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2001 Animated Feature Oscar Analysis

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is one of the newer Oscar categories that was first created and regulated by the Academy in 2001. It’s arguable whether or not this was the right time to debut the category. To me personally, it was a horrible time as 2001 is a particularly mediocre film year when it comes to animation and the category was at least a good decade or too late having in mind a strong, diverse input from the studios since at least the 80s. But at least we got the award, even if the results would mostly be troublesome later on.

So in this first slate they nominated just three films as the competition was lacking. Two of those were major films from DreamWorks Animation and Pixar with Disney Animation staying rightfully behind as Atlantis disappointed almost everyone with its quality. The third flick came from Nickelodeon surprisingly enough. I find the slate overall fine for the standards of this particularly weak year, but the wrong movie won and that third slot could have been better fulfilled.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

3. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Yes, one of the weakest ever nominees in this category is Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. It’s a film that is obviously fine for little children and especially boys and its heart is in the right place, but everything else is just mediocre. The characters are nothing to write home about, its SF tale is rather silly and the animation was atrocious and dated the moment it came out. It’s a childish, forgettable movie that adults can barely enjoy and thus I am rather frustrated that it got nominated for a freaking Academy Award.

2. Shrek

Shrek is a solid movie that’s certainly far from DreamWorks best or worst. The animation is definitely excellent, the characters are highly developed and memorable plus its take on film references and especially fairy tale parody elements worked tremendously well. But the pop-culture references and overly modern music annoyed me so much to the point of becoming frustrating. And it’s difficult to watch this movie singularly on its own merits when you take into consideration how awful its influence proved to be on American animation in years to come.

1. Monsters, Inc.

Unfortunately the best movie from this slate lost the Oscar to a more timely movie, but Monsters, Inc. remains timeless in quality and is still an iconic animated film that ranks among Pixar’s highest achievements. Mike and Sully were created here and they’re an instantly classic protagonist duo. The animation is absolutely gorgeous and groundbreaking for its time. And of course Boo is adorable, the humor is pretty good, the story and its world are immensely authentic and the emotion is highly effective. It’s an amazing movie for any age.

Film That Should Have Been Nominated:

Waking Life – Richard Linklater’s Waking Life is certainly far from the best entries of his filmography. It’s lacking a stronger connective tissue, but it still deals with some rather important themes and its dialogue is particularly strong. It’s not a great film, but it’s certainly miles better than Jimmy Neutron so it should have been nominated.