixar films they fell in love with.
Monsters University is Pixar’s take on a college movie, with Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) reintroduced as freshmen at MU, both with dreams of making it as a “scarer.” It doesn't have the emotional weight of the first one (Boo, you are missed), but Monster's University is still a fun and funny movie in its own right. MU introduces us to a younger Mike and Sulley and delivers a funny take on a college comedy in the process.
Pixar’s biggest obstacle at this point is their own track record. So many of their films have been so emotional that there’s a certain expectation that all of them should be. It’s unfair though. Pixar is using animation to tell all sorts of stories and not all of them have to make you cry to be worthwhile. We all like a good comedy too, right?
Released in 2001, Monsters, Inc. broke free of Pixar's toys and bugs track record -- they'd only released A Bug's Life and two Toy Story films up until that point -- with a story about kindly creatures and the utility company that they work for in the land of Monstropolis. Starring John Goodman as Sulley and Billy Crystal as Mike, a couple of working-class monsters, the film finds its inspiration in the familiar area that Toy Story did, giving reality and weight to childhood fantasies as we learn that, yes, Virginia, there are monsters in your closet.
And yet, Monsters, Inc. pales in comparison to the Toy Story films. "What's peculiar here is why the film doesn't work as fully as it should have," we noted in our original review. "A lot of it has to do with how thinly-drawn its characters are. When considering the Toy Story movies, both films are consistently clever, with insightful and well-rounded characterizations running throughout. In fact, characters in those movies are generally established before they set about doing things which affect the plot. Monsters, Inc.'s characters never fully engage or flesh-out. We ultimately warm-up to them a bit, but for the most part, they're just going through the motions -- much like the first 50 (or so) percent of the movie." Still, Monsters, Inc. is fun and better than most of its non-Pixar peers (how many times do we have to make that distinction today?). It's just that it feels like it could've been even greater than the sum of its monstrous parts.
Ratatouille was a risky one for Pixar when it was released in 2007, if only because of that title. Let's face it: Americans don't like French (or the French) much, especially when they can't pronounce it. So that makes this film, in its way, the Alien 3 of the Pixar oeuvre -- the hidden gem that's not as well recognized as it should be, but is typically a revelation for those who come late to its stew. Directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles), who was already beloved by animation aficionados prior to joining Pixar for The Iron Giant, the film was originally conceived by Jan Pinkava. But the Pixar bosses weren't happy with Pinkava's work, and Bird was brought in to rebuild the project from the ground up.
Particularly given audiences' lukewarm anticipation for the film, Bird's follow-up to The Incredibles could have easily been a return to the kind of moviemaking which established his name: widely praised but little seen, if only because it was far too smart for its own good... much less the moviegoing public's. But Ratatouille is that unique experience that strikes deep notes of recognition across many kinds of moviegoers, be they discriminating technophiles, fans of animation, or just everyday folks expecting to be entertained. Bird has created the kind of movie that is truly for everyone.
Finding Nemo, from 2003, features perhaps the most widely recognized characters from a Pixar picture aside from the original Toy Story troupe. Ask anyone, age 50 or five, who Dory or Nemo is, and they can probably tell you. This is surely the result of several factors, not the least of which are the breathtaking design of the deep-sea world inhabited by the characters, the spot-on vocalizations by Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, Albert Brooks, and the rest, and the real-world emotional parallels of the story that mark the best aspects of all of the Pixar films.
The film's story of an overprotective father who is separated from his son instantly preys upon any parent's deepest feelings, and yet the film is never manipulative or calculating in its storytelling methods. "Finding Nemo is ultimately a rewarding, engaging, compelling, and even spiritual adventure that works charismatically on multiple levels," we noted in our review. "Many recent endeavors have used ultra-powered CGI to broaden their canvas of storytelling, usually to cold, lackluster, and uninspired results. Nemo powerfully illustrates the conceit that... at the end of the day... the human equation is still what prevails in filmmaking. And, that all the meticulously rendered razzle-dazzle in the universe doesn't mean anything unless it's driven by a truthful human spirit."
Source : ign[dot]com
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