Board 8 > Board 8 Film Ranking Squad Ranks Animated Movies 5 - The Rankings

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Greetings folks, our usual crew ranked 30 animated movies, largely focused on the past two years and split about equally between mainstream big-studio titles and weird independent films.
There were many strong, divisive opinions and nearly every movie ended up with at least one fan or hater. Thus I ask that you all to remain civil as the rankings unfold, everyone is entitled to their opinion even if it makes you angry (and trust me, it probably will).

So lets get this party started!

The Rankers:

Karo
Johnbobb
Inviso
Ermine (Zigzagoon)
Evillordexdeath
LightningStrikes
Mythiot
Great_Paul
Suprak
Red13n

The Movies:

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
Fantastic Planet (1973)
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Son of the White Mare (1981)
The Rabbi's Cat (2012)
Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018)
White Snake (2019)
Unicorn Wars (2022)
Chicken for Linda! (2023)
Elemental (2023)
Four Souls of Coyote (2023)
Mars Express (2023)
Migration (2023)
Nimona (2023)
Robot Dreams (2023)
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (2023)
Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds (2023)
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (2023)
The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023)
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Wish (2023)
Flow (2024)
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Kensuke's Kingdom (2024)
Memoir of a Snail (2024)
Moana 2 (2024)
Piece by Piece (2024)
The Wild Robot (2024)
Transformers One (2024)
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Scores:

39
50
73
76
92
99
118
120
130
131
136
137
141
147
152
162
172
175
175
177
177
188
189
201
203
206
229
238
246
273

Hype

I think Wish ends up as #30

Wish is the safe answer for #30, so I'll say Ruby Gillman

Im gonna go wide and guess Bunuel, give how much blowback there was at the pigeon shooting scene during the art movie list.

30. Wish

Red: 24
Ermine: 25
Johnbobb: 26
Inviso: 26
Suprak: 27
Karo: 28
Lightning: 29
Evillord: 29
Paul: 29
Mythiot: 30

Total: 273

Red: This was supposed to be Disney's big movie for their 100th anniversary celebration. To no coincidence, a character in fact is celebrating their 100th birthday, which I guess means characters in this universe live quite long as he doesn't look human-100, but this isn't explained. Instead this is a mostly shallow movie that does nothing but showcase how recent Disney is often creatively bankrupt and incapable of doing much beyond playing everything as safe as possible. The songs here are often not terrible but they never feel particularly inspiring either. Also don't think about the villain's motivations or his song at all because they really don't make much sense in any concept. He just jumps around in personality for the sake of the plot rather than in service to it.

Ermine: 100 Years of Disney huh? Wooooof
Yeah, this movie was kind of a stinker. It wasnt AS bad as I thought it was going to be but it really is kind of depressing how far Disney has fallen in the last 10 or so years. You still have a few shining stars but more often than not these days, they are just completely uninspired slop, and Wish falls right into that description. Asha is one of the least likable Disney Princesses heck one of the least likable Disney characters period. They tried so hard to make her quirky and relatable that she came off as completely unrealistic and (I hate to use this word) cringey.
Then we have discount Djali. Ill just leave it at that.
THEN we have Magnifico himself. I dunno, I feel like he could have been the best character in the film but everything is thrown out when he sees a shining light and his wishes go jingle jingle. He feels the need to tell the audience (because they are clearly too stupid to see for themselves) that he is THREATENED! So he goes and does dark magic and goes from what could have been an interesting character into one of the most uninteresting and flat villains to date.
Theres other characters. Well. If you can call them that. Asha has friends. They all have one personality trait. OK.
And now we get to the music. Man, what a let down. In most Disney movies, this is the part you can feel they are probably going to nail, despite if the movie itself still kind of sucks. I personally dont care for Encanto in the slightest, but man did it have some banger songs.
The music in Wish is just I dunno, awful? Uninspired? The lyrics for a bunch of them are just gutter trash. I dont need to tell you that, Im sure other write ups will cover that. And Im all for talking animals, but good lord I wanted them all to shut up in that stupid Youre a Star song.
Best part of the movie for me was the credits because one, it meant the movie was over, and two it gave us little cute images of all the main characters from past Disney movies that were actually good! It made me want to watch a good movie! So maybe Ill go and do just that.

Johnbobb: Ariana DeBose is a great singer, and I really dug Knowing What I Know Now. But every other song in this was so boring and forgettable that I ultimately just would've rather been watching Wish Upon.
"Magnifico is, like... serious hot sauce. Like, Sriracha hot."

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
If you really think about it Magnifico is kind of like Julius from Fire Emblem 4, I'm not going to elaborate

Inviso: So, I went into this movie having heard Wish was bad, but willing to give it a chanceand it immediately burned through my good will. Im going to get this out of the way now though: the reason it ranks here and not lower than the films below it is because ultimately, I did enjoy some of the music, and I found myself consistently engaged, even if I was engaged in annoyance more than most. Also, because its Disney, there was a CERTAIN level of animation quality, even if it felt like a definite step down from more recent Disney fare. But with that brief stint of positivity out of the way, I have so many critiques to level against this movie (and admittedly, the fact that I feel as passionate as I do really helps to boost it JUST a little bit on this list.)
For starters, this movie is just SO fucking self-referential. I get that its meant to be the big star of Disneys 100-year history, but likeit feels like there isnt a single original thought in this entire film. The opening sequence is effectively the same opening from Encanto, which is only two movies prior to this onebut unlike Encanto, where the song both conveys information AND helps to establish the personality of our main character, this song is JUST exposition, and theres no reason why our main character is the one person providing this information. And the more I think about itAsha just becomes the main character for no reason. Like, obviously the plot is sparked by her actionsbut the events leading up to the inciting incident dont really establish her as any kind of leading role. Shes just very nice and pleasant and she happens to be applying to be Magnificos apprentice despite not really demonstrating any sort of magical aptitude for the position. Like, if Disney wanted to hearken back to the golden age of their female leads being utterly without personality, they did a bang-up job here.
Opening aside, the CONCEPT behind this movie COULD have worked; the pieces are all there. You have the king of this kingdom who takes peoples wishes and sometimes grants them, and he maintains peace and order for all who then choose to live in his kingdom. But as the movie goes along, it turns out the king just likes having all this power and having the citizens wishes at his mercy, and he slowly proves to be evil and needs to be overthrown for the good of the kingdom. Its a simple story, yet the movie fucks it up by just taking so many wrong turns along the way. Like, the first big problem is that the movie allows Magnifico to genuinely appear benevolent at the start. Not only does he have a loving relationship with his wife, and he comes across as completely charming during an almost romantic musical number with Asha, but hes also allowed to provide a reasonable justification as to why he doesnt just grant EVERY wish hes given. And he only becomes somewhat petty and dickish after Asha does the whole Hey, maybe you could grant MY wish? thing that Im sure he gets all the time and keeps him from feeling like anyone genuinely cares about him.
This first issue snowballs when Magnifico seems to do a complete 180 in terms of his personality for the most minor of reasons. He sees a burst of starlight and is suddenly terrified and goes on a complete witch hunt for the person who did iteven though its not like the light actually accomplished anything that he knew of at that time. Yeah, EVENTUALLY hed have to deal with the fact that all the forest creatures and plants and fungi were suddenly sentient and capable of speech, but he hadnt experienced that shit by the time he decided I need to use this dark magic spellbook that I have locked up for some reason. Its like a switch flips, and while there are hints about it (now that I think about it, having his royal baker make cookies with his likeness isa choice), he becomes this vain monster largely out of nowhere.
This all comes to a head at the climax when Asha and her friends rebel against Magnifico and try to free all the wishes, only for him to capture and siphon up not only the wishes, but also their little star buddy. This allows him to capture the entire kingdom and hold them prisoner to prevent anyone from every upsetting the status quo of his kingdom ever again. Asha tries to fight him but Magnifico is just too powerful and she gets defeated. But then she starts singing and its COMPLETELY out-of-place nonsense in the middle of an evil sorcerer battlebut power of love triumphs over evil and Asha rouses the crowd into singing and casting off their shackles, while Magnifico gets sucked into a mirror and everyone lives happily ever after.
Now, I did not come up with this next part; I was watching this with a group and Wickle pointed it out. But the inciting incident of the movie stems from Ashas grandpa being one hundred years old, and yet his personal wish was never granted. His wish was to inspire future generations, and Magnifico specifically refused to grant this because it was too vague and he feared that such a wish would inspire rebellion against his rule. And then Asha specifically breaks into the castle to steal back her grandfathers wish and returns it to him, so he knows what he has been missing. So, in that moment during the final battle, with Asha beaten down, why does SHE sing to inspire the kingdom? Shouldnt the plot come full circle by having her grandfather start the rebellion song and HE inspires the crowd and empowers her as well? Instead, his entire role in the endgame of the film is taking a boat with Ashas wish-grieving mother across a channelthen turning around and returning to the kingdom just in time to get captured.
One of the other problems is the bizarre characterization choices in the movie. The grandfather being shunted to the side at the climax of the film is one thing, but hes still one of the better-established characters in the movie. I already discussed how Asha is verybland. Shes not all that special and the depth of her characterization is that her dad is dead. But likewere introduced to her friends, and theyre all meant to be analogous to the seven dwarfs, yet the movie almost forgets the Happy friend exists for the first half of the runtime. Sure, everyone else is reduced to one defining trait, but she doesnt even get THAT. And then when Magnifico is lashing out at Asha, the movie establishes early on that she cares deeply for her grandfather, yet Magnifico destroys her MOTHERS wish as a means of hurting Asha. Weve gotten almost NO insight into her mother, or into Ashas RELATIONSHIP with her mother, and suddenly the audience is meant to care when the mother has her wish destroyed. Oh, and I should point out that Im pretty sure the entire plot of this film takes place over the course of two days, which makes it really difficult to accept ANY of the character development we DO get (namely from Queen Amaya since no one else really grows or develops or changes over the course of the film).
All of the above paragraph is the result or Disneys insistence on jamming cutesy and funny animal characters into the film, by the way. Theres a completely superfluous baby goat in the first portion of the movie because every Disney film needs to have a cute animal sidekick. But then we get a little star sprite character that just dashes around and causes chaos while being generally adorableand said star sprite sprinkles star dust on likethe entire forest, so suddenly every animal in the film (and the trees and flowers and mushrooms) can talk. And holy crap Valentino the goat wont shut the FUCK UP. Youre trying to do this whole spy/rebellion thing, yet Valentino and the star sprite cant sit still and keep quiet for five goddamn seconds.

Inviso cont.: Like I said at the top, there are PIECES of this film that could have worked, and heres what I would have done instead. First, get rid of Ashas mother. She has no role in the movie other than to be a victim that we dont really have reason to care about. I know killing parents is cliched, but killing Ashas parents helps better establish her devotion to her grandfather, who is the heart of this story. You can still have some flashback sequences with the parents to better characterize the kind of person Asha is though: her dad wanted to be an astronomer, so Asha has a fascination with the stars; and to give her mom an actual character, lets say her mom tried to become a mage like Magnifico but could never accomplish much, so when she died, Asha started studying really hard to take on a similar role. This way you actually have a reason as to why she might be considered for the role of Magnificos apprentice.
BUT, I think having the movie start on Asha just having a job interview lacks some of the whimsy you want for this sort of fantasy tale. Instead, in the real movie, it establishes a rule that when you turn eighteen, you can submit your wish to Magnificoyet it states that Asha is a few months away, and ultimately none of this really matters. Its a world-building thing that doesnt really impact the plot. In MY version, instead of it being Sabinos 100th birthday, its Ashas 18th birthday. Her grandfather and her friends make a big deal about how she finally gets to give her wish, and she should think really carefully about what she wants, because Magnifico might just grant it. And you get a brief scene with her and her grandfather about how itll be his hundredth birthday in a few weeks and in all those years, hes never had his personal wish grantedbut theres always a chance.
So, we get to the ceremony; Asha gets to meet Amaya and Magnifico in-person and she gushes over them because its a special occasion when you get to visit the castle to give your wish. She tells Magnifico that she wants to be his apprentice and she wants to be a mage just like him, and you can kind of give some initial hints that hes not a good guy by having him subtly dismiss what shes saying (like: Yeah, sure, I get that a lot.) But then Asha actually makes her wish, and Magnifico is surprised, because she DIDNT wish to be his apprentice; instead, she wished for him to grant her grandfathers wish, whatever it is. And you can keep the whole memory thing, like she doesnt remember that she gave her wish for someone else, but she can respond when Magnifico asks why she didnt wish to be a mage like him, and she can say she has studied and worked very hard, and she wants to earn that, rather than just wish for it to come true.
This allows the movie to fix the time compression issue. We meet Asha in the morning, she has her interview in the afternoon, theres a wish ceremony in the evening, and Asha wishes upon a star that night. And then the rest of the movie goes off the rails in a day or two after that. But in my version, Magnifico (and Amaya specifically) can be very impressed by Ashas selflessness and determination, and Magnifico takes her on as his apprentice. We get a montage of scenes of him teaching her (or more likely him showing off magic while she just watches, because again, you subtly hint that this guy is a dick), and this allows us to establish the passage of time and gives a little more depth to Ashas relationship with Amaya and Magnifico. And THEN you have the scene where Magnifico shows her the wishes and they have their musical number.
You can keep a lot of the same plot beats at this point. Asha finds her grandfathers wish and asks if Magnifico can grant it. Hes a little disappointed but rejects her request, saying her grandfather wished to change the world, which could mean overthrowing his (Magnificos) rule, and he only grants a handful of wishes that wont really impact things all that much. Asha begs him and tries to reason with him, but Magnifico outright refuses and heres where we get the full heal turn: he admits that he grants a handful of simple wishes to keep peoples hopes up, but he largely leaves the grander wishes unfulfilled, because the grander the wish, the more power it provides him personally, and thats the sort of power she could obtain if she just plays by his rules as his eventual successor. Asha is horrified by this revelation, and Magnifico says hell give her a night to think it over, otherwise he might need to reconsider if she has what it takes to be his apprentice. And for Disney purposes, you can give Magnifico an evil familiar or something to watch after Asha and justify why Magnifico would let her just leave his castle unrestrained, after revealing the secret to his power (likein the real movie, he makes a show of fucking her over after revealing the secrets of his trade and then justlets her leave).
Asha is distraught, she has a few flashback scenes with her mom and with her dad, which leads to her wishing on a star, and then the magic she built up with all her studies comes and summons forth this little star sprite. And apparently there was a point in the creative process when the star sprite was able to become various animals, so just have it do that instead of magicking the forest into talking animals (and an obnoxious goat character). The familiar (lets say a black cat for simplicitys sake) reports back to Magnifico and tells him Asha has star magic on her side and now he has it out for her. You can still have the general plot beats of Asha trying to sneak back into the castle under the guise of continuing as Magnificos apprentice, but this just leads to a tense sequence where shes trying to free the imprisoned wishes, only for Magnifico to reveal both hers and her grandfathers wishes, absorbing them and harming them both. Asha escapes with the stars help, but NOW Magnifico can deem her an enemy of the state.
I think at this point, the rebellion scene where Asha gathers her friends can still happen, since she can explain Magnificos evil grip on the wishes, while the star sprite is good. And Amaya can join them because shes realizing that Magnifico has become corrupted by the power of the wishes, and hes no longer than man she married, whereas shes developed a fondness for Asha due to her good nature. And then you get a lot of the same plot beats like the siege of the castle in service of freeing all the wishes, Magnifico realizes Amaya betrayed him and recaptures the wishes and the star sprite and unleashes his malevolence on the entire kingdom in the form of his same green tendrils. This time though, he actually has a magical showdown with Asha, who in my version has actually demonstrated SOME magical skill by this point. Shes still defeated, but she visibly demonstrates that shes strong in front of the whole kingdom.

Inviso cont AGAIN: And then, you do what I said above and have the grandfather inspire the crowd to fight back against Magnifico, effectively fulfilling his lost wish without the use of magic and weakening Magnifico in the process. And since her grandfathers wish came true, so does Ashas, which allows her to grow stronger again, while further weakening Magnifico. And slowly but surely, you can have citizens in the crowd realize they dont need to rely on magic to make their dreams come true, and they take back their power from Magnifico until hes ultimately weakened and defeated. BUT, rather than trap him in a mirror, what I would have done is take Magnificos backstory (the movie establishes that his original home was attacked and destroyed) and have Asha show him compassion by finding HIS wish, which he could never fulfill on his own, and helping him to make it come true, effectively quelling that power-hungry nature since he would not need to be upset about the loss of his childhood home any longer. Everyone wins, Asha is the new head mage and Magnifico works in the kingdom to restore his honor in the eyes of the people, with a newfound lease on life.
It's SO close to being a good movie, and I think a handful of tweaks wouldve made such a tremendous difference overall. But it made for a fun write-up. For me, at least.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: This Disney 100 year milestone film created using a paint by numbers template features another princess who is not really a princess and is marred by visuals that could only be described as utterly putrid. The characters all have this washed out aesthetic that only makes them look cheap and made at least\st 15 years ago. Seriously, there are Disney Junior television series with better character modeling than this.
But as bad as the characters look, the environments look at least 10 times worse. Everything looks flat, blurry and smudged as if I am watching the film through a dirty window. I look at the The City of Rosas and I am left wondering when the fuck are the high-res textures ever going to load in.
I don't fully know what they were going for here, but hey, if you want to try and make your movie seem like it is hand drawn, how about you actually fucking make it HAND DRAWN. It's not like you aren't the studio who pioneered the serious development of the art form and are are endowed with more money than God. It's your anniversary, make it fucking happen.
Now then, the songs. The heart of any good Disney musical. Uh, yeah. So everything here is just so forgettable and lacking in magic, think like Frozen 2 only much, much worse. When something actually IS memorable, it is for all the absolutely wrong reasons. Front and center being lyrics that are bizarre AI-generated slop such as when Asha sings '(you want to) go to outer space, well hey you've come to the right place'. Rosas does not have an active space program, or any sort of magical artifacts that could accomplish such. It is also hinted without any followup that the King is an extraterrestrial as he sings of getting his 'genes from outer space'. This more than anything else reeks of machine assistance, when you have two different songs that use the exact same anachronistic phrase you can't really chalk it up to poetic license, rather it's an AI repeatedly associating the words 'star' and 'space' without fully understanding context.
Or you may be partial to the infamous 'I let you stay here for free and don't even charge you rent', which sounds pulled right out of the big book o' ChatGPT poetry. Though nothing can top the entirety of the unbridled insanity and grammatical genocide of I'm A Star'. Just listen to these so-called lines:
'When it comes to the universe we're all shareholders, get that though your system... solar!' Seriously? That doesn't even rhyme, let alone make sense.
'We eat the leaves and eat the sun, that's where all the balls of gas come from!' Cue an up close shot of a goat's ass. Charming.
I know they say 'just see the mushrooms and you'll understand', but bitch, believe me there ain't enough mushrooms in the world to make anyone understand. And this is somehow the best song in the movie.
So this is what the great tradition of Disney music has become. Forgettable dreck that can't even top a fucking Trolls movie, with songwriters that are about as eloquent as the flowers' dancing. Hell, Disney has made bad songs before, but never an entire soundtrack's worth.
Now, on to the story. Ugh. Basically, the City of Rosas is ruled by the narcissistic King Magnifico, who uses his unexplained magic powers to grant the wish of one person every year, while everyone else goes and rots. Kind of like the so-called american dream, amirite?
Anyway, there is this young girl named Asha who is salty that papa didn't get his wish granted, and thus tries to overthrow the system so everyone can have their wishes. It's only fair, right? Haha. Hahahahahahahah
Okay, so yes, Magnifico is a wish fascist, but what Asha wants is for everyone's dreams to come true without any sort of filter. I imagine there are quite a few sadists and psychopaths out there who should absolutely NOT have their wishes granted, not to even get into all the many conflicting desires. I invite you read the excellent comic series 'Eight Billion Genies' for a glimpse into what Asha's dream world would be like. It ain't pretty.
In terms of Disney musicals this is the lowest of the low, and is only saved from being a bottom 10 Disney movie period by the grace of the package era existing. It is nothing more than an hour and half of generic soulless fluff, that even if it wasn't actually created by AI, had about as much heart and thought put into it as a computer program would. You don't know how much this hurts. This was your anniversary film, meant to be a work of gratitude to those of us who have been fans of Disney animation basically since birth. And this is the thanks we get? (da-dah-da-da-dah-da-da-dah-da-da-dah-da)

Lightning: So I make this wish

Intended to be Disneys 100 year celebration honouring the history of their animated films, this film bombed at the box office and was poorly reviewed. While I did go into this with an open mind, I unfortunately have to agree that this wasnt very good. The film is full of a lot of disparate elements and just about none of them work.
The story does have some good ideas. It effectively focuses on a charismatic leader lying to his people which is very relevant today, and there is some interesting stuff early on about the establishment being too cautious while the younger generations want to take risks to improve their lives. However, none of this really gets expanded on enough and it is all largely ejected from the film as it goes on. Asha is well animated and voiced by Ariana De Bose, but does not have a lot to her other than caring for her family. Chris Pine is good as Magnifico who again, starts out as an interesting villain who does not want to ruin everything but is overly cautious and controlling of his peoples wishes, but this is all done away with in the last act when he just becomes another power mad antagonist. The other characters are all forgettable at best, deeply irritating at worst. Looking at their past work, there has been a lot of discussion over the years about the place of comic relief talking animal sidekicks in Disney films, but Valentino the goat has to be one of the most annoying of all time.
While the characters and story leave a lot to be desired, even worse than that a lot of the moment to moment writing is just bad. There are loads of awkward expository dialogue scenes and baffling lines. One particular highlight would be when Gabo in the crowd scene says he thinks Asha killed her family, but then in the same scene chides Simon for betraying her. What was that about? Furthermore, almost none of the jokes are actually funny. There is one funny joke in this film, and its when theyre looking through the crowd and Valentino says to Asha All I see is feet. Even this is more of a heh than a proper laugh line. Worst of all, the music is bad. It was a truly baffling decision to go with this style of pop music for a film like this. Which is not to say that there is only one way of doing songs for Disney movies, they have successfully changed type several times now, but it doesnt match whats happening on the screen at all and comes across as just somewhat generic. A lot of it is fine in isolation, but theres frankly no saving the opening song or This is the Thanks I Get (which almost had some decent dissonance with the harsh visuals going on but was just so gentle it didnt work) no matter what, theyre bad songs. Also a lot of them have tortured expository lines crammed in or parts that are just bad like the shareholders part. I did appreciate Knowing What I Know Now for trying something different but thats about it. I get why you want to have your centenary film not be too backwards looking and not wheel out Alan Menken for it, but was Lin Manuel Miranda busy or something?
Unfortunately the animation style is also a miss. The hybrid style can work in some scenes and the backgrounds do look good but a lot of the time it makes the models look just too simple to look good. As with the music theyre trying to launch a new style. Unfortunately it just doesnt work. The most annoying and misguided aspect of this film though has to be the attempts to connect all the Walt Disney Animation Studios films together along with the constant references to those works. The grumpy one was particularly bad. Also, LMAO at them skipping The Black Cauldron in the run through their previous films during the credits. They also skipped Meet the Robinsons for some reason, possibly licensing related. Anyway, this is a bad film.

2/5

Evillord: People have been clowning on Wish since the day it came out. Looking it up on Letterboxd for instance, this has the lowest average score out of any mainline Disney film. Yes, below Chicken Little, Strange World, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Dinosaur, Home on the Range, The Black Cauldron, and even Song of the South, which I don't know if Disney wants to count any more. It doesn't seem like much of anyone wants to stick up for this thing, and even as someone who generally enjoys Disney movies I went into it with very cautious expectations. Unfortunately I think Wish does kind of live up to its reputation, and while it was an auto-include for a list like this due to being an original project from the most famous animation studio in the world, its presence seems destined to provide an easy #30 for the list before we move onto more controversial eliminations.
Was there anything I liked? Well, the star is cute, and there's something to the idea of the wish-controlling villain Magnifico being undone by a magical little bundle of joy who is more powerful than him no matter how hard he tries and how much dark sorcery he enthralls himself to. I thought the story beat of the Queen joining the revolution against her husband was kind of nice. I enjoyed the parts during that song in the forest where raccoons were on the screen, and I liked the little constellations of main characters from most of the previous Disney films in the end credits, though I did scratch my head a bit at the fact that some films - The Rescuers, Meet the Robinsons, and Fox and the Hound - were seemingly omitted. But the fact alone that I have to go to some nostalgia-baiting in the credits to list positives probably says enough, and the strongest emotional reaction I think I had to the film was when Robin Hood showed up in that sequence.
This is a movie that's just bland and boring the whole way through. The main character is dull and doesn't have much in the way of motivations of her own, ironically for a film centered around the concept of wishing. The narrative sort of implies that stopping the villainous Magnifico, who has stolen her mother and grandfather's ability to remember their greatest ambitions and desires, their "wishes", is her wish, but in the ending where Magnifico has been defeated, the luma character has to literally grant her a purpose before ascending back to space with a wink at the camera. The main character has a large group of friends who are equally charmless and annoying. There is a talking goat, and it seems to be a theme of this list that when an animal in one of these films initially can't talk but gains this ability through some kind of magic, I will immediately wish for them to become mute again, even if only because everyone else is already blabbing way too much in most of these movies. The songs are fucking tedious and totally forgettable. But I think what really lets this movie down is its villain. A lot of the time the villains steal the show in Disney movies. Think of how personable and gripping to watch a character like Ursula, or Cruella, or Hades, Scar, Ratigan, Dr. Facilier, or Bowler Hat Guy is, how much charisma and specificity they bring to their respective films, and then contrast how dull and monologuing Magnifico is. One of his biggest problems is that they almost frame him as a twist villain but it becomes so obvious so early that he's the bad guy and they just keep trying so, so hard to make it clear that he sucks. This twit unravels because a bright light flashed outside his building. He starts rambling about how desperate times have forced him to unleash the forbidden magic he swore he would never use before a single concrete sign of the rebellion he's about to face has even materialized - he defeats and exposes himself almost without the heroes needing to lift a finger, and instead of a charismatic or daunting threat it just makes him seem pathetic.
It is a principle in storytelling that the villain should generally be stronger than the hero. It doesnt lend itself very well to drama if the obstacle the protagonist must overcome isnt challenging enough to fill their role. I think that villains like Magnifico and Captain Vidal of Pans Labyrinth, whose portrayal I complained about during the Art Films list, break this principle by having such innumerable and unsubtle psychological flaws that one wonders how they ever convinced their mooks to follow them. Of course, there is a place for a pitiful antagonist in fiction, and I analyze how I think [REDACTED], himself a thoroughly pathetic, constantly despicable character is a great villain in a writeup elsewhere on this list. I think the two main differences are as follows: firstly and less importantly, there are several aspects of [REDACTED]'s story that invite the viewer to feel sorry for him and understand his horrific behavior, which makes his character feel a little more believable and a little more complex. More importantly, [REDACTED] has one of the best secret sauces that make a compelling character: the viewer's perspective on him keeps changing throughout the film. When he's first introduced, it's easy to see him as a strong but unhinged actor in a world full of deeply imperfect people. By the midpoint of the film, after a particular watershed moment, it's clear that [REDACTED] is a far more heinous individual than anyone else in the story, but also that he's a contemptible weakling hiding behind a flimsy front of strength and charisma. And just when the viewer is tempted to dismiss him as a joke, he reveals just how dangerous he really is for all his pitiful, spineless hatred. In the final third of the film, one can almost get tricked back into thinking he's a cool bad guy, and in the context of the story he is actually inspiring to other people at this point, even though as the viewer you should know damn well he's the most wretched piece of shit imaginable. With Vidal and Magnifico, I saw them as the same shallow, obnoxious assholes the whole film through and it just made them so boring to watch.
I think what's particularly frustrating about Magnifico is that his path to better characterization is so clear in the finished project. Magnifico wants to keep everyone's wishes locked up and forgotten so they won't experience the pain of having their dreams crushed, while Asha wants to free those wishes and let everyone struggle toward them. Wish's hypothetical best self is one that actually explores that conflict of ideals and depicts a stronger version of Magnifico to defend the former position. Most viewers would be naturally inclined toward Asha's ideals, but Magnifico's point could at least be understood to some extent. Wish is too cowardly to even try to prove why Asha is right and resorts to having Magnifico commit atrocities or act like a loser - succumbing to dark magic, stealing everyone's wishes to fuel his own selfish power, turning on his own wife, showboating pettily toward Asha and throwing temper tantrums when the slightest thing doesn't go his way - to avoid tempting its audience to think. I think he could still unravel, still resort to forbidden magic, and still try to capture Star as the film goes on and his empire starts to crumble, but the most important way to keep him interesting would be to have him do all that in service of his ideals - of keeping everyone unaware of their own greatest desires - instead of in service to his own childish ego. In my idealized fanfic version of Wish, that's the version of Magnifico we get - and then instead of the goofy friendship song they defeat him with in the released film he is just completely unable to touch Star and gets BTFO'd by the force of nature he's trying to control. Also Asha's grandpa learns about his wish to inspire the new generation, fails to even come close, and then dies in despair. Okay maybe I am not the right man for the job of scripting Disney movies.

Paul: I really didnt have an interest in watching this, and only did because of this project. Very disappointing for Disneys 100th anniversary. The animation style wasnt good either. Every song is extremely forgettable, and I cant remember a single tune besides the villain song, and only because of how bad that one was. One thing I will give Wish credit for is that Im tired of modern Disney/Pixars obsession with doing a twist villain in every movie. It worked well at first but it got old fast. In Wish, we know who the villain is right away. I will definitely not be watching this one again.

Mythiot: 4

Well that's a lot to read, by crikey. The universal hatred of such an unsurprising drop doesn't do much with outliers as of yet.

Outlier:

Red13n: 6
Ermine: 5
Johnbobb: 4
Inviso: 4
Suprak: 3
Karo: 2
Evillord: 1
Lightning: 1
Paul: 1
Mythiot: 0

Fair bottom ranking. My fantasy booking would have been so much better.

"When it comes to the universe, we're all shareholders,get that through your system, solar!" has to be the worst lyric ever written for a Disney song.

There's actually a strong central premise to Wish, a central authority chooses a privileged few to have their wishes granted and ignores others while removing the ability for anyone to pursue their dreams on their own. That's ripe for allegory about totalitarianism or monopoly, but it never gets developed, possibly since it might indict Disney itself, one of the largest holders of literal intellectual property.

Also, man is the animation hideous, it practically looks unfinished!

Mythiot posted...

"When it comes to the universe, we're all shareholders,get that through your system, solar!" has to be the worst lyric ever written for a Disney song.

It's certainly up there with "Don't know if I'm elated or gassy, But I'm somewhere in that zone"

Haha this one I was prepared for! I thought this was the most obvious #30 of any list we've done because I couldn't imagine anyone liking it.

Wish (2023) D-
I straight up hated this one. I wasnt done watching everything yet but Johnbobb made a comment like wow all the movies this time were pretty good and I specifically remember thinking to myself wait is Wish a different movie than the one Im thinking of? I hadnt watched all of Wish before but I did start it with my kids during one movie night and twenty minutes in two of them were like can we watch anything else instead so I put on Three Ninjas because that somehow seemed like the better option. That was my entire context for Wish before and honestly I shouldve left it that way.

Wish, to me, is Disney at its absolute worst. It is the most navel gaze-y, derivative, bland corporate slop that cant even muster up a whiff of the sort of magic that this movie constantly references. This is very much giving vibes of knockoff Disney movie, the kind of stuff that pops up on Tubi and I think was made to trick grandmothers that are babysitting and trying to put on a movie. Everything about this movie very much feels like someone was following a checkist of what made past Disney movies successful and forgot to spend time actually putting some charm and personality and heart into the film. It feels like a movie that was made by a group of people that were not excited to make it. This was no ones vision it is a movie Disney popped out because their new film time alarm went off and no one had put together a better one yet.

Wish feels like eight different Disney movies Frankensteined together into this ugly blob that is begging for you to just kill it to put it out of its misery. I think it was intentional. I mean, sometimes I know it was intentional. It doesnt always make sense or fit but it at least feels like they meant it to be that way. Like with her gaggle of idiot boring friends. At first I was like why are there so many of these losers? and then I was like oh wait its a seven dwarfs reference? and then I was like why are there these idiot seven dwarf stand-ins? It doesnt add anything to the movie. They arent likable, they arent funny, there are seven characters here doing the work of what couldve been done by like 2-3, and theyre just sort of there taking up space. At one point theyre trying to get in a door and I feel like each one of them has a line just because the writers felt like wed forget about them if they didnt actually say anything. It very much feels like someone went hey we should make a seven dwarfs reference! and then some people in the room laughed and one person was like how? and then everyone else shoved that person in the closet for being a nerd.

One of the characters literally yells out this is why Im GRUMPY DO YOU GET IT DID YOU MISS THE REFERENCE HMM SEE LOOK FUNNY!!! Theres a lot of the movie that is like this, where I feel like it just does something to make a reference to a different Disney movie and that is the entirety of the idea behind the bit. They call a deer Bambi. Ha? Chris Pine wizard looks at a wish and it is the plot of Mary Poppins. Ha ha? This is the lazy way to do easter eggs and it seems to be the only way the writers thought of ways to actually sneak them into the story. Every now and then the movie stares at you and goes OTHER DISENY MOVIE REFERENCE and that is the entirety of the bit.

That is all more of a minor complaint though. The thing I really don't like is not necessarily the direct references, but how it feels like Wish is taking ideas and themes from popular Disney films and lazily using them in lieu of actual ideas. Hey people love talking animal characters right? Boom heres a goat. And a squirrel. And a bear because why not. The goat is cute and the star is cute but they arent these fun, interesting characters that need to fill that sort of role. They very much feel like someone was like oh make sure you have a couple of cute characters we can turn into stuffed animals and that was why theyre in this movie. You get the dead dad origin story and the villain song and animal side characters and it feels like theyre here just because they were in other Disney stories.

Things in this movie are not contextualized in a way that makes them emotionally resonate when theyre happening. Asha likes to draw. Ok, cool, why? She shows the king her flip book and then she pulls out her notebook where she doodles the wishes in the kings evil wish chamber and it seems like maybe it is a part of her character but they just drop that entirely. Why does she like to draw? Was it important to her dad? Does it mean something to her? The entire ending doesnt really make sense unless youre just assuming Disney magic. They literally sing their way through defeating wizardry. Is music magic? Does music mean something? Or have we just seen enough Disney movies to know that when people start singing together some serious shit is going down so we just sort of nod our heads and go along to it. Characters sing because this is a Disney movie, but it isnt as if music itself is important to Asha or her family or the people of the island. Some corny scene where her dad is singing to her and she glows a little like the star makes them glow, something like that to make what is happening make sense is important. It hits all these beats that were all expecting them to hit, but it doesnt at any point make me feel like it is earned.

I dont know if this is a hot take or not, but I also hated the art style in this. This is one of the ugliest Disney movies Ive ever seen. Part of it is the specific style which just does not work for me. I get that they were going for sort of this storybook aesthetic which is a fun enough idea but I dont think they really nailed the execution here. It has the look of something unfished. I kept looking at the backgrounds and thinking to myself is that how they were supposed to look or did they fire a couple of animators midway through and forgot no one was putting the finishing details on things anymore? The character models are also awful. Like, truly ugly. The closest thing I can think of is characters from like a mid-afternoon Disney tv show based on an actual movie that people liked. It is a flanderized version of a thing people normally like. Like much of the movie, there is just no charm or heart or style and you have these generic bland characters in this generic bland movie meandering their way through a generic bland script.

Wish is what happens when you force AI to watch 100 hours of Disney film and ask it to write a script for you based on that. There are probably worse movies on this list (well, at least one) but I dont know if there was one I liked less than this one. Im still debating if I should give it the bottom spot or not because at least it was a full film with a coherent story. But in terms of all the important stuff heart and charm and personality it has none of that. Even stuff Disney usually does well like musical numbers fell flat here for me. I think the only one I liked was Knowing What I Know Now. The part where the queen pops in and theres this pause before she joins in? That was the one part in this whole movie I thought was good. Everything else was a mess of bad ideas that have done better twenty times before.

That is an incredible spread for Wish. I was quite confident in it being #30 because while there are some very disparate tastes in this group it feels like a movie that no one would want to stick up for. It is nice for everyone to be able to agree that Wish sucks balls before we start flaming each other over the upcoming films.

I think Ruby Gillman will be #29, it also feels like something we can just about all agree isn't very good.

Suprak did you actually do writeups for the movies? I didn't receive any with the list, I'm not sure if that was in error or anything. If you have others you want to send I can put them with the other writeups for subsequent rankings.

PrinceKaro posted...

Johnbobb:
Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
If you really think about it Magnifico is kind of like Julius from Fire Emblem 4, I'm not going to elaborate

I love that game. I think the big comparison is that they're both possessed by a demonic book. I actually like Julius as an antagonist, but one more thing he does share with Magnifico is that they're both villains I was disappointed by due to the lack of complexity in their characters. Julius is said to have been a kind child before becoming the host of the evil god Loptous, and there are some signs of remaining humanity in him such as some amount of care for his girlfriend (herself a character who felt like she had unexplored narrative potential). I really like the idea of a redeemable, almost unwilling anti-Christ figure, but most of the time you see Julius he just rambles about how much he enjoys murdering children or something. It would have been nice to see more flashes of his non-evil self.

PrinceKaro posted...

Suprak did you actually do writeups for the movies? I didn't receive any with the list, I'm not sure if that was in error or anything. If you have others you want to send I can put them with the other writeups for subsequent rankings.

I did but I only got seven done yesterday. Im at eight now and I was going to try to get them all done by today/tomorrow. Once I do Ill send them to you but for now I can just post them as stuff drops!

PrinceKaro posted...

Inviso cont AGAIN

PrinceKaro posted...

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Having this back to back was the funniest part of all of that

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

I wasnt done watching everything yet but Johnbobb made a comment like wow all the movies this time were pretty good and I specifically remember thinking to myself wait is Wish a different movie than the one Im thinking of?

I had not watched Wish at that point

I was mostly just happy we weren't getting like Trolls 3 and The Boss Baby 2

Tag

Wish sucks.

There were many strong, divisive opinions and nearly every movie ended up with at least one fan or hater.

Red: 24
Ermine: 25
Johnbobb: 26
Inviso: 26
Suprak: 27
Karo: 28
Lightning: 29
Evillord: 29
Paul: 29
Mythiot: 30

This did make me giggle. We rarely are in complete agreement like this!

Wish genuinely might be one of the least likable movies I've ever seen. I was just curious and I checked rotten tomatoes and it has a 48% critic score which seems impossible. But it also has an 80% audience score, which seems impossible-er. I just don't know how someone could like this unless they were just so enamored with Disney that they don't care about the specifics of what they're making.

Im going to take a wild guess for the big money odds we no longer do and say Transformers One is next.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Im going to take a wild guess for the big money odds we no longer do and say Transformers One is next.

You are insane LOL

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
If you really think about it Magnifico is kind of like Julius from Fire Emblem 4, I'm not going to elaborate

Oh my god

To be fair that 48% critic score is the third lowest in Disney animation history (fourth if you count Pixar)

Zigzagoon posted...

You are insane LOL

As the boards certified biggest lover of animals, this is one of the few that didnt feature any actual animals and thus must be ELIMINATED.

True!

Oh my.... EvilLord and especially Inviso's write-ups are literally tl;dr. Maybe I'll take a crack at reading some of these later. I didn't have the same seething vitriol for Wish as some of you did, but of the sixteen films that I've watched (not for this ranking project obviously, I'm just a fan of animation and caught most of the recent ones during their theatrical runs organically) I doubt it escapes my bottom 5. I found it quite uninspired and "mid", as the kids say these days. It wasn't at all worthy of the hundred years of celebration hype ascribed to it before, during, or after its release, and the version of it that got left on the cutting room floor that could have salvaged the project just makes me bitter in retrospect for what we were deprived of. #neverforgetStarBoy #orvillaincouplegoals

29. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

Paul: 13
Suprak: 17
Ermine: 23
Red: 25
Inviso: 27
Evillord: 27
Johnbobb: 28
Lightning: 28
Karo: 29
Mythiot: 29

Total: 246

Paul: Im probably ranking this one higher than I should be, but I enjoyed it. I like the idea of a family of krakens that avoid the water to hide their kraken powers. I also really enjoyed that they made Ariel the villain.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Ermine: If I had a nickel for every time a movie came out that heavily featured a young girl that suddenly realized she could turn into a giant creature and had an overprotective mother that was trying to hide this fact from her, and also that only the females of the family had this ability for some random, completely unexplained reason, Id have two nickels, which isnt a lot, but its weird that it happened twice.
Seriously though, its actually crazy how similar to Turning Red this story is. Well, maybe not so much the story, but the characters themselves. And OH BOY, we have another Generational Conflict Movie! My Favorite!!
This movie, like Turning Red, is just completely NOT for me. The one thing that it has on Turning Red is that the characters are at least slightly more enjoyable. It doesnt help that it has one of the most predictable stories of all time. And I know kids' films are often predictable, but come on, this one has to take the cake.
Theres really not much to say here. Its slop. And if you enjoy slop, then eat up and have your fill.
God, what a disappointment after the amazingness that Dreamworks gave us with Puss in Boots 2. But thats the Dreamworks classic. Sometimes they hit a home run and sometimes they completely and utterly strikeout.

Red: This is literally just Turning Red but worse in every aspect and released a year later. It is just too damn spot on. I didn't need to watch exactly the same movie a second time.

Inviso: Man this movie was more vapid than I could ever have expected. Like, within the first ten minutes, my mind thought People already dont like Turning Red, and youre making this die-ass version of Turning Red. Now, keep in my that I like Turning Red, so Im not your average board 8er, but I still found this movie really lazy and dumb. Like, it couldnt even go the most basic route possible in terms of an animated movie plotline. Teenager going through puberty-style changesfine. But it does such a bare-bones job of establishing the world Ruby lives in before suddenly turning this into a weird Princess Diaries style world where Ruby is the princess of a kraken kingdom. Also, youre already doing a twist by making the krakens the good guys and the mermaids the bad guysso you dont really need a SECOND twist where the mermaid girl is actually the evil queen of all mermaids. That just becomes a complete anti-twist, because bad guy is ACTUALLY bad guy is the end result. So yeah, while this kept my attention (which is more than I can say about some films below it), this was really really dumb.

Evillord: No matter how many of these animated film lists we do, the war between the furries and the art snobs rages on. These demographics are very stratified, much talked-about, and definitely influence how the rankings shake out. There are always a couple dark horses - I'm thinking of Over the Moon, Ron's Gone Wrong, The Girl Without Hands, or to a lesser extent The Red Turtle - that place as well as they do because they're held up by one of these groups while placing among the bottom 10 in every list by the other. Likewise, there has been many an instance of a film falling well below where one might expect because one of these voting blocs unanimously trashed it. The top and bottom spots, however, always go to films that bridge the gap between the two, that furry voter and art snob voter alike can agree are exceptional - or exceptionally poor. I think Ruby Gillman has the vibe of one of those movies. I see Wish as the big favorite for last place, but Ruby seems like it has a good shot at #29.
To be fair, I didn't think it was as dreadful as the reception made me expect, but I have a hard time imagining anyone feeling excited about this movie, or even liking it enough to place it outside the bottom 10 on what is overall a great list of films with few obvious weak spots. It is kind of just a trite and unimpressive movie, feeling like it's giving "Luca at home" and "Turning Red at home" at the same time. Perhaps throw in a bit of The Little Mermaid at home and The Mitchells vs. The Machines at home with the stylistic choices too. But then it also just feels like a disposable Netflix film meant to provide white noise while you scroll through tik tok - or at least that seems to be the audience the exhausting banter among the teen characters is aimed for. There are some *ugly* character designs here too, especially that skater kid/love interest with the terrifying proboscis.
There were a few things here and there that I liked. The scene where Ruby first transforms into giant Kraken form, has a panic attack, and her mom shows up to calm her down was kind of cute. I think the film was at its best when it first introduced the Mermaid character as a friend to Ruby. This was a revelation that came right after Ruby's grandmother, who had previously been established as a sort of untrustworthy character and the center of a story about generational conflict due to being completely estranged from Ruby's mother, had finished lecturing Ruby about how evil Mermaids are. There were a few minutes where I wasn't quite sure what route the story was going to take: would Ruby's friendship with this mermaid draw out all these generational conflicts, leaving Ruby and her new friend forced to confront long-held prejudices and try to forge a future of mutual trust? Or would it just go with the Grandma being totally right to hold what are essentially racist views because the Mermaid is a "twist" villain? Unfortunately, within about 5 minutes the mermaid starts suggesting that they should go retrieve a trident that let the Mermaids challenge the Kraken kingdom in the backstory and it becomes super obvious that it's the latter. Indeed, I think the biggest weakness of the narrative is that all the doubt about Ruby's mom and grandma and their views on the relationship between humans and krakens mostly gets forgotten in favour of beating up the evil mermaid, and once she is defeated everyone just has a family get together and hugs it all out and it cuts to credits or some shit. Ruby's teen issues from the early parts of the film also felt like they got forgotten for the generational conflict story which then got forgotten in favour of fighting a big mermaid. Remember the very visceral and iconic way that they take out Ursula in The Little Mermaid by impaling her with the bow of a ship? And then the way her body sinks gradually into the ocean leaving behind a spray of bubbles? I watched it three days ago and I can't remember what the visuals for the mermaid boss fight in Ruby Gillman were like. I think they fired a magical laser beam? The movie would've been more interesting if the Mermaid was not actually a villain. I think it would've still felt like a lesser animated film cobbled together from aspects of better, more popular movies, but at least it wouldn't have added a tally mark to the count of films on this list that sidestep dealing with the actual issues their stories present by distracting the viewer with a big explosive climax of mind-numbing special effects.

Johnbobb: In The Incredibles, there's a scene in the end of the movie where Dash competes as a high school athlete, and his family cheers him on to finish in 2nd so he can feel the joy of competing without taking it away from everyone else. In Ruby Gillman, there's a very similar scene in the end where the younger brother uses his powers to compete by being impossibly better than everyone else as a throwaway joke, and I think that's a pretty clear distinction of the type of the thing that keeps Ruby Gillman distinctly separated from good animated family movies. It takes plot pieces of movies like Turning Red and Luca and mixes them with the trashy rubber/plastic/neon art style of movies like Trolls and simplifies them to have the absolute simplest messages and emotional stakes. It's best moments were just poking fun at things like ASMR Youtube channels and The Little Mermaid, but it has little of its own defining personality.

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
blatant neo liberal propaganda

Karo: In this weird scuffed fusion of Turning Red and Luca, a young girl must cope with how her changing body is bringing out her sea monster ancestry and complicating her pointless teen bullshit.
For you see, Ruby is actually a fearsome Kraken! Or not really so fearsome, as Krakens are just misunderstood and subject to prejudice. Cute moral, huh? Remember this point because we'll get back to it later.
Anyway, there is a new popular girl at Ruby's school, who is eventually revealed to be a Mermaid. Now, in Kraken culture, Mermaids are seen as monstrous and bloodthirsty, but despite this Ruby gets to know the newcomer and defends her new friend from her mother's scrutiny. This is sweet though not particularly original, and the movie seemed on track to end up the same way.
But this was not to be. For the film soon goes completely off the rails in the most vile, horrific and unforgivable way imaginable. It is something so catastrophic that it utterly ruins its story, eviscerates its own moral, and enshrines it as quite possibly the most inappropriate children's movie ever created.
Remember that earlier lament about how humanity never gives the Kraken a chance, and only sees them as violent monsters? For Ruby's Mermaid friend is actually evil and manipulates and betrayed her. The Mermaids are all psychotic and the ongoing prejudice and mistreatment of them is justified by both the script and the characters. Oh go fuck yourself sideways six ways with a rusty sewer pipe.
So yeah, the Kraken have the self-proclaimed 'right' to rule the oceans, Mermaids are inferior or even inherently evil and they should remain confined to their tiny little patch of the sea. Your parents are always right, especially when they are being judgmental or bigoted, and if you try to show any empathy for people different than you will be betrayed and hurt. I'm not really sure what I expected from this movie but 'Apartheid under de sea is totally awesome' was not up there.
I certainly wouldn't let any children of mine within 50 feet of this disgusting garbage. I'd sooner have them see Fritz the fucking Cat, who honestly would probably teach them better moral values.

Lightning: Maybe shell hate me, like I hate my mom.

Unfortunately this film can only be described as aggressively generic. Every single cliche associated with modern childrens animated films is here, what is worse is that a lot of elements are seemingly lifted directly from more successful animated maritime movies, such as the beady eyed seagulls and the family of sea creatures. Of course, these aspects were all done better in those films. Similarly, the family dynamics are vastly inferior to what you find in Encanto, Turning Red, or The Mitchells vs The Machines. You can find all elements of this done better elsewhere.
All the writing here is just fantastically bland, and it is peppered with attempts to use modern speech that fail to hit the mark. The film also relies too much on generic pop music sequences and even ends with a trite dance number. All the plot twists are telegraphed well in advance. The metaphors also are extremely broad, switching quickly from handling topics more associated with older teenagers to those of later teenage years. If you have seen any recent animated films at all then youve basically seen this. With all that said there are also some upsides. It does look quite good, adding a near-claymation effect to the characters. Ruby herself is quite a likeable protagonist as well. This is not an outright bad film, however it is so generic I have to criticise this film for that reason. Everything about this film seems entirely uninspired.

2/5

Mythiot: 4.5

Outlier:

Paul: 17
Suprak: 15
Ermine: 11
Red: 10
Inviso: 6
Johnbobb: 5
Evillord: 3
Karo: 2
Lightning: 2
Mythiot: 0

Yeah that checks out.

lol I didn't even realize Ruby Gillman was a Dreamworks film, it felt like it was made on a $10 budget. We're done with the films that I felt like were locks for the bottom now, but I'll guess that we're staying on uncontroversially mediocre movies for the moment with Migration.

We should probably get out actual bad movies first, I think, Evil.

Yeah, I suspected that one was going to be pretty low for most.

That one WAS frustrating. I stand by my statement that they tried to make a twist ending in which the twist was that there WAS no twist.

Zigzagoon posted...

We should probably get out actual bad movies first, I think, Evil.

Agreed, but aside from the 2 that already dropped I think the few movies I dislike will stick around a while. As for the films I think you're thinking of, I expect them to drop in the bottom 10 but not necessarily right away due to having a few ardent supporters.

I may have referenced you in one of my writeups, Evil. And for that, I apologize.

Unless you actually did rate said movie highly. Then I do not apologize and am proud I guessed correctly.

LOL

Zigzagoon posted...

I may have referenced you in one of my writeups, Evil. And for that, I apologize.

Unless you actually did rate said movie highly. Then I do not apologize and am proud I guessed correctly.

LOL

Oh you probably did, my list this time will probably be quite predictable if you've seen how I rated the movies in Animated 3 and 4. I bet you're talking about my #2, possibly my #8, both of which are movies I would expect you to hate.

Aw, I feel bad for Wish. It isn't a great film at all, but the potential it had really feels like it should have carried it out of last place considering there are a couple of films on there I think are more actively bad than this one. At All Costs is one of my favorite Disney songs in a long time; granted it makes no sense in the context they used it in terms of singing to floating bubbles... you just have to remember that song was initially composed as the love duet between Asha and Starboy before Disney decided to try and make him a mute plushy seller instead. As someone that has this strong attachment to the company for sentimental reasons, it hurt a lot that this film just wasn't up to par. I still can't understand the decisions they essentially unmade as it relates to the plot and characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHKzNcT5fKo

Never forget what could have been.

PrinceKaro posted...

It's certainly up there with "Don't know if I'm elated or gassy, But I'm somewhere in that zone"

thank you for this.

"Get that through your system. Solar!" isn't even the worst line from a song in Wish. Did y'all somehow forget "I let you live here for free, and I don't even charge you rent" is from the same movie?

Guys stop. My hatred for Wish can only get so intense.

I do have a write up for Ruby Gillman so Ill post that when Im at my computer later!

Not familiar with much of the list but that seems like a good last-place pick

PrinceKaro posted...

Im probably ranking this one higher than I should be,

Correct

GenesisSaga posted...

"Get that through your system. Solar!" isn't even the worst line from a song in Wish. Did y'all somehow forget "I let you live here for free, and I don't even charge you rent" is from the same movie?

You need to pair it with the "shareholders" line for the full effect. Not only do they try to make the concept of SHAREHOLDERS into something timeless and whimsical, they make the most forced slant rhyme I've ever seen to go with it.

Oh yeah, Ruby Gillman. Aka, "What if we put Luca, Turning Red, and smatterings of other mainstream 2020's animated movies into a blender, filtered out anything unique or personal about them, and served up with some truly hideous character designs.

The nose. The damned boyfriend's nose. Everything about Ruby Gillman's movie is so forgettable except for that horrible nose. That nose is going to haunt my nightmares long after I'm unable to put it into context. I'm going to be on my deathbed and it'll be that nose that blows me to Hell.