The only film that is bad there is Cars 2. Note that Cars was mostly created while Pixar was still nominally independent from Disney.
Brave, UP, Wall-E are all recent and great.
I admit Cars 2 was created mostly to market more toys for little boys. Disney had such a good thing with the whole Princess thing that they needed something for boys.
That’s * one* bad film.
I haven’t seen it, but I haven’t heard many people rushing to the defense of Monsters University, either. And I think it’s easy to feel a little disenchanted with Finding Nemo 2, Cars 3, and Incredibles 2 in the pipeline – not that they have to be bad, but it certainly doesn’t feel bold and original.
Agreed. But on the other hand, Inside Out.
Amen.
It certainly needs to be on the unofficial rules list.
Monsters Univ isnt bad, but it’s hardly groundbreaking. It’s pretty good, not great. They can’t all be great.
The fans have been loud in their request for Incredibles 2, many call it as the best Superhero film ever done. (I call it in the top 3, after Superman and the Avengers).
It’s a matter of personal opinion obviously but I wouldn’t rank any of those as great. They’re all good movies but even WALL-E (which I’d call the best of those three) falls a step below Megamind and Monsters vs. Aliens.
In his spectacular interview with Steven Colbert, Maurice Sendak objected to the idea that he made books for kids. He insisted that he just made books and kids happened to like them.
That’s a bit disingenuous, but there’s a valid point behind it. If you make a truly excellent piece of children’s art, and yes, shut up, I’m gonna decide what I think is excellent, kids and adults alike will be able to enjoy it. When you’ve made something that only kids can enjoy, it’s probably crap that kids themselves won’t enjoy as much as something richer.
Where the Wild Things are is an incredible work, of course. It’s a perfect prose poem to describe something about childhood, and I value it for that, yet it has subtleties upon subtleties. If you haven’t looked at how the white space in the book supports the story, grab a copy and pay attention–it’s really cool. It is clearly targeted at kids 100%, but as an adults I can appreciate its beauty.
My favoirte comparison for this principle is the book The Tale of Despereaux and the terrible movie based on it. The book is lovely and rich. I read it to my students most years, and every single time I’ve read it, students burst into spontaneous applause on the last page. One year I made the mistake of renting the movie to show on the day before winter break. The movie is horrible, changes the complex characters from the book into wise-talking Indiana Jones knockoffs. I can see how the movie enjoyed modest success in the theater, but my kids who had just finished the book were perplexed and disappointed.
So no, Pixar isn’t often criticized for making kids’ movies. All their movies are kids movies. They’re criticized occasionally for making not very good movies.
Megamind? meh.
So, what Pixar films are great then?
Up and Wall-E received 98% and 96% fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes respectively. Both won Oscars for best animated feature, and Golden Globes for the same category. I think it’s pretty safe to say that the vast majority of the viewing public considers them great movies and aren’t criticizing Pixar for making them.
One positive emotion to 4 mostly negative ones? (Sadness could be either, I suppose.)
Hell of a message there. What about Love? How about Curiosity? Loyalty? Compassion?
I already don’t like this movie, and all I know about it is the information in the quote. Small minded of me, I suppose.
So, a big-screen remake of “Herman’s Head”?
UP and WALL-E not great? Gotta strongly disagree with you there. The emotional impact of UP, the crazy non-conventional style of WALL-E that somehow worked, classic Pixar. And while Brave doesn’t hit the bullseye that we normally expect from Pixar, I’d rather watch it than the other two you’ve mentioned.
Seems to me to be a reflection of a lot of people’s actual personalities. Heck, sounds a lot like my own, to be honest, if Joy also happens to be a self-absorbed lazy hedonist.
Since when was every movie required to have a Positive Message ™, or every protagonist required to be a Perfect Hero ™? Maybe this particular protagonist is simply a bit of a whiny asshole. I think it sounds interesting.
“Hop on Pop - The Movie”
In my opinion, all three Toy Story movies, A Bug’s Life,* Monsters Inc*, and Finding Nemo are great.
Seconding your appreciation of A Bug’s Life, I’m used to being in the minority on that one. Come on now, who doesn’t love Dave Foley?
More like “Who doesn’t love Seven Samurai”
I think a lot of people are locked into an either/or mentality. You have to choose: you can like Star Trek or Star Wars, Family Guy or The Simpsons, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
In this case, A Bug’s Life came out at the same time as Antz and they got caught up in a silly rivalry about which one was good and which one was bad. In my opinion, they were both great movies and I don’t see why anyone needs to be forced into making some arbitrary choice.
I don’t think either movie really has all that many fans.
I think Ants is meh and Bugs Life is good but not great.