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Ranking 2000s Animated Short Oscar Winners

The 2000s was not a great decade when it comes to the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It is not the worst either, but it’s certainly far from terrific as half of these films are either okay, solid or downright weak (and bad in one instance). But half are very strong and even excellent so without further ado here is my ranking of all ten of these admittedly very diverse films:

10. Ryan

Ryan is such a bad movie. It is a documentary which follows the life of Canadian animator Ryan Larkin who had a drug problem. Now many critics absolutely adore this film’s visuals, but I find them to be terrible. The animation is original, but in a negative way as it looks unappealing in both character design and colors. The story is also dull. I just really disliked this film.

9. The ChubbChubbs!

This flick admittedly is much better than the previous one as it is not bad and it is perfectly passable as fun, throwaway entertainment, but that’s about it. The characters are very annoying and the entire film is obsessed too much with music and is never at all original in its approach or story. It was an odd childish cartoon choice for the Academy to honor.

8. Le Maison en Petits Cubes

Melancholic in tone, very well animated and so well scored, Le Maison en Petits Cubes is definitely technically commendable, but still disappointing in plot, emotion and especially pacing as it is overly slow and thus dull and uninvolving to be appreciated more. It’s artistic, but never engaging.

7. The Moon and the Soon: An Imagined Conversation

After ‘Ryan’, this is another underserved Oscar winning animated biopic which is definitely thematically interesting and it has solid dialogue for sure, but the animation itself is terrible and I really dislike the tendency to mix live-action with animation such as by using old photos etc. That makes the film very cheap which is certainly the case here.

6. Logorama

Logorama explores the world of logos and their impact on our everyday lives and is thus a very interesting, authentic experiment which is so well animated and with excellent world building and score. But it is also a mixed experiment in execution as the characters are forgettable and the plot itself needed some work.

5. Father and Daughter

Father and Daughter is sweet, emotional and definitely incredibly animated. I liked its score too. It is emotionally and artistically a very accomplished film, but it is also very slow and uninspired in terms of storytelling as ‘Bunny’ already did a similar thing and that film did it much better.

4. Peter and the Wolf

This Peter and the Wolf adaptation is not the greatest as it is overly serious in terms of approach and tone, but it’s still the first very good film on this list owing to a couple of wonderful sequences, solid characterization, an interesting realistic take on its story and particularly accomplished, lovely animation.

3. The Danish Poet

The Danish Poet’s animation is nothing to write home about and the narration is excessive, but the film is very sweet, charming and so well scored. It explores chance and coincidence and what power they hold in our world and how they can literally change and bring lives. It’s a fascinating theme very well explored in this lovely Norwegian production.

2. For the Birds

For the Birds has terrific CGI animation and fantastic character design. The sound design is also great and the characterization is strong. Although it does depend on its ending a bit too much, what an ending it is! It is a hilarious gag perfectly executed and one of the funniest in all of short animation. For the Birds truly is one of Pixar’s best and most wonderfully childlike works.

1. Harvie Krumpet

The clay animation in Harvie Krumpet is fantastic with excellent character design and obviously great attention to detail. Adam Elliot’s direction is reliably superb and he brings us another classic in this film which features lovable quirky characters, terrific storytelling and such a wonderful ending with a great optimistic message. This stop-motion charmer is thus easily the best Oscar winning animated short of the 2000s.