Who said family films aren’t cinema? In his column I Kid You Not, Liam Maguren critically evaluates the excellence in kids flicks and writes them into the history books. With the upcoming release of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, he declares DreamWorks Animation Studio as 2022’s champion of animated blockbusters.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
There’s been a lot of uncertainty about family films and their current place in cinema. When the pandemic and lockdowns forced DreamWorks’ Trolls World Tour to go straight to streaming, many followed in its glittery footsteps. Three years is a long time for a child, and with cinema-quality movies heading straight to streaming platforms, you can understand how many young movie lovers might now expect to see these big films immediately on their home screens.
Big studios are still trying to figure that one out, which is why it’s important to look critically into this year’s biggest animated blockbuster releases and champion the ones that make the most of the big screen for small audiences. This is, after all, their introduction to the wonders of cinema, and it brings me great pleasure to champion DreamWorks as 2022’s king of blockbuster animation.
(It’s also important to note that animation extends far beyond family-friendly entertainment and Hollywood in general, but that’s where the blockbuster money goes.)
Turning Red
For years, Pixar has been the gold standard. As the only animation studio to have three films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (Wall-E, Up, Toy Story 3), they’ve solidified their status as supreme storytellers for all ages. That reputation was upheld earlier in the year with Turning Red.
As our own Eliza Janssen put it, the film’s “a big, fuzzy, apt allegory of puberty,” and unapologetically so. Breaking free from Pixar’s typical visual style helped it stand out plenty, as did its Red Bull-chugging pace and climactic kaiju battle worthy of the big screen. A pity Turning Red‘s original theatrical release got cut severely short, reportedly due to the rise of the omicron variant.
Disney felt safe to release Pixar’s other film of 2022 into cinemas, only to leave a noticeable trail of disappointment in its wake. Lightyear had great ambitions of being a sci-fi epic you could take the whole family to, but after a superb 20 minutes, it quickly dipped in quality. You could almost say it nosedived. In fact, I did. Though it’s entertaining enough and made respectable business at the box office, Lightyear still felt like the one that should have gone straight to Disney+.
Walt Disney Animation Studio’s own sci-fi adventure, Strange World, felt similar—low on thrills but with its heart in the right place (in my opinion)—but became unfortunately known for being one of the year’s biggest financial failures. This had less to do with its slightly above-average quality and more to do with Disney’s inability to market the film. It’s staggeringly bad performance at the box office led to this fun little statistic.
The craziest animation box office stat of the year? Disney's Bob's Burgers Movie outgrossed Strange World in its opening 3-day weekend frame ($12.4M to $11.9M). pic.twitter.com/C5jItRMc07
— cartoonbrew.com – Animation News (@cartoonbrew) November 28, 2022
As for financial successes, Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru and Warner Bros’ DC League of Super Pets are some of the year’s biggest hits. The grumpy old man in me would chalk it down to these films’ cynical design: kids love those minions, so give ’em more minions; pets and superheroes are marketable, so smoosh those together. I could shake my out-of-touch fist at the #gentleminions TikTok trend all I like, but I have to concede that it’s good to see any family animated film succeed during such uncertain times.
Which brings us to DreamWorks Animation Studio and their first hit of 2022, The Bad Guys. Comfortably seated in the Top 20 worldwide box office for the year, this was an undeniable success for the studio. Relatively speaking, it still got crushed by Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which opened at a similar time to double the gross, but for a non-franchise feature (based on Aaron Blabey’s books), it’s an impressive performance.
The Bad Guys
Looking beyond business, The Bad Guys is also a wildly entertaining and inventive film. With a maximised sense of silliness that doesn’t detract from its succinct story, first-time feature director Pierre Pierfel throws buckets of paint on the withering heist genre to create something new, accessible, frequently funny, and always engaging. Rounded off with a blistering use of 2D-on-3D visual elements and some stonkingly good action sequences, The Bad Guys is easily one of the year’s best animated blockbusters.
Perhaps more impressively, DreamWorks Animation Studio revitalised their longest-standing franchise. Technically a sequel for a spinoff character introduced in a sequel, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish makes the two-decades-old Shrek series feel new and exciting again while retaining the fairy tale franchise’s dark-ish edge.
In a current blockbuster landscape where cinematic universes militantly mush their films into the same-looking visual paste, The Last Wish‘s newly stylised (you could say Spider-Verse-y) look feels downright defiant. Exploding onto the screen in the first five minutes with a lol- and whoa-worthy comedic action scene, this sequel-spinoff-sequel manages to keep the chuckles flowing at a hot clip while telling a worthwhile story of blind arrogance, the preciousness of life, and the persistent fear of death (yes, really).
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Featuring inspired takes on The Big Bad Wolf (a properly intimidating villain *chef’s kiss*), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (an adopted family of British hooligan *two-handed chef’s kiss*), and Little Jack Horner (a bakery kingpin voiced by John Mulaney *three Michelin stars*), The Last Wish is so surprisingly good it makes you wish they handed the franchise over to Puss sooner.
Time will tell how much Puss in Boots: The Last Wish will gross, but I’m almost sure it’ll make a metric buttload of money. It’s a recognisable brand. The critical reception’s been favourable. And it’s already earned award nominations. Most importantly, unlike Disney’s handling of Strange World, the marketing for The Last Wish has been rock solid.
Thankfully, it’s been a solid year for blockbuster animation. Though 2022 has seen Pixar and Disney uncharacteristically on shaky form in more ways than one, films like Minions: The Rise of Gru and DC League of Super Pets continue to prove that families value the cinema experience. However, it’s DreamWorks who have added the most value to those experiences with two excellent, inventive, exciting, and revitalising films: The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
In the realm of blockbuster animation, this year belongs to the moon boy with the fishing rod.
