Oscar nominees for best animated feature

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, February 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The good, the bad, and the animated.

Animated films used to be a staple of family viewing, but fewer of them are family friendly these days. Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino with a rundown on the Oscar nominees for best animated feature.

MUSIC: [“Life’s Incredible Again” from The Incredibles]

COLLIN GARBARINO: The Oscars have been around for almost a 100 years, but the category of Best Animated Feature only began in 2001. Of the 22 Oscars given out in this category, I think the Academy has a pretty good track record at picking the winner. Classics like The Incredibles, WALL-E, and Big Hero 6 definitely deserved the honor.

But here’s the thing. Just because the Academy usually figures out which animated film is the best of the year, doesn’t mean you can trust them when it comes to their nominees. Let’s take a look at this year’s slate to separate the dross from the gold.

MUSIC: [Boy and the Heron soundtrack]

First up, we have The Boy and the Heron from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. The movie’s rated PG-13 for cigarette smoking and some bloody scenes, but otherwise it’s family friendly, though perhaps a bit eerie at times. It’s a story about a boy’s journey into a magical world to save his mother. Young kids might get a bit impatient with the pacing. But older kids and adults can appreciate the thoughtfulness of a movie about longing and the impossibility of creating a perfect world for ourselves. The movie has beautiful animation and a haunting soundtrack. I give this one a thumbs up.

Next up, Pixar’s latest movie, Elemental. Pixar used to be a shoo-in to win best animated feature, but not so much anymore. Its recent movies haven’t had the same narrative punch as the classics. Elemental is another miss in my opinion. The movie follows the story of a water elemental who falls in love with a fire elemental. Naturally, they’ve got some obstacles to overcome.

EMBER: No, Wade. We can’t touch.

WADE: Maybe we can.

EMBER: No.

The animation is graceful, but the story was cliched. It’s a metaphor for the immigrant experience with the fire elementals representing Asian immigrants and the water elementals, white folks. I felt like I was watching a colorful ripoff of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, just not as good. Pixar also indulges in some annoying virtue signaling by including gay and non-binary supporting characters. I don’t know if it was Pixar’s past reputation or the virtue signaling that secured Elemental’s nomination, but the film certainly doesn’t deserve it.

NIMONA: Our chariot awaits.

BOLDHEART: What the heck was that? And you never said you could change into me.

And speaking of movies that don’t deserve it, our next movie might be the least deserving of a nomination. Nimona is a Netflix Original movie with a cool techno-medieval setting, but nothing else to commend it. The story follows a shapeshifting demon who teams up with a disgraced knight to wreak havoc in the name of diversity.

NIMONA: I feel worse when I don’t do it, but then I shape shift and I’m free.

Don’t be fooled by the PG rating. The film is essentially gay and transgender propaganda. The LGBT agenda is the driving force behind this movie that portrays political conservatives as murderous villains.

One of the more obscure movies to be nominated this year is Robot Dreams which indulges in some nostalgia for New York City in the 1980s. Except everyone in the city is an animal.

The hero of the story is a lonely dog who buys a robot for companionship. But the path to friendship is a rocky one. This is a Spanish-French animated film, but you won’t need to read subtitles. The movie doesn’t have any dialogue, and honestly, it strikes me as a little gimmicky. Yes, it manages to tell its 100-minute-long story without words, but the project felt like it should have been a short film rather than a feature length movie. Also, the movie seems to blur the line between friendship and romance, and really. What kind of message are we getting when we see someone buy a friend at the store? Also, be aware that even though there’s no bad language—because there’s no language at all—Robot Dreams does contain some rude hand gestures.

And that leaves the last of our nominees, which also happens to be the only box-office hit: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

MILES MORALES: There’s an elite society with all the best spider-people in it?

This is the follow up to 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won the Academy Award that year. This sequel, which is only the second installment of a trilogy, might not be better than the first one, but it’s still really good. The plot twist at the end really surprised me, and I’m not easily surprised. A word of caution though: one scene contains a blink-and-you-miss-it transgender flag in the background that shows one of the heroes supports the LGBT agenda. That and some mild swearing are sad blemishes on this otherwise clever and heartfelt PG movie.

In my opinion, three out of these five nominees don’t deserve the honor, but there was a movie that didn’t make the cut that your family might want to check out. 

BOWSER: I will ask their princess to marry me in a fairytale wedding!

KOOPA: Doesn’t she hate you?

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the second biggest movie of 2023, but the Academy ignored it. It’s not edgy and it’s not breaking new narrative ground, but The Super Mario Bros. Movie is solid family-friendly entertainment. If you have any inkling of Nintendo nostalgia, and you still haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out. If for no other reason than to hear Jack Black sing “Peaches.”

BOWSER (Singing): Peach, understand, I’m gonna love you ‘til the very end.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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