Worst to Best Animated Features of 2017 Part 2

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com. It would help support my work, and keeps the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this editorial!)

Welcome to part 2 of the list! If you have not yet read part 1, then please do so to see films that will not be on this part of the list. We are counting down from the worst to best of the animation offerings from 2017!

28. The Nut Job 2

While it’s a marginally better sequel with better animation, better physical gags, a decent villain, and more entertaining voice work, it’s still not much better than the original. It’s still annoying, filled with annoying characters, and underutilizes its gimmicks. The Jackie Chan mouse is barely used. If you are going to have Jackie Chan, use him! Plus, this was only greenlit because the first one made money in a slow month back in 2014. Well, I hope the company that’s going under hoped it was worth the cash they spent and lost on it.

27. Batman & Harley Quinn

While slightly better than many of the mediocre DC-animated features, it’s still a mess, no matter how you look at it. Most of the jokes don’t work, it’s too focused on Harley Quinn fan service, the story abruptly ends, and the animation quality dropped a lot in certain scenes. However, when the jokes did land, it was a laugh riot, and probably has one of the best mid-credit scenes out of any DC movie. It’s also always nice to see Kevin Conroy as Batman. Not the best, but not the worst, it’s pretty much okay.

26. Blame!

It might have some fun fight sequences, some creepy designs, and a decent twist that caught me off-guard, this film works better as a world-builder than anything else. I didn’t care much for the characters, the animation was clunky, and sometimes, it looked like they duplicated character models. It has its moments, but I can see why this one got buried.

25. Smurfs: The Lost Village

Man, even being the best of the films based on the Smurfs franchise still doesn’t mean much. It has visually beautiful animation, pleasant designs, good voice work, and some likable characters, but it seemed like they stopped halfway through production, and made it another forgettable animated feature. I do like a couple of aspects of it, but it still could have been better.

24. The Boss Baby

I do think the hate this film got back then and still does is a bit much. It’s really not a bad movie. It has some of the best animation from 2017, some good laughs, and physical comedy that made me watch it as a film to just turn on and chill to. However, I still found the emotional investment of the characters to be lacking, because I never cared about what happened. It also shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Animated Feature, but it’s been almost a year now, and it’s time to let that go. I’m also not really looking forward to the sequel, but I hope it can be just as zany and visually entertaining as this one.

23. Despicable Me 3

Man, this franchise got to the third film fast! While I think it’s technically the best one of the franchise, with great animation, a fun villain, the Minions not being in the film a lot, and Gru still being the best character of this entire franchise, it still falls flat. It had so many potential story arcs that it could have been fleshed out, but it chose to be the safest animated feature of 2017. Sooner or later, Illumination, you will need to start putting more emotional effort into your films, or people are going to get tired of the Minions and this franchise fast.

22. Cars 3

Speaking of being the best film in an alright franchise, Cars 3 was a surprise. While it has its own pacing problems, more wasted potential with its story and villains, it also has the best animation, some of the story moments were touching, and Lightning is more worthy of my time than in the other films. It’s still the final film in a trilogy that gave Pixar their first official bad movie, but still.

21. Ferdinand

While I can definitely still be mad that this film wimped out on its more serious tone, it’s forced family film tropes, and how it also shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Animated Feature, I still found myself really enjoying Ferdinand. It has some of Blue Sky’s most likable characters, best voice work, and some of the darkest story moments. I just wish it committed to its tone and not take the easy way out.

20. Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

I could complain about how Brother Blood is a weak character, and the fact that if you have seen the 2000s Teen Titans show, or read the comic, you will know what happens, and they kind of kept one of the ickier parts of that storyline partly in the film. Outside of that, it’s still a pretty good flick! It gives the rest of the team time to be fleshed out, the action is great, the writing is better, and Damian isn’t the lead character! It did essentially sequel-bait as well, but overall, I still enjoyed this DC venture, and I hope the next film is even better.

19. Captain Underpants

Now, we are heading into the films I loved from this year. Captain Underpants must be one of the biggest comedic surprises from last year. It had vibrant and wonderful animation, great jokes, was hugely entertaining to watch, and it was all done with a budget of $30 mil! That’s incredible! Sure, it had a few jokes that didn’t land, and its humor is not super original, but I find myself watching this film a lot!

The Other Side of Animation 108: Batman & Harley Quinn Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com. It would help support my work, and keeps the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

Well, after a year of nothing, but positive reviews for a project, DC finally has what could be considered their worst outing of the year so far. Well, at least in the animation scene (I do know Justice League is not doing well). I mean, it’s bound to happen to some companies. Even GKids, Disney, and A24 will have a dud or a film that isn’t as good as their other offerings. I think it’s more disappointing, since DC has been really good so far this year. I enjoyed LEGO Batman, Justice League Dark, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, and even though I haven’t seen it yet, Wonder Woman is one of the more important films of the year. Too bad that winning streak had to come to a halt with Batman and Harley Quinn. Probably one of the more hyped direct-to-video films from DC, this was promising from every aspect. It had Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester returning as Batman and Nightwing, Kevin Michael Richardson as one of the villains, and it was going to be this big comedic action film with Batman fighting alongside Harley Quinn, one of the most popular comic characters of all time. Sadly, as anyone can tell you by now, this film was not well received, and it was just another disappointment from DC’s animation front. Let’s dive into this Sam Liu-directed experience, and see what went wrong.

The plot starts us off with Poison Ivy, voiced by Paget Brewster, teaming up with a rather low-key DC villain, Floronic Man, voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson. They break into a lab, and take a scientist hostage to unleash their evil plan. Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, teams up with Nightwing, voiced by Loren Lester, to find out what exactly is going on, and what specifically did the two plant villains steal. Unfortunately, if they want to find out about anything, they need to get in touch with Ivy’s long lost friend, Harley Quinn, this time voiced by Melissa Raunch of Big Bang Theory fame. Can they find Harley, and team up with her to stop Poison Ivy and Floronic Man?

It’s really hard to talk about this film, and not bring up one of the biggest elephants in the room/problems with the film, Harley Quinn herself. She has been everywhere, and has enjoyed critical acclaim from all fandoms of DC. Sadly, she is incredibly hit-and-miss with this film. I don’t want to be too harsh on Melissa Rauch, because I know she has gotten the most criticism out of a lot of reviews, but she is part of the problem. Her voice for the character sounds like an incredibly obnoxious parody of how Tara Strong or Arleen Sorkin voiced her. It got grating quickly with her forced accent. I mean, she would be fine if the script and story did more with her than to be a sex icon. Listen, she is a very lovely character, but a lot of the jokes and scenes with her are focused around sex appeal, and I’m not some teen anymore. Her relationship with the Joker ruins any kind of sex appeal, due to how horrifying and damaging it was. The film just decides to give her a one-night-stand with Nightwing, and some scenes of fan service. Again, I wouldn’t mind a more mature edge to everything in this movie, if it didn’t clash with the more comedic tone of the film. This film is probably one of the more violent DC animated films. You will see blood, and the Floronic Man kills multiple people in the movie. The sleaze and the violence would have been better if the jokes landed. Sadly, the jokes don’t always land, and rarely did I laugh in the movie. The film tries out a lot of childish humor, adult humor, and clever humor, but it felt like too many people were trying to make the film’s comedy work. For example, they have a fun scene with Rob Paulsen playing two characters singing a country song, but then do full-on Harley Quinn fanservice, and it makes the fun part lose some weight. Also, does DC have something against Swamp Thing? This is the second film from DC this year with Swamp Thing, and he only appears in the last five minutes, and does nothing. He just spouts some philosophical garbage, and then says “peace!”, and sinks back into the swamp. Now, part of that is very funny, but at the same time, why have him in the movie if he isn’t going to do anything?

The jokes and the action would probably be better as well, if the animation was better. At times, the animation is typical straight-to-video quality, but some scenes will dip in frames, and it’s really obvious that they spent more money on some scenes than others. It’s such a shame because they are using the old 90s animated series style. You know they can make that style work for multiple projects. I even noticed some weird details, like you can see Nightwing’s eyes through his mask, and you don’t know why they did that. His eyes are already super expressive with the mask on.

So, what is great about this movie? Well, the voice cast is pretty outstanding. While I know I dragged Melissa Rauch through the ringer, the rest of the voice cast does a great job bringing their characters to life. Kevin Conroy, Kevin Michael Richardson, Paget Brewster, John DiMaggio, Rob Paulsen, and Loren Lester all have great performances. One of my favorite scenes is actually the scene I talked about above this sentence, where Paulsen plays twins singing a great country song. While the comedy doesn’t always land, when it does, the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, though if you want a funny DC-animated film, you should just pick up The LEGO Batman Movie. Still, the comedy does work when the scenes line up with everything going on.

Batman & Harley Quinn is a huge disappointment, and it doesn’t help Bruce Timm’s later work, since his reputation was hit with The Killing Joke last year. Like I said above, if you want a more comedy-focused DC animated film, you are better off getting The LEGO Batman Movie or Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders. It’s honestly a shame this didn’t work out as well as it could have, because the idea is really good. A dark comedy Batman movie. That sounds like it would sell well. However, if this is the best they could do, then maybe it’s best they stick to more serious stories. Not the worst of the year, but it’s still not that great. Well, let’s jump into the countdown to 110 reviews, and check out Leap! Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the review, and I will see you all next time!

Rating: Rent it!