Better Animated Feature: 2011

Personally, if I wanted to keep winning Best Animated Feature awards, I would have simply not released Cars 2.

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Preston: At the start of 2011, Pixar Animation Studios was on one of the biggest hot streaks any film studio, in any medium or genre, has ever enjoyed. They’d been merely one of many contenders for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in its first six years, claiming a “mere” two victories and two nominations from their four releases in that span. But starting in 2006, Pixar would put out a new film every summer for eight straight years, and the second through fifth movies in that stretch took home the Oscar four years in a row, an unmatched achievement widely recognized as the studio’s all-time peak. After the spectacularly strong run of Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3, it seemed like the award was Pixar’s to lose for the indefinite future.

Then they put out Cars 2, a film so bad that it didn’t just lose Best Animated Feature—it wasn’t even nominated. In retrospect, it’s a rather remarkable turning point in the history of animation, one whose aftershocks are still being felt today. Pixar dropped more duds in the following years—never in such great numbers that their successes (like 2015’s Inside Out and 2017’s Coco) went unrewarded, but often enough that their stranglehold over BAF was permanently broken. It wasn’t until 2019-20 that they once again took the award in back-to-back years, and the door that had temporarily slammed shut on other major studios and more niche contenders was thrown wide open for good. Plenty of factors have contributed to the growing respect in the film industry for animation, but it’s clear that 2011 marked a transformative shift away from the polished, kid-friendly, Pixar-centric view of the medium that had held sway for years.

Of course, as important as it was that Pixar missed a step and indirectly gave reason for alternative sources of excellence in the field to be appreciated, it was equally important that the remaining slate had talent worth appreciating. And boy, did it ever—the nominations range from niche foreign hits to a dramatic DreamWorks epic that happens to be my personal favorite film of all time. And then there’s the winner, a film that probably would’ve been unduly overlooked in many other years, but rightfully earned its deserved acclaim in 2011 en route to a stunning Best Animated Feature victory. It’s a delightfully unlikely field of contenders, and one that set the stage for greater variety and depth in the future of animation.

It’s one of the toughest decisions the Academy has ever had for this award, and possibly the most surprising winner they’ve ever chosen in the end. So: did they get it right?

The Nominees

Rango (won Best Animated Feature)
A Cat in Paris (nominated)
Chico y Rita (nominated)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (nominated)
Puss in Boots (nominated)

The “Best” Animated Feature: Rango

Eli: Rango is an outlier among Best Animated Feature winners in two notable ways—both of which, as far as I’m concerned, it shares with 2022 winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and nothing else.

The first is that it’s an American film that isn’t overtly kid-friendly. This is a bigger deal than it might seem on the surface, as America at large definitely still views animation as a medium for children’s entertainment even today. It’s not every year that a gritty film like Rango, which contains a relatively unusual amount of non-cartoonish violence, coarse language, and adult activities, becomes so popular with a general audience in the United States. There’s a whole subsection of Rango’s Wikipedia page about the time an anti-smoking advocacy group (unsuccessfully) petitioned the Motion Picture Association of America to rate the movie R instead of PG. Meanwhile, Disney had already banned depictions of smoking in their movies back in 2007.

The second is that its director is not primarily known for animation. People forget this, but animation and filmmaking are two completely separate arts; you’d be surprised how insular the animation industry can be in tabbing directors. In a rare shift from this trend, Rango was directed by Gore Verbinski, best known for directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This goes a long way toward explaining the previous paragraph.

Verbinski’s eccentric style translates pretty well to animation, probably helped at least somewhat by the fact that he’s still working with Johnny Depp: the same lead actor he directed in the Pirates movies. Depp’s great performance as Rango is the driving factor behind this gem of a film—an action-packed Western that deconstructs many of the genre’s most oversaturated tropes and quips at them with ease.

Rango isn’t a perfect movie. The female lead is mostly useless and probably gets made fun of for her disability more than she contributes to forwarding the plot, and like a lot of Westerns, it doesn’t exactly treat Native American culture with the utmost respect. But overall, it’s just a fun movie to immerse yourself in, if only for how unusual movies like it are in the American animation canon. Holistically, I’d be hard-pressed to say Rango wasn’t award-worthy, and it’s pretty clear to me why it took home the gold.

What about everything else?

The Other Animated Features

A Cat in Paris — Leah

Nominated

Y’all know by now that I love small, indie foreign films. I was actually following this movie before it was released in the US way back in the day, enough to get the DVD when it was available stateside. I’m also a sucker for anything about cats, so a movie with a cat right in the title has to be good, right?

A Cat in Paris gives us a peek into the double life of Dino the cat, which in turn connects the lives of the people he interacts with. Dino lives with Zoe during the day as her beloved pet cat, while at night he sneaks off to go out with a burglar named Nico. Zoe is a young, nonverbal girl, traumatized by the death of her father at the hands of notorious criminal Victor Costa. Her mother, a police superintendent, is working tirelessly to bring him to justice, but that leads to her not being the most involved parent. Zoe follows Dino out one night to see where he goes and the movie follows her misadventure as she discovers her double-crossing nanny, a kindhearted burglar, and Costa himself.

I think the biggest strengths of A Cat in Paris are its unique visuals and animation—especially character animation. For instance, Nico’s movements are very fluid as he travels above the streets of Paris, moving across roofs and expertly dodging capture. The character designs in the movie are very unique, with long faces distinctly shaped. They almost look like drawings of people you might expect to see in a European art museum, adding to the film’s cultural identity.¹ I would recommend checking this movie out just to be treated to 70 minutes of gorgeous animation.

Wait a second, only 70 minutes? That seems low. And this is the shortest movie we’ve discussed in Better Animated Feature so far. It’s definitely faster-paced than the other films in this article, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This film does have a complete narrative arc and doesn’t waste any of its runtime. Zoe and her mom both get to go through full character arcs, and I think the film does a good job showing a family broken by a terrible crime and learning to heal in the aftermath.

That said, I did finish the film wishing that more aspects of the story had been fleshed out. Spoiler warning for the end scene, but I wished we’d gotten to learn more about Nico’s motivations. Why was he a burglar in the first place? What about the events of the film made that unknown motivation change, to the point he became part of Zoe’s family? I think the movie would have been better if they’d had a few more minutes of runtime to show that aspect of his character.

When looking at the case for this movie, it’s still a cinematic achievement to create a unique film like this on a low budget (only $7.5 million). I think the distinct art style and fluid character animation are the strongest aspects of the film. The narrative is also solid, though it does feel sparse at times. I really do like this film and appreciate getting to see something different from the mainstream, big-budget nominees (and I can comfortably say this was a better feline film than Puss in Boots), but it’s really hard to argue this over Rango. That movie also had a very unique art style while feeling more narratively complete. It’ll certainly stick with me longer than A Cat in Paris. Still, don’t write this one off, as it’s still well deserving of its nomination. The unique art and the solid story kept me engaged and I’m glad we got to see something a little different this year. If you enjoy noir films, this movie will probably be right up your alley. 

Verdict: Not a better animated feature

Chico y Rita — Leah

Nominated

Chico y Rita is a nominee that shows animation doesn’t just have to be for children. The medium can be used to tell mature stories that deal with concepts best appreciated by adults. This movie has sex, cheating, gun violence, drugs, and a story that is definitely geared toward adult sensibilities. (Age-inappropriate content aside, I can’t imagine many children being invested in this sort of love story.) Of course, being for adults doesn’t inherently make it better than a movie for kids, so how well does this film compare to the winner?

Chico y Rita is a love story between a piano player (Chico) and a singer (Rita), both living in 1940s Cuba. It follows the twists and turns of their lives through their music careers in both Cuba and the United States. It delves into the history of Cuba and the United States and how the two histories are related. It also is an intimate look at a love story and how forces both external and internal can keep two people who love each other apart.

The movie has great visuals. I love how they portrayed the music and parties and social life of late 1940s Cuba, and the character designs were distinct and helped convey the character’s personalities. The musical element also added a lot to the film’s atmosphere. Since jazz is so central to this movie, it’s only fitting that the soundtrack leans on it to evoke the atmosphere of the jazz scene in both Cuba and the United States.

Chico y Rita has a lot to say about historical chauvinism and racism. When Rita becomes a popular singer and movie star in the US, she still faces segregation and racial discrimination. The movie doesn’t shy away from depicting the realities of the time period, giving a window into some of the sins of the USA’s past.

The relationship between Chico and Rita is also fraught with conflict, some of it self-inflicted. Chico cheats on his girlfriend with Rita (leaving her in the dark about this until his girlfriend comes home to discover he cheated). A lack of communication between them also ultimately results in Rita going to the US, heartbroken over Chico.

After watching this movie, I asked Eli what they thought and they told me that “it was really hard to root for Chico”.² He treats Rita very poorly at times, perhaps reflecting the toxic masculinity of the time period. This movie isn’t a perfect, pure love story where the issues are only external to the relationship; there’s a bit of introspection needed too.

Overall, I think this movie deserved its Oscar nomination. It’s well crafted in style, animation, and sound. I appreciate animation being used to tell a more mature story with cultural significance. I think those elements are what could make its case for being a Better Animated Feature. However, Rango is very tough competition.

Where I think Rango gets the edge over Chico y Rita is in its story. Rango has one of the strongest stories seen so far in this award category. It shows a mastery of the craft of cinematic storytelling, and engaged me in a way that Chico y Rita did not. This movie doesn’t hit Better Animated Feature status not because it was bad, but because Rango is so outstandingly good.

Verdict: Not a better animated feature

Kung Fu Panda 2 — Preston

Nominated

“As almost a representation for Carl’s old self, Muntz has to die.”

I came across this quote, from Up director Pete Docter in the film’s DVD special features, while doing research for the 2009 piece in this series, covering the year that film won Best Animated Feature. It’s been rattling around in my head ever since, in part because I think there’s something about it that defines what makes Up’s story so great even beyond the oft-praised opening sequence, but also because it suggests something fascinating about the dynamics between heroes and villains that I found myself coming back to often this year. In particular, it’s a valuable concept to keep in the back of your head in comparing the two heavyweight contenders for the 2011 award, because this year indulges us with not one but two of the best hero-villain contrasts in animated film history.

I’m here to talk about Kung Fu Panda 2, and believe me when I say that there’s plenty to talk about there, but I’ve got to give Rango its flowers here too. The mayor makes for a fantastic villain, representing a more evolved version of the character Rango starts out as: a cynical, charismatic manipulator who doesn’t believe in heroes at all, reflecting and reinforcing the protagonist’s disbelief in himself. Very few films deconstruct their genre conventions to such impressive results; the striking similarities to classic Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance have been noted before, and there’s more than a little Fantastic Mr. Fox in the soul of this story, but it’s hard to think of anything else I’ve seen that gets at what it means to be a hero quite so well. In many, many years, I’d pick Rango as the easy BAF winner…and probably have to complain about some merely okay high-budget film undeservedly taking the award over it.

Fortunately for Rango, and arguably for respect of the medium as a potential space for films targeted towards older audiences, it did win Best Animated Feature because 2011 was largely catastrophic for the big studios. Most famously, Pixar veered from the runaway success of back-to-back-to-back-to-back award wins with Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3 directly into Cars 2, clearly their worst film ever at the time and still widely considered the weakest in their catalogue today. Disney’s Winnie the Pooh didn’t earn a nomination, while Blue Sky’s Rio…mainly just cemented that Blue Sky wasn’t a big studio, despite Ice Age’s success. DreamWorks had two opportunities to capitalize on this downturn, and one of them whiffed completely, as Eli details in their review of Puss in Boots below. But the other…

…well, okay, I’m not gonna beat around the bush anymore. Kung Fu Panda 2 is my favorite film of all time. There’s a vast litany of reasons I’ve loved this movie from the first time I saw it, and that I’ve rewatched it so much over the years. It’s utterly gorgeous, for one thing—not just in animation but also aesthetic, presenting some truly beautiful visual storytelling through the recurring use of white, black, and red to underscore its core storyline. The score is so good that it’s the reason I got into soundtracks in the first place (which, over a decade later, are still my most-listened-to genre, with Kung Fu Panda 2 still right near the top). It’s an incredibly well-paced movie, too, rising seamlessly from one perfectly-choreographed action sequence to the next throughout its final hour without ever getting repetitive or stale.

But what makes this film is its story, and I think that Docter quote really gets at why this plot resonates so much, too. Shen is an utterly fantastic villain, and he contrasts Po even more perfectly then Tai Lung, providing a constant and direct threat from the midpoint on. Much like Rango’s mayor, he captures perfectly what threatens to undo the protagonist—a stubborn determination to deny the trauma of his youth while simultaneously tying his identity to it—and expresses it in an utterly larger-than-life character, brought to life magnificently by Gary Oldman’s impeccable voice acting and a sensational visual design. He’s the perfect combination of a cunning manipulator, a spiteful villain, and a tragically pitiful wretch, lighting up every scene where he appears in whatever way the story needs. And the way his mask falls away over the final scenes, when his efforts to retain control finally fall short completely and he resorts to pure, manic rage, is about as satisfying an end as any single-film character arc has ever had.

The dynamic between Po and Shen is the defining feature of Kung Fu Panda 2, and the thing that pushes it over the top into 10/10 range for me, but it’s also worth noting just how much of the movie supplements that central theme. The subtle B plot centering on Po and Tigress’s friendship gives her character some wonderful understated depth, establishing her as far more than the cold antagonist force she was in the first film; the idea of a storyline in which she learns to communicate and empathize better is obvious, but the execution is as good as you could possibly hope for.³ Mr. Ping, whose role in the first film is likewise to cast doubt on Po’s ability, also gets a much-appreciated moment to shine in the first act (and the final scene). Even the wolf boss, a bit player who doesn’t even get a name, has a meaningful role to fill—the fact that Po completely does not care about his weight-related insults reinforces that the lessons of confidence and self-worth from Kung Fu Panda haven’t been forgotten.

There isn’t a wasted plot, scene, or line in this movie. It’s a simple enough story that a child can appreciate it, but it’s also so surpassingly beautiful, magnificent, and well-told that it deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest films of all time, animated or otherwise. This may be a closer call than it would be in many years, but ultimately, Kung Fu Panda 2 is about as close to a perfect movie as there is. As good as Rango is, there’s only one choice.

Verdict: Better Animated Feature

Puss in Boots — Eli

Nominated

When we were all figuring out who would watch which 2011 nominee(s), I pounced on Puss in Boots specifically because I am a fan of the Shrek franchise and I had never seen it. I thought that it would, at worst, be as bad as Shrek the Third—which is to say “mid”—but I also thought that because Puss has been my favorite part of the franchise since he was introduced in Shrek 2, his standalone movie would have a higher floor than the mainline Shrek franchise.

And boy, if only Puss in Boots displayed Shrek the Third’s level of quality. This is just bad, man.

The animation is broken; half of the motion looks stiff and some of the movements look like glitches. The pacing is awful; I have no idea what exactly the movie is supposed to be about until approximately halfway through the 90-minute runtime, and then it throws several more curveballs at you in the second and third acts. The jokes are way too horny to be legitimately funny; there’s this exchange in the climax between Puss and Kitty, the love interest this movie introduced, that’s just drenched with sexual tension and goes on for about three beats too long. The creative team seemed to be under the impression that Spain and Latin America are interchangeable (they aren’t); why is Lady Gaga’s “Americano” the end credits song?

Worst of all, the most interesting part of the movie—the Puss in Boots origin story—is restricted to a bloated flashback near the beginning, leaving the rest of the film as an obnoxious adventure/revenge plot featuring the most annoying egg in the history of cinema.

The sole saving grace for this movie is strong voice acting from stars Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, and even the egg-voicing Zach Galifianakis. I thoroughly enjoyed all three performances, but they were pretty much all there was to keep my attention throughout the film.

This piece is already long enough, so I’ll spare you any more of the gory details and just state unambiguously that consuming Puss in Boots is akin to eating cinematic cat food. I haven’t yet seen the sequel everyone seems to love, but if it’s really that good, that’s a bona fide miracle.

Verdict: Not a better animated feature

Running Tally

2001: 2 better (2 nominated; 3 snubbed)
2002: 1 better (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2003: 1 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2004: 0 better (2 nominated; 1 snubbed)
2005: 2 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2006: 3 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2007: 3 better (2 nominated; 1 snubbed)
2008: 0 better (2 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2009: 2 better (4 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2010: 3 better (2 nominated; 4 snubbed)
2011: 1 better (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)
TOTAL: 18 better (28 nominated; 17 snubbed)

Ah man, finally a break from Pixar. Join us in two weeks for…more Pixar? Seriously?

Next: 2012 (4 nominated; 1 snubbed)

1. Modigliani’s paintings are cited as an inspiration for this movie’s style.

2. Editor’s note: It’s not inherently bad that your main character is hard to root for, but when your movie suddenly swerves into trying to take down institutional racism, you can’t impart your message as effectively if the audience isn’t invested in the success of the victims. —Eli

3. Surely she wouldn’t get so completely written out of the franchise after this that she wouldn’t even have a speaking role in Kung Fu Panda 4, right? …right?