Pixar Feature Films Ranked Part 1

Following my look at the Pixar theatrical shorts and movie-related spinoffs, it was inevitable that I get round to rewatching and ranking all of the Pixar features themselves. Pixar’s contribution to the animated feature rocked the industry and they have continued to produce quality films across multiple decades. There have been a few bumps in the road along the way and this first part will take a look at those, alongside some of the mid-tier material. There are still some great films in this part but I rated everything here 3.5 stars or under. There are some obvious rankings (hello Cars 2. How’s the bottom of the pile looking?) and some hot takes (check out who I made my poster boy for this first part!) but I hope you enjoy reading about my journey through Pixar, however vehemently you may disagree with my ranking.

28. CARS 2

Imagine if you heard there was going to be a new Toy Story film and you were really excited… then you found out it was going to focus on Rex as the main character. This scenario roughly equates to John Lasseter’s worst mistake when he decided to make Cars 2 and throw the spotlight on Mater, a patience-testing character even in a supporting role. Lasseter conceived of the plot when he was travelling around the world to promote the first Cars film and kept wondering how Mater would react to the various different cultures. Basically, he came up with the same idea as the producers of every sitcom spin-off movie ever made: if you can’t think of anything new to do with the characters, send ‘em on holiday. With Cars 2, the golden age of Pixar had reached an end. There were still plenty of great films to come but that consistent critical ecstasis that characterised the studio’s opening fifteen year run would never again be recaptured. Tellingly, the only previous chink in this armour had been the first Cars film, which received lukewarm, if still broadly positive notices. Toy Story 3 closed out the golden age beautifully but it also kicked off a decade of Pixar releases of which only four were original premises, with the other seven being sequels or prequels. While plenty of strong films emerged from extending certain worlds, there was also an overwhelming feeling at the time of a studio either running short of ideas or conquering their fear of the cash-cow’s teats. Fortunately, not absolutely every property was squeezed for more juice. We never had to suffer through Rata-two-ie, A Bug’s Afterlife or WALL-F. But as the first non-Toy Story Pixar film to get a sequel, Cars seemed like a distinctly odd choice.

Making Mater the protagonist of Cars 2 was not an idea without precedent. The Car-Toons series of short films mostly foregrounded him, as did the 2006 short Mater and the Ghost Light, released as a bonus feature with the Cars DVD. But there’s a difference between carrying a 5 minute short and an entire feature. While Lasseter obviously had a fondness for the character, I can’t say I’ve often seen that replicated elsewhere, even with easy-to-please kids. Mater isn’t just annoying, he is a curiously tonally inconsistent creation. The toothless hick persona that serves as his basis, while in keeping with Cars penchant for playful stereotypes, has an edge of adult cruelty about it and the fact that he is voiced by an X-rated comedian who occasionally uses his own catchphrases in the dialogue blurs that line further. Though Mater’s antics are too broad to appeal to most adults, the writers also occasionally seem to squarely target an older audience. There is a joke in Cars 2 about Mater watching pay-per-view porn. It’s veiled enough to go over the heads of children but it’s right there nonetheless. As if there weren’t enough questions going around after the first film about how cars reproduce, now we’re actually encouraged to consider how a tow truck might masturbate. 

If placing Mater centre stage and sidelining Lightning McQueen was arguably the decision that punctured the tyres of Cars 2 before it even got out of the garage, the idea to make it into a Spy movie spoof poured sugar in the gas tank for good measure. For one thing, the 60s Spy genre had already been very well homaged by The Incredibles, so Cars 2’s return to that well feels like Pixar retreading old ground. For another, the slick, action-packed intricacies of Bond-style blockbusters feel especially ill suited to a franchise with such cumbersome characters. Anthropomorphic vehicles can only really do certain things convincingly. One of those things is racing, so it’s frustrating to once again see a racing plot set up and then marginalised by a less compelling story. There’s also something really annoying about Cars 2’s Be Yourself message. I love a Be Yourself message, I don’t think we can have enough of them in kids’ films, but what we don’t need is a Be Yourself message in which the subject is so selfish and obnoxious. Mater’s blundering is often detrimental to his friends and is carried to its catastrophic conclusion despite repeated warnings. Suggesting that everyone else needs to make adjustments to accommodate Mater seems more like it’s licensing kids to be thoughtless and wilfully ignorant. Maybe the fact that I personally really don’t like Mater weighs heavily on this impression but to me Cars 2 feels like a misjudged attempt to remake The Simpsons’ famously cynical episode Homer’s Enemy but with a heart. It does not work.

Pixar has always been a studio celebrated for their storytelling skills but Cars 2 is like a car crash and not the kind you can’t look away from. With the tedious mistaken identity spy story interspersed with a scant handful of badly paced racing sequences, the film feels overcomplicated and poorly blended. It’s as if Lasseter’s world tour has just been recreated thought-for-thought, without any development process. This currently stands as the last film Lasseter ever directed and, given the accusations of sexual misconduct that subsequently emerged, it says a lot about the quality of Cars 2 that many people still blame this film for Lasseter’s disappearance from the spotlight (actually, that probably says more about people’s screwed up priorities). Despite being an acknowledged hot mess, Cars 2 still made money and fortunately it did not kill the franchise, as Cars 3 would eventually rejuvenate it by finally leaning into the racing storyline. Lasseter’s contribution to Pixar’s legacy is not to be underestimated and his time in the director’s chair yielded some of the studio’s classics but, at least where the Cars franchise is concerned, it seems significant that it finally put the pedal to the metal when Lasseter climbed into the back seat.

27. THE GOOD DINOSAUR

The Good Dinosaur is not a film that I have a great deal about which to say. That is illustrative of its main problem, which is a level of blandness that is rarely found in Pixar films. Even Cars 2, which is still a worse film, seemed to be groping towards something more interesting than is present in The Good Dinosaur. The best moment in the whole film happens immediately and was also prominently used in the trailer. It shows the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs narrowly missing the earth, as the giant beasts casually lift their heads to watch it pass. It’s a funny moment that sets up an interesting premise about what would’ve happened if the dinosaurs had survived. The answer? A boring, episodic journey narrative, the like of which never seems to go extinct in lesser animated features. Now I’m as partial to a journey narrative as anyone but it has to be more than the sum of its parts. Finding Nemo did the journey narrative brilliantly by threading its numerous story beads onto a confident, consistent thematic string. The Good Dinosaur was renowned for having an extremely troubled production process, mainly due to the story just never coming together. From the evidence of what reached the screen, it never really did. This is a film of ideas, some decent, some weak, some utterly bizarre, pitched into a bucket and allowed to bob around freely in the hope they might somehow coalesce. Staple tropes like the tragic loss of a parent and the development of an unlikely friendship are present, while an underworked effort to make The Good Dinosaur into an unconventional take on the Western genre lingers tentatively on the outskirts of the plot. There’s a potentially decent film to be made out of these ingredients but with a starting point as played out as dinosaurs, those ingredients better be blended and baked well. This is the sort of cookie that you have to stop chewing every couple of mouthfuls to remove the chunks of baking powder from your tongue.

Given how it has become one of the big Pixar punching bags, I don’t want to spend too long tearing strips off The Good Dinosaur, but I must say that even with lowered expectations this was a bit of a chore to sit through. I went in expecting a perfectly reasonable adventure scuppered by the legacy of Pixar Damoclesing above it. What I actually found was something quite poor by any standards. I’ll give it the backgrounds. Nature always figured heavily as a plot point in the development of The Good Dinosaur and the scenery the creative team came up with here was unprecedented in its magnificence. But reviewing a movie by praising its backdrop has the same connotations as reviewing a gig by talking about the light show. It seems a conscious decision was made to make the dinosaur characters more cartoony as a juxtaposition with the realistic scenery. I have no problem with that. God knows we wouldn’t want to get stuck with another version of Disney’s Dinosaur, where the characters were often barely distinguishable from one another. But I really don’t like the character designs in The Good Dinosaur. They are sometimes blocky and awkward, while at other times the dinosaurs look too toy-like, as if they would feel rubbery to the touch and would squeak if you squeezed them. The voice cast, though generally adequate, are scuppered by bad material, with Sam Elliott only really standing out because of his amazing voice. The main problem here is Jeffrey Wright. Much as I love Wright and his warm, soothing voice, his performance as the patriarch Poppa Henry sounds like Mufasa working with idiot boards. I’m pretty sure it’s a problem for your story if the audience reacts to the pivotal death of the father with the word “Phew!” Maybe that’s just me but for the mercifully short period of time Poppa Henry appears, extinction has never looked so appealing.

It’s amusing to me that in 2000 Disney made a very bad film called Dinosaur and in 2015 Pixar made a film called The Good Dinosaur. Was this part of a plan by Pixar to make good versions of all Disney’s worst films. If it had been successful, could we have expected The Good Tarzan, The Good Chicken Little and The Good Black Cauldron to have followed in its wake? Sadly we’ll never know because The Good Dinosaur doesn’t come close to living up to its own modest adjective.

26. LIGHTYEAR

“In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. It was from his favorite movie. This is that movie.”

That’s a hell of a starting point for a Toy Story spinoff film. Unfortunately, I’m not at all convinced this was the starting point for Lightyear. For one thing, that is a terribly written caption. It takes a great idea and delivers it with a hurried first draft simplicity that drains it of all its dramatic heft. It reads like it was appended to the film fifteen minutes before the premiere. Given how many changes a Pixar film usually goes through across its lengthy production, I wouldn’t be surprised if the notion that Lightyear was the film that inspired Andy’s obsessive fandom emerged well into the story development process. It’s a shame as if this had been the seed from which Lightyear grew, I imagine the result would’ve been a lot more fun. To justify a five year old’s adoration, Lightyear would have to be a lot more fast moving, a lot less convoluted and a great deal more spectacular. It’s hard to imagine a barely school-age child sitting through more than about five minutes of the Lightyear we got. What’s more, Lightyear misses a great opportunity to present a playful period piece in the style of mid-90s family filmmaking. What we get instead is clearly a 21st century film. Some critics used this oversight to attack Lightyear’s inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters that certainly wouldn’t have been given such prominence in a 90s family film unless they were a punchline. It’s a fair observation but these criticisms almost invariably came loaded with a homophobic subtext and if you’re going to pinpoint problems with Lightyear’s shaky claim to retro significance there are far more obvious problems than anachronistic inclusivity. Lightyear is simply too boring to convince as a child-pleasing 90s blockbuster or even, as its box office take confirmed, a 2022 blockbuster. A best-selling toy range based on this seems about as likely as the My Dinner with Andre action figures wielded by Christopher Guest’s character in Waiting for Guffman.

Fans keen to preserve the prestige of the Toy Story franchise spent a lot of time declaring that Lightyear isn’t a Toy Story film. That’s sort of true and sort of false. Lightyear isn’t about the Buzz we know from the Toy Story films. For one thing, he was a toy. A toy imbued with the personality of the Lightyear we see here, as is made clear by some early dialogue that mirrors Buzz’s opening lines in Toy Story, but a toy nonetheless. What we’re seeing in Lightyear isn’t even the real human equivalent of Buzz. If the suspiciously eleventh-hour-sounding caption that opens the film is to be believed, what we’re actually watching in Lightyear is a human actor portraying the human version of Buzz in a film. While this arguably pushes Lightyear further from being a Toy Story film, that stinking caption puts paid to such a defence. It confirms that this film was supposedly released in the Toy Story world. Andy saw it (and somehow liked it), which means toy Buzz could plausibly sit down and watch this too (which would probably be even more excruciating an experience for him that it is for us). Lightyear may not be about the toy version of Buzz but Pixar have irreversibly hitched it to the Toy Story world when someone hastily scribbled that opening caption on the back of a napkin. Mature adults can easily disregard it if they so choose but as a film whose concept seems to be seeking to appeal to the kid in all of us, Lightyear disappoints in just about every respect other than its robot cat.

Lightyear’s concept wasn’t unprecedented. In the early 21st century, before Toy Story 3 was even in production, there was a Walt Disney Television Animation series called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Although John Lasseter reportedly hated the series and sought to erase it from the Toy Story canon, Pixar did create brief computer animated segments to supplement the traditionally animated episodes. In these eerily lifeless interstitials (if you’ve ever yearned to see a version of Woody voiced by Tom Hanks’s brother Jim, this is the place!), the toys in Andy’s bedroom eagerly sit down to watch Buzz’s televisual equivalent. Although Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, still absent from Disney+ at the time of writing, was not held in particularly high regard, Lightyear does at least honour the possibility that this Toy Story spinoff series could just as plausibly have been an animated offshoot of Lightyear itself. And while what I’ve seen of the series is not overly inspiring, it is certainly preferable to Lightyear. If you told me that Andy’s obsession with Buzz Lightyear was inspired by Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, I’d certainly buy that notion more readily. But Lightyear itself, as far as I’m concerned, is lost in space.

25. WALL-E

From the moment of its release and right up to the present day, WALL-E has been hailed as a masterpiece, one of Pixar’s greatest achievements and one of the crown jewels of the animated medium. It’s hard, then, to find yourself in the position of being one of the few people who really don’t like WALL-E but that’s where I am right now. I’m willing to recognise the fact that I’m the anomaly here and that WALL-E obviously works for so many people in a way that it never has for me. There is much to admire here, chiefly in the film’s considerable ambition and good intentions. For a mainstream animated feature to attempt a largely dialogue-free story is commendable, while the environmental issues it addresses were and still are in dire need of continued discussion. But in both cases, where most people see a delicate grace and biting satirical urgency, I find WALL-E to be obvious, cloying and confused. 

From an ideological standpoint, WALL-E has been accused of everything from anti-corporate liberal fascism to pro-capitalist conservatism but one of the main problems for me is that I simply don’t find the character of WALL-E himself charming or interesting. I can understand why so many people did fall for WALL-E but in his every cutesy gesture and mawkish head-tilt I can only see animators striving to charm rather than actual charm itself. Early on, when WALL-E imitates a dance routine from Hello Dolly! I feel the same aversion to letting my heart melt as I do when confronted with try-hard images of pets dressed in human clothes. I’m an easy mark when it comes to sentimentality but WALL-E’s antics bring out the cynic I made a concerted effort to bury years ago. Chaplin and Keaton were an acknowledged influence for WALL-E, in particular the celebrated first act which features just WALL-E, EVE and WALL-E’s pet cockroach, but honestly I see very little similarity between the little robot and these geniuses of silent cinema. WALL-E swings between sentimentality and crash-bang slapstick but it rarely marries the two convincingly as Chaplin was consistently able to do. Instead, it goes “awww look, WALL-E is making doe eyes at another robot. How swee… oh, a load of trolleys have fallen on him.” Again, I must acknowledge at this point that a lot of WALL-E’s subtler strokes probably rely on the viewer being enchanted by his winsomeness. If you’re tuned in to his physicality from a more sympathetic standpoint, the emotional engagement may make it easier to spot the nuance. But the skill involved in a human being executing physical comedy and the skill of an animator rendering an approximation of it are quite different and I don’t think the direct comparison made by many critics accurately describes what we see in WALL-E. I suspect the silence and the sentiment played a bigger part in perpetuating the Chaplin references than any of the detailed but blandly executed routines we actually see.

The first 40 minutes of WALL-E remain the most acclaimed and, though I honestly find them a bit tedious, I can appreciate the work that has gone into making something distinct from the expected tone and pacing of the average mainstream animation. But after those 40 minutes I genuinely feel that WALL-E becomes quite a bad film. The revelation of what has become of the human race sees Pixar venture into an area of overt preachiness that it had so far artfully avoided. That they do so by way of problematic fatphobic material makes it even harder to stomach. I have no problem with the lesson being served up by WALL-E. It’s true that human beings are destroying our planet and that we are barrelling towards disaster if we don’t turn things around. I’m not so sure that the best way to portray this is by suggesting the worst case scenario would be if we all put on a lot of weight and had mobility issues. WALL-E’s attempt to draw parallels between the destruction of abused bodies and an abused planet has such an inbuilt sense of disgust that it feels deeply uncomfortable. One of the film’s worst stylistic choices is to include human actors amongst the animation. I always thought this broke up the atmosphere horribly but on this most recent watch I also felt that it implied that as they all got heavier, people became more inhuman. I can’t imagine this was an intended part of WALL-E’s message but it does feel like it crept in unconsciously as Pixar staff were merrily animating people falling off their mobile recliners and flailing wildly until a robot helped them back on. Once this sour subplot starts to underscore the film, WALL-E’s antics struggle more and more to wrest back the charm that was relinquished the moment the movie started to screw up its nose.

I should take a moment to acknowledge WALL-E’s strengths, which are primarily visual. Although I’m not especially a fan of Sci-fi, WALL-E’s world is exquisitely beautiful. At times, this is clearly the most impressive film Pixar had made from an animation standpoint. If the mechanics of the world itself are not convincingly sold from a storytelling standpoint, the visuals make it feel like you could touch every dystopian inch of what is onscreen. I must also applaud the ambition behind WALL-E. The screenplay by writer/director Andrew Stanton and longtime Simpsons writer Jim Reardon makes for a very interesting read, describing the largely wordless action in minute detail. The storyboard process involved 125,000 storyboards compared with the average 75,000 for other Pixar productions. That level of dedication is to be admired, even if it didn’t result in as coherent a vision as its creators might’ve hoped. Still, if WALL-E continues to divide certain members of its audience who have perhaps projected their own politics onto it, it continues to work on the level of a simple robot romance for many. Personally, by the time WALL-E and EVE have their celebrated dance together in space, I was flagging quite badly. Still, WALL-E’s legacy has seen it embraced almost across the board, becoming one of the few animated films to briefly secure a place in the prestigious Sight and Sound top 250. Although its perceived innovations were largely preempted and surpassed in the routinely ignored medium of independent animation, WALL-E should be celebrated for bringing this level of ambition to the mainstream. But, hard-hearted robot that I apparently am, I just can’t love it myself.

24. MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

When Disney bought Pixar, the installation of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull in key creative roles helped to bring Disney back from the brink of the surrealist excesses that had been scuppering their output throughout the 00s. For instance, when Lasseter and Catmull became involved in Bolt, its story had somehow come to include the character of a radioactive Girl Scout serial killer zombie. The Pixar creative staff seemed to be instrumental in helping to iron out these narrative transgressions and by the 2010s Disney films were on the rise critically and commercially with the likes of Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and the megahit Frozen. But if their absorption of Pixar brought strong storytelling back to Disney, it also seemed to somewhat dim the invention and independent spirit that had informed golden age Pixar. As Disney got their mojo back, Pixar entered a half-decade of almost uninterrupted blandness. Commercially, Pixar films were still paying off handsomely but critics had started to notice that the imagination was drying up and by the time of Monsters University fans were starting to get antsy. Reviving the hugely popular characters from Monsters, Inc. resulted in an almost guaranteed hit but that film had combined those appealing characters with an ingenious premise about monsters having to scare children to mine their screams as an energy source, even though monsters themselves were terrified of children. That’s a smart and original little scenario. So what was the premise for the belated prequel? They’re at university. Some stuff happens but basically that’s it, a standard origin story that fails to do anything new whatsoever.

It’s fair to say that Pixar fans like myself had become a bit entitled by the 2010s, taking for granted that the studio would continue to surprise and delight with little consideration for how much work it takes to sustain that. But the hot mess of Cars 2 and the troubled production of Brave that was writ large in the finished product both knocked our confidence and when Monsters University arrived it did feel a bit like a studio giving up. There’s a story from the development stage of Monsters University in which writer/director Dan Scanlon discovered a piece of dialogue in Monsters, Inc. in which Mike referred to Sully having been “jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade.” This contradicted their plan to trace the origin of Mike and Sully’s friendship to their college years. Scanlon and his team tried to find a way to justify this line, working on ideas of an earlier meeting between the two characters that preempted but did not overwhelm their planned college storyline. Ultimately, Scanlon was advised by Lasseter and Monsters, Inc. director Pete Docter to focus on doing what was right for his story rather than trying to honour one line of dialogue in its predecessor. In a way, this is evidence of the classic Pixar dedication to story but in another way it is a disheartening example of disrespecting the legacy. It may be one line of dialogue that most people wouldn’t remember but the reference to Mike and Scully’s virtually lifelong friendship informed the original dynamic on which Monsters, Inc. was based. That’s a pretty big building block to just wrench out because you want to do a clichéd college story. The characters never seem quite right in Monsters University and this willingness to retcon their backstory feels central to that discomfiting change.

With the Toy Story films, Pixar had shown that sequels need not deal in diminishing returns but the expansion of that franchise’s themes and world were not reflected in the first couple of Pixar follow-ups that came in their wake. One of the problems was both Cars and Monsters, Inc. featured clearly completed arcs. Lightning McQueen’s transformation from arrogant to considerate and kind meant that in the sequel the Cars star was sidelined in favour of an annoying supporting character, while Monsters, Inc.’s conversion of the energy source from children’s screams to children’s laughter left little room for further dramatic tension. Instead, Pixar decided to make the new Monsters, Inc. film a prequel so that scaring could still be an integral part of the plot but this ends up making the film feel like a partial retread of its predecessor, combined with a tired thumbing through of College movie tropes like evil jocks and oddball outcasts. A structure is established around the Scare Games, which steers Monsters University towards the Sports film mould that the first two Cars films had seemed oddly determined to avoid. It’s serviceable enough entertainment but thoroughly predictable and it detracts from, rather than enhances, the original film for those who are concerned with canonical integrity. Pixar’s subsequent slate of sequels, though initially a cause for concern, proved to be a significant improvement as they got the hang of applying the lessons of the Toy Story series to other franchises. Monsters University remains a low point in the Pixar filmography but I don’t begrudge its existence because frankly it is so thoroughly disposable that I can disassociate it from the wonderful Monsters, Inc. For me, these college years never happened and Sully had been jealous of Mike’s good looks since the fourth grade.

23. BRAVE

Not all dreams last forever. For many years it was fun to buy into the narrative of Pixar as giant-slayers trumping Disney’s critical and commercial successes with fired former-Disney employee John Lasseter at the helm. That’s a massive oversimplification, of course, but it’s an example of the pleasingly uncluttered storytelling that was part of Pixar’s appeal. But in 2017 accusations of sexual misconduct were made against Lasseter, which he acknowledged with the inappropriately diminutive term “missteps”, and a sickness was revealed at the heart of the studio we’d loved for so long. Perhaps we were naïve not to see it coming. Aside from the systemic misogyny found in the majority of large corporations, Pixar’s films hadn’t exactly been a haven of female representation up to that point. Reports of a boy’s club mentality began to come down the pipeline, with female employees asked not to attend important meetings because “John has a hard time controlling himself around young women.” The reveal of these toxic attitudes was preempted by the behind the scenes stories from the production of Brave, Pixar’s unlucky thirteenth. Much was made of Brave being the first Pixar film with a female protagonist and a story focusing prominently on women, specifically a mother-daughter relationship based on the experiences of writer/director Brenda Chapman. Chapman’s original story was very dear to her heart and she was installed as Pixar’s first female director, another element of Brave that was officially played up. It was heartbreaking, then, when Chapman was fired from the project mid-production and the reins were handed to a man, Mark Andrews, who proceeded to overhaul Chapman’s work. Though Chapman ultimately felt that her vision did come through in the finished product, she always maintained that her firing was wrong. Eyebrows have been retrospectively raised over the vague suggestion that “creative differences with John Lasseter” were to blame, although salacious speculation is hardly helpful. What did quickly become clear is how damaging it was to take the character of Merida out of the hands of her creative mother. When Disney inducted Merida into its official Disney princesses hall of fame, the character was redesigned to make her thinner, give her rounder eyes and tame her trademark wild locks. Chapman was among the signatories of a petition that recognised the detrimental effect of trying to fit a character designed as an alternative kind of role model for young girls into a mould based on more retrograde attitudes. In keeping with the character’s vehement rejection of established traditions, Merida was eventually restored to her original form but Disney’s true colours had already been shown in their abortive attempt to turn Merida into the sort of woman John has a hard time controlling himself around.

The sour backstory of Brave’s production is unfortunately not the only problem with the film. Though it did well enough at the box office, reviews were mixed at a time when a more enthusiastic critical success was really needed in the aftermath of the Cars 2 debacle. Although it is rarely pegged as the absolute worst that Pixar has to offer, Brave found itself in the perhaps even less enviable position of being one of the most routinely forgotten Pixar films. Its fairy tale style and princess protagonist often see it misidentified as a Disney film, while the goofy anachronisms and superficial similarities with the Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon franchises see it just as regularly mistaken for a DreamWorks production. For a studio that historically had such a distinctive voice of its own, these easily-made errors of categorisation feel like a low-key disaster. The tonal confusion was almost certainly the result of Brave having been wrested from Chapman and handed to Andrews and it would be interesting to see if the film would’ve been significantly better if shepherded to the screen by a single overseer. But ultimately it must be acknowledged that the story itself is a bit underwhelming and strange. Originally named The Bear and The Bow, the switch to the snappier title Brave seems to have been made partially to preserve the surprise of the central plot twist, in which Merida’s attempts to change her mother’s values with magic ultimately result in her being physically changed into a bear. The bear did not feature in the film’s trailers, keeping the surprise of the transformation under wraps for audiences, but in many cases this seemed to backfire. Critic Leonard Maltin observed “I’ll give it points for originality, but that story twist is so bizarre that it knocked me for a loop. The movie tries to make up for this detour with a heart-tugging, emotional finale, but the buildup to that moment has been undermined, so it doesn’t have the impact it should.” The bear is such a prominent part of the story and its wonderfully animated antics so central to the film’s appeal that hiding this narrative linchpin, while laudable from the perspective of preserving the audience experience, seems damaging to the film’s impact in retrospect.

Brave is one of the shorter Pixar films but rather than feeling refreshingly concise it feels overstretched. There’s a lot of material here that feels like filler, with goofball gags and slapstick antics superseding the storytelling. While the numerous musical montages adequately show off the beautifully rendered highland scenery, these interruptions can’t disguise how small Brave feels on a narrative scale. Small stories can be even more effective than big ones if they have the depth and heart to back them up but Brave seems preoccupied with trying to make us think it is grander than it actually is, while the fitfully moving mother-daughter relationship is undermined by having to share space with tonally intrusive jokes, like a witch’s approximation of a modern-day answering service. These damaging clashes of mood are almost certainly a result of two directors working uncollaboratively and, given that the story meant so much to Chapman, I can only imagine that she would’ve delivered at least a more emotionally satisfying version of Brave. This is not meant as an attack on Andrews, whose skills have been proved on other projects, but reportedly his first move in overhauling Brave was to take out a lot of the stuff about spirits and enchantment which he felt got in the way of the story. At the risk of ending with the same oversimplification I discussed at the top of this review, it’s too great a temptation to resist describing that process thus: Pixar took a woman’s personal story, handed it to a man and he removed the magic.

22. SOUL

Soul is often hailed as one of the best post-Toy Story 3 Pixar films but, as is the case with WALL-E, it’s a film over which I find myself at odds with the majority. As the first Pixar film with an African-American protagonist, Soul quickly fell foul of disappointed reactions that said protagonist spends the majority of the film outside of his own body, represented as a blue blob or inhabiting the body of a cat while his own body is piloted by an unborn soul that the film itself acknowledges has the voice of “a middle-aged white lady.” Similar complaints had been levelled at Disney’s previous The Princess and the Frog, which boasted the studio’s first black princess but seemed in an awful hurry to turn her green. It wasn’t these issues that bothered me about Soul though, so much as the fact that it feels… well, soulless. It is a film of big ideas, stylistic ambition and virtually no heart, resulting in its final act feeling blandly platitudinous rather than moving. It’s a shame because there’s some really inventive animation here, which is often Soul’s saving grace. There’s also laudable ambition to create a visual narrative that works on the senses in a similar way to music. But for the first time, a Pixar film feels scuppered rather than bolstered by the studio’s signature style. The little gags and quirky characters that are usually beloved trademarks feel like counterproductive clutter here. Soul needs to take itself a bit more seriously in order to meet its philosophical aspirations. Instead, the set up features the underdeveloped character Joe Gardner acing an audition with one of his Jazz heroes and then immediately falling to his death down a manhole, all of which happens in the first ten minutes. In its hurry to get to the quirky afterlife stuff, Soul undersells its own humanity and imbues its initiating event with all the dramatic significance of a backfiring Acme rocket.

There’s plenty to like about Soul. Its vision of the afterlife is beautifully and inventively rendered, using lots of different animation styles to create a compelling visual experience. It bats about a lot of interesting concepts, even if it does hold back on engaging fully with any of them. This, of course, is part of its oblique plan and I admire the way Soul attempts to acknowledge fleeting moments of great importance and smaller ones of superficial pleasures while giving equal weight to both. But its thesis is jumbled, a problem exacerbated by how cold the whole thing feels. There are moments in which it touches something akin to human warmth and experience but it seems in such a terrible rush and in trying to play everything in its overstuffed hand, the cards end up flying everywhere and landing in a haphazard fashion. I really wish I liked Soul more but ultimately it feels like a flabby alternative to Don Hertzfeldt’s 2012 masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day. The first two parts of that three-part film were originally released as shorts in 2006 and 2008, and director Pete Docter has since acknowledged their influence on Soul. Docter clearly admired Hertzfeldt’s work but his attempt to create a mainstream equivalent feels like a mammoth task killed by time constraints and commercial demands. The laudable ambition is there and we know from experience that the required level of profundity is something Pixar can achieve, but the Pixar of 2020 feel like they are working within far too constrictive parameters to fully realise it. You can almost hear the words “OK, but can you put a cat in it?” echoing beneath Soul’s glossy surface.

21. TOY STORY 4

I have an idea for a Toy Story short film set after the events of Toy Story 4. Andy comes back from college for the Christmas break and he goes to see Bonnie. “Hey Bonnie” he says, “Remember that lovely moment we had a while back when I gave you my favourite toy Woody to look after and you promised to keep him safe for me? That was nice. Where is Woody by the way? Bonnie?… Bonnie?” *You’ve Got a Friend in Me plays on soundtrack*

From that opening paragraph, you probably think you know where this review is going. Another angry fanboy furious at Toy Story 4 for spoiling the perfect trilogy. While I’ll own up to being a bit disappointed when I originally heard about Toy Story 4, I’ve revised my opinion since then. While I do agree at the time of writing that this is the weakest of the series, I’m more than happy for the Toy Story franchise to continue. These characters are a lot of fun to be with and, between short films and TV specials released since Toy Story 3, there is plenty of other canon content from this world that doesn’t seem to infuriate Pixar purists half as much. That said, and while there is plenty to enjoy here, Toy Story 4 does have more than its share of problems. Its revelation that Bonnie’s initial attachment to Woody in Toy Story 3 quickly evaporated retrospectively undermines a perfectly mapped arc for the cowboy. Woody’s climactic decision to leave Bonnie in order to pursue a new life as a lost toy also casts Andy’s Toy Story 3 promise that “the thing that makes Woody special is he’ll never give up on you… ever. He’ll be there for you, no matter what” ring sadly hollow on rewatches. Then again, the Toy Story series has always been about change and defined by Woody’s neurotic reactions to the dilemmas with which life presents him. While it was nice to think he had found some respite at the end of Toy Story 3, that wouldn’t leave much room for significant conflict in subsequent longform Toy Story instalments. Many argue that that is the very reason that Toy Story 4 shouldn’t exist at all. This was my initial inclination too but there’s enough in Toy Story 4 about the dangers of listening too closely to your inner voice to convince me that maybe I was wrong.

For all its missteps, Toy Story 4 is still pretty entertaining. It has a lot of new characters, some of whom work better than others, and a great main setting in a dusty old antiques shop adjacent to a fairground. Its plot is a bit all over the place but the various little skits that make up most of its runtime are often well executed and amusing. But something is also a bit off about the film. There’s a disconcerting sense of zombification when it comes to the beloved supporting characters who made up the original ensemble. They are given very little to do at all, with major players like Jessie being completely sidelined. Inevitably, the epitome of this problem is Don Rickles’ Mr. Potato Head. Rickles was up for returning to the franchise but he died before he could record his part. Wanting to honour his memory, the Pixar team went through old footage and unused snippets of dialogue from the previous films to piece together Rickles’ role. The problem is that Mr. Potato Head was one of the most motor-mouthed characters, always chiming in with a cynical jibe or snarky comment. It’s downright eerie to see him standing silent for the majority of his scenes and once you know Rickles’ limited dialogue is taken from a completely different context it’s hard not to feel alienated by the result. Even more damaging is the fact that the writers clearly struggled to find a decent plot for Buzz. He becomes a mildly buffoonish and underused character. There’s one gag in which Buzz is tasked with obtaining a key held by the antiques store owner. When he arrives victorious with the key and is asked how he got it, he plays up what a difficult mission it was. We then see a flashback in which the owner casually and obliviously puts the key down right in front of Buzz and he just takes it. It’s a cheap laugh but worse, it comes at the expense of giving Buzz something interesting to do. This side mission could’ve occupied the character and provided an entertaining stretch for Buzz fans. Instead, it merely highlights Buzz’s redundancy in the plot in a manner which makes it feel like the writers just can’t be bothered.

Though the plethora of new characters are a mixed bag, they lean more towards the positive. Keanu Reeves’ scene-stealing turn as daredevil stunt-bike rider Duke Kaboom is an oft-cited highlight and Ally Maki’s Giggle McDimples is also a lot of fun. For a portion of the film, Christina Hendricks’ eerie detachment makes the sociopathic Gabby Gabby one of the series’ most effective villains but a rushed and rather unconvincing eleventh hour redemption rather takes the wind out of her sails. Still, her army of mute, persistent ventriloquist dummies bring the sort of nightmarish chills that make sleepless nights sort of worth it. I am also a big fan of Jay Hernandez’s increasing exasperation as Bonnie’s father, whose plans for a smooth holiday are repeatedly scuppered by the toys attempts to stall him. Only Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as the shackled-together carnival prizes Ducky and Bunny stick out as annoying, with their abrasive attention-grabbing comedic style feeling intrusive rather than complimentary. The most prominent new character is Forky, a real gamble of a creation whose silliness will either delight or irritate. I find Forky extremely funny and Tony Hale is a perfect piece of casting for this most anxious oddball of a character. The notion of a toy made out of junk who suffers an existential crisis because of being neither one thing nor the other is terrific and recalls the humour of the ingenious Toy Story short Small Fry, in which fast food tie-in toys suffer crippling inferiority complexes. The only problem with Forky is that the writers can’t quite take him seriously enough. He is pivotal to the plot but at one point when Forky appears to be in mortal danger and Woody wants to mount a rescue attempt, the other characters just shrug it off and want to give up. And when they press Woody about why he cares so much, it becomes about his own failing relationship with Bonnie. Why is no-one actually bothered about Forky’s wellbeing? In this moment he is reduced to a prop when his tenuous sentience really should be enough to make the others concerned about him.

The headline when it came to Toy Story 4 was the return of Bo Peep, voiced as always by Annie Potts. This initially failed to excite me for a couple of reasons. For one, I liked the way Bo’s absence was fleetingly acknowledged with a passing comment in Toy Story 3. It felt in keeping with the harsh realities of the franchise’s depiction of toy ownership. Of course these groups will be split up by forces beyond their control. The return of Bo felt like a contrivance to fix something that didn’t need fixing. But also, Bo always stuck out to me as an underdeveloped character in the original trilogy. With no offence to Potts, I wasn’t exactly crying out to see her return. Toy Story 4 addresses this by improving Bo’s character in a convincing way. Now a “lost toy” who makes her own way in the world, not being constrained by being a piece of owned property is shown to have given Bo a new lease of life. She has become an agile, resourceful and streetwise heroine as opposed to the bland lamp fixture she was before. Some people took against the new Bo but she feels like a vast improvement to me and her gradually rekindling relationship with Woody is treated realistically, accommodating their years apart with an astute awkwardness that is not swept aside for the convenience of cinematic romance. That said, Woody’s decision to stay with Bo instead of returning to Bonnie is undersold, especially given the force of Woody’s previous belief system regarding his relationship with “his” kid. Toy Story 4 is clearly trying to present a shift in these beliefs and it could’ve worked but the screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom just isn’t strong enough in its exploration of Woody’s decision. It needed to dedicate less time to so many superfluous new characters and more time to examining Woody and Bo’s relationship. When the finale comes and Woody says goodbye to his friends, it really feels like a cynical attempt to milk tears from the audience rather than an organically earned moment of real heart. The past couple of Toy Story films had easily elicited sobs from me but at the end of Toy Story 4 I was not only dry-eyed but entirely unmoved.

For those who hate Toy Story 4, the accepted narrative has become that it was a mere cash-grab. I don’t hate Toy Story 4 and, while that billion dollar box office take was surely a partial incentive, I do believe that the Pixar staff have more than a financial connection to these characters and want to do right by them. An attempt has been made here to tell a stronger and more emotionally engaging story than actually reached the screen, but it too often seems underworked. Even Randy Newman’s songs this time round sound like rudimentary half-efforts. How I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away got Oscar nominated remains a mystery. Still, for all its failings, Pixar did at least remember to make Toy Story 4 entertaining. I’d watch it again and there is enough good work on show here to make me glad that the franchise is still ongoing.

20. CARS

First thing’s first: Cars is not a rip-off of Doc Hollywood. Since a handful of people noticed the similarities between the 1991 Michael J. Fox vehicle and the 2006 Pixar vehicle vehicle, the initial “hey, this is a bit like…” has grown into endless accusatory bellows about plagiarism. The similarities between Doc Hollywood and Cars have been so overstated that when I finally watched the former I almost expected Michael J. Fox to have wheels. There is a similar initiating moment in which an arrogant hot-shot on his way to L.A. inadvertently ends up in a small town where he accidentally destroys some property and ends up being sentenced to perform community service. The fact that both set-ups involve a conviction for accidental vandalism seems to be the major reason Doc Hollywood has erroneously been pegged as the inspiration for Cars but the subsequent city-boy-gradually-charmed-by-small-town-life plot does not in any way belong to Doc Hollywood alone. This is a standard trope that has appeared in many stories long before Michael J. Fox symbolically crashed through a picket fence. Look at the TV series Northern Exposure that premiered a year before Doc Hollywood was released. Check out Local Hero from the previous decade. Go back almost thirty years to the 1963 episode of The Andy Griffith Show entitled Man in a Hurry. You’re going to find broadly the same thing in all these places, but each of these examples is quite different in its own way. That’s because this story is a time-honoured trope. If Cars is guilty of anything, it is falling back on what has become a comparatively hackneyed plot device during an era when Pixar was known for its originality of storytelling. But people were so incredibly pleased with their faulty comparative abilities that Cars somehow became routinely and erroneously described as a beat-for-beat remake of Doc Hollywood, with reviews that went “Hey, they are both on their way to L.A.! Hey, he drives a red car and he IS a red car! Hey, both these films have lines of dialogue in them!” It makes very little sense that Pixar would look at a 15 year old film that was a modest box office success and critical flop and go “Here’s the story we need. Sure, a lot of people probably remember it but hey, at least it’s considered crap.”

Setting aside the Doc Hollywood controversy, Cars is still seen by many as Pixar’s first real disappointment. From a commercial point of view it delivered another hit and kicked off an enduring franchise but the vague sense of a creative downturn hung over the film like a pair of furry dice. Anthropomorphic cars just felt like such a tired idea and the to-the-point title did little to dissuade that initial impression. The toys had a story, the bugs had a life and the monsters had an inc. but this was just Cars. They’re cars. That’s why they called it Cars. I remember seeing posters for the film and feeling no enthusiasm whatsoever for it. It took me years to first watch Cars and when I did I had my antici-pointment confirmed. Little did I know, this was just the beginning of a long and complex journey for me and this franchise. You know, like a journey a car takes… on a road…I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get in the spirit of this film… It’s not Doc Hollywood.

I’ve actually returned to Cars several times over the years and my rating has pinballed between the three and two star marks but the film, not to mention the effect of its numerous spinoffs and surprisingly excellent second sequel Cars 3, have chipped away at me down the years and I found myself enjoying it much more this time round, settling on a 3.5 star rating. Problems still abound. Cars is fun and funny but it relies on a far more enthusiastically crass tone than that for which Pixar is generally known. There are more wink-wink adult gags and an increase in humour based on stereotypes. These jokes aren’t so much offensive as they are annoying. The stereotypes are presented with such exaggeration that they couldn’t be taken for anything but an obvious burlesque, yet this level of overstatement makes certain characters almost immediately tiresome (or tyre-some! I could’ve written for Cars). The apex of this irritation is Mater, a take on the toothless hick stereotype that is absolutely played to the hilt. Pixar made this intention clear by hiring comedian Larry the Cable Guy, a man who has made his name performing in the guise of a magnified, self-described “redneck”, to voice Mater. The character of Mater plays heavily on a G-rated variation on this schtick, sometimes blurring the line by having Mater use Larry’s own catchphrase “Git-R-Done.” Although he would become the breakout character, starring in numerous shorts and having his role considerably and disastrously elevated in the infamous Cars 2, in this inaugural chapter Mater is technically a supporting character but an overused one. Cars seems to be oddly in love with his broad antics, to the point that his goofballery becomes intrusive, steamrollering the viewer when the plot and other character relationships are vying for the attention they deserve and require. 

It is perhaps the persistent phenomenon of Materus Interruptus that pushes Cars to its excessive two hour runtime. Previous Pixar film The Incredibles had a similarly lengthy runtime but it needed it to unravel its comparatively complex story. Cars seems to have taken its cue from this but used the increased length to stretch out and indulge its own languorous inclinations. In some ways this works, given that the film’s juxtaposition between high speed racing scenes and the languid pace of small town life relies on the viewer drinking in the latter and gradually being won over. But the transition is too abrupt, with an excellent opening half hour of racing movie vitality literally crashing headlong into the slow-paced middle hour with its reflective and melancholy tone. Arrogant racing car protagonist Lightning McQueen finds himself hitched to a huge road surfacing machine and suddenly the audience feels like it is pulling the thing too. Still, for all these negatives, Cars is often quite heartwarming and insightful. The town of Radiator Springs is beautifully realised, with the 50s car culture influence spilling over into the town’s neon-drenched nostalgia. There’s a powerful subplot about the impact of new bypasses on the economies of small towns that brings a good deal of heart to the film, bolstered by another original song by Randy Newman, the Oscar nominated Our Town. Newman is back on score duty but he hands over the reins of Our Town to his old singer/songwriter contemporary James Taylor, who gives it a smooth treatment that is in keeping with the polished Rock soundtrack and doesn’t invite the unwanted comparisons with earlier Pixar films in which a Newman vocal would unavoidably result.

While some of the small town heart works well enough, Cars is at its best in the racing scenes, to the extent that it beggars belief that it took them until the third film to really make that the focus. Though Lightning McQueen‘s transformation is predictable, it is also reliably feelgood and Owen Wilson is well cast for his ability to sell both sides of that character (though he is undoubtedly more entertaining as the a-hole version). Paul Newman bows out with dignity in his last role in a major movie as Lightning’s reluctant mentor Doc Hudson (hey! Doc! Like Doc Hollywood, right?! What a ripoff!) and the wonderful Bonnie Hunt, after nailing a couple of minor Pixar roles, finally gets to play a lead character, bringing plentiful charisma to Sally. Michael Keaton is also delightfully detestable as Chick Hicks, a boisterous racer whose empty victory provides a very satisfying conclusion. When I first watched Cars, I missed the positives of the good characters and enjoyable performances because I was too wrapped up in the cumbersome nature of anthropomorphic vehicles and my own self-defeating desire to validate my kneejerk negativity. Since having a son who is obsessed with vehicles, I have watched Cars a couple more times and generally found myself insufficiently entertained but this was because I was watching with a 4 year old, which shifted my focus towards hoping for something faster-paced that would keep his interest. This latest rewatch was just for me and I was able to appreciate both the faster and slower paced portions of the film, even if they didn’t quite blend seamlessly. Ultimately, I think Cars is a film that benefits from multiple viewings that allow the viewer to slowly penetrate the topcoat of jokes about headlights and windscreen wipers to discover the ample heart beneath. I still think Cars was Pixar’s worst film up to this point but I now recognise that it’s not a total lemon.

19. RATATOUILLE

There’s a thing in cinema that I call The Ratatouille Effect. Back when it came out, I loved Ratatouille as much as everyone else but the woman who would eventually become my wife couldn’t stand it. Her main objection to it was the plot wrinkle in which Remy the rat can control the limbs of human chef Linguini by yanking strands of his hair, causing involuntary movements in his arms. My response to this was always a snarky “Yes, THAT’S the moment the film about the cooking rat loses all credibility!” But over the years I’ve come to believe she was right all along. Just because a film has a fantastical premise, that doesn’t give it licence to throw in any crazy detail it wants. You have to work within the parameters of the world you’ve set up. For instance, just because time travel is possible in Back to the Future, that doesn’t mean you could just chuck a unicorn in there. In the case of Ratatouille, it could be argued that the hair-pulling fits and certainly director Brad Bird said the outlandishness of the premise was what attracted him to the film. But to me the hair thing feels like a temporary patch-job on the plot that got left in when they couldn’t think of a better workaround. Sure, a rat who wants to be a chef is a bold central hook but much of the story is told with a convincing dedication to selling that attractively simple premise. The hair pulling seems to be the thing that opens the floodgates for the dafter intrusions that knock Ratatouille off centre. That’s the Ratatouille effect. One outlandish detail that doesn’t belong can bring the whole thing crashing down.

I still think Ratatouille is a good film but I no longer think it’s a great one. There are too many things that don’t quite work and they keep getting in the way. I don’t like Remy talking to a small Gazoo-like imagining of the dead chef Gousto, a notion that is used a lot at the beginning of the film which then gets pushed to one side. I don’t like the way the plot ends with a couple of temporary kidnappings that are just shrugged off by characters who ought to be mortified by them. Again, the outlandishness has been licensed so the credibility takes a knock. I’ve never liked the character of Linguini at all. His blundering physicality was apparently a delight for animators to create but it is a lot less fun to watch. His ultra-nervy personality is just as insufferable, making him one of Pixar’s most annoying characters, and making the romance between him and the tough, fiery Colette implausible. This problem could’ve easily been avoided had Colette been allowed to exist as a character without having to fulfil a romantic obligation to a male lead. Her speech about being the only woman in the kitchen suggests progressive intentions but the traditional way in which the story uses her ends up partially undermining that.

It’s a shame to get hung up on the negatives because what Ratatouille does well, it does very well indeed. The design and animation are exquisite, with a beautifully rendered Parisian setting enhanced by an ingenious rat’s-eye-view perspective. The scene in which Remy attempts to escape from the kitchen through an open window is one of the best in Pixar’s whole canon, fully immersing the viewer in the experience by forcing us to plunge into sinks and ride on food carts right alongside the protagonist. The focus on the pleasures of food gives the film a wonderfully sensual quality, with Remy’s culinary appreciation palpable thanks to wonderful character animation and realistically tasty-looking dishes. Patton Oswalt is a perfect choice to voice Remy, while Ian Holm’s performance as the gradually more unhinged Skinner is very funny and Peter O’Toole brings the right mix of gravitas and menace to the unforgiving food critic Anton Ego. The final twist in Ego’s story is also a deeply moving moment that underlines the theme of the evocative power of food. There’s a sassy wit to Bird’s Oscar-nominated screenplay that helps balance some of its more excessive silliness and, as with The Incredibles, his contribution brings a new voice and perspective that broadens the scope of the Pixar brand.

For me, then, Ratatouille is a frustrating film of peaks and troughs. Never less than enjoyable, it is also often harder to engage with on an emotional level, like a nervous blind date who keeps blotting out their personality with excessive mucking around. There’s the core of an excellent film here but the decision to lean into what feel like first draft story band aids is a bold one that either works for you or it doesn’t. Despite my love of offbeat concepts and cartoonish wackiness, it felt misplaced here in what could’ve been a more classically pristine piece of storytelling. 

18. INCREDIBLES 2

When Incredibles 2 arrived fourteen years after its predecessor, the cinematic landscape for Superhero films was very different. In 2004, though there were a few popular franchises, Superhero films weren’t dominant like they were after the game-changing blockbuster success of the MCU’s first phase. By 2018, the MCU was at its peak, with Black Panther breaking through critical barriers with a Best Picture Oscar nomination and Avengers: Infinity War smashing records and setting up the finale of what is now known as The Infinity Saga. While Marvel was commercially all conquering at this time, fatigue was starting to set in for many, in the face of more content and dwindling quality. The problems that this caused for Incredibles 2 were myriad. Writer/director Brad Bird was keen to distinguish his film from those of the MCU but with a generation of superhero fans whose idea of the genre was shaped by those films, the potential for confusion and disappointment in a key audience demographic was high. Then again, fans of the original Incredibles were likely to be alienated by a film that felt the need to react to and incorporate elements of a template that had since emerged and, across the course of a decade, become repetitive. In the end, Bird largely did what was best for his original vision, delivering a film that in no way feels beholden to or even acknowledges the Marvel brand. The original 60s Spy movie influence remains a much more prominent factor and Bird continued to state that his own interest was in the family dynamic above the superhero action. This defining element remains reliably in place but the main flaw with Incredibles 2 is that Bird’s intentions to only make a sequel if he could make it “better” than the original resulted in that classic error made by many sequels: conflating “better” and “bigger.” Incredibles 2 achieves the latter but not the former, and in going bigger it can’t help but fall victim to some of the crash-bang bombast from which Marvel films, even the really interesting and unusual ones, can’t quite extricate themselves.

It’s unfair to lay the blame for headbanging third acts entirely at the feet of the Marvel juggernaut. The Superhero genre comes with certain expectations and even I would be disappointed if a film with becaped protagonists delivered no action at all. It’s foolish also to suggest that action scenes are a lower form of entertainment. Great action is as hard to pull off as anything else and many of the action sequences in Incredibles 2 are thrilling and smart. The problem is the lack of heart, something that Bird managed to deftly inject into them the first time round. The Incredibles major achievement was delivering the family dynamic and action simultaneously but Bird couldn’t simply repeat this trick for fear of stagnation. Instead, the family comedy/drama and the superhero action are often divided this time, with Elastigirl sent out on a mission while Mr. Incredible stays home to look after the kids. While cutting between these two scenarios works quite well in ensuring the audience gets their fix of both, it does separate them in a way that leaves some of the interesting character beats underexplored. The Incredibles used the mission itself as family therapy, while Incredibles 2 feels more like it partially deals with the family issues early in order to make way for the action finale. While the two interlace only minimally. A bridging element comes by way of baby Jack-Jack, who was basically a one-off gag in the first film and becomes an extended gimmick in this one. Seeing his various new powers develop is fun and it’s great to have him along for the mission but the emphasis in this plot strand is mainly on gags when there could’ve been ample opportunity for a more focused plot about the whole family coming to terms with their youngest member’s new abilities.

Perhaps the main issue with Incredibles 2 is how weak the superhero plot is. While there are plenty of strong action scenes to keep things interesting, especially the thrilling scene in which Elastigirl fights the mysterious villain Screenslaver, the thrust of the plot itself feels hackneyed and its main revelation is much too easy to guess long before it arrives. Bird’s greater interest in the domestic side of the story is obvious, with the scenes of Mr. Incredible running himself ragged at home proving far more engaging and entertaining. That the film never quite blends the two sides of its personality is disappointing, especially as some interesting psychological implications of the central role reversal are teased then left hanging. Still, where Incredibles 2 wins is in its ability to remain consistently entertaining even when its story is sagging. It does fall foul of those twin traps that so often ensnare superhero films: overlength and a weak final act. But the characters, now rendered far more handsomely thanks to fourteen years of animation innovations, are all so likeable and their dynamic so entertaining that there are fewer glances cast watch-ward than there might be were this material placed in the hands of a lesser writer-director. Incredibles 2 doesn’t really add anything new to the franchise but neither does it take anything away. It is a decent, thoroughly enjoyable second instalment that falls a long way short of its predecessor but is nice to have around nevertheless.

17. TURNING RED

As a middle aged white male, I hate the fact that I didn’t love Turning Red more than I did, chiefly because many reviews from others who fit into one or all of those demographics were breathtakingly stupid. Many critics, both professional and amateur, seemed determined to paint Turning Red’s focus on a Chinese-Canadian, boyband-loving teenage girl as limiting and exclusionary for average audiences. This, of course, is complete nonsense, based on the assumption that we have to have comparative personal experiences in order to connect with content. For those with an interest in learning about the world outside of their own tiny sphere, the reverse is true. One of the greatest things about cinema is how it opens up windows onto places and experiences to which audiences might otherwise have no access. In the case of Turning Red, set during the early 21st century when boybands were still enormously popular, this was a chance for me to revisit a time I’d lived through without the eyeball-rolling misogyny into which I’d once shamelessly bought. Though there are many great Coming of Age films from female perspectives, teenage girls are still enough of an underrepresented group that a film focusing on them feels like a refreshing and welcome change. Although I’ve dedicated a good chunk of the opening paragraph to them, I think at this point we can disregard those complaining that they don’t see themselves in Turning Red. After all, these are the same people who complained about a TV advert featuring a black family by saying “I don’t see myself here” and then went out and bought insurance from a meerkat, breakfast cereal from a tiger and Christmas food from a fucking carrot!

I’m not sure why I didn’t connect with Turning Red as strongly as I’d hoped but it’s important to note that I did like it a lot anyway. Directed by Domee Shi, the first female director to get sole credit on a Pixar film, it brings a new voice to Pixar from which I’m keen to hear more in future. From the outset, Turning Red is bursting with infectious energy and a palpably personal perspective that imbues it immediately with a level of heart missing from so many animated features pitched at a similarly manic level. The era is encapsulated beautifully without relying on hackneyed pop culture references or needle drops and the characters of the teen girls present recognisable types without tumbling into one-dimensional sketches. The relationship between the girls is crucial and Shi demonstrates how the shared obsession with boybands becomes about more than just music and burgeoning attraction. All of this is portrayed perfectly and keeps Turning Red enjoyable throughout. The film loses me a little in its portrayal of the mother/daughter relationship, which seems to rely more heavily on clichés of the overbearing parent that are ramped up to sometimes excruciating levels. I’m sure for many this depiction rings true but I’ve cringed through variations on so many of these scenes before that Turning Red’s version struggled to hold my attention. 

Turning Red is to be loudly and enthusiastically applauded for its unapologetic engagement with the topic of puberty, particularly from a female perspective. The idea of a mainstream animation whose title openly references menstrual blood would’ve seemed unthinkable as little as a decade before. Shi uses the colour red in a clever multifaceted way, evoking anger, lust and embarrassment and keeping them all at the forefront with the emergence of the red panda into which the protagonist turns whenever she experiences a strong emotion. It’s an apt and effective analogy for the onset of puberty and the explosion of emotions experienced during that period, one that ought to strike a chord regardless of gender. The problem comes in convincingly maintaining that analogy across a feature length runtime, something that Turning Red, for my money, can’t quite do. As the protagonist Mei learns to control and then exploit her transformation for her own ends, the metaphor gets a bit muddied, drifting into a meditation on being yourself and not being ashamed that, while laudable and still thematically appropriate, feels like it overextends the narrative’s reach in order to tag on a well-worn message. Of course, this is my entitlement as an over-catered-to male movie-goer bursting out like the rutting stag that is unfortunately the spirit animal of so many of us boys! The important thing is that Turning Red works best for its core demographic and, while the film has enough to delight all ages and genders, it probably does and should appeal most to the teen girls who are living, or have recently lived, something akin to that which it whimsically but also brutally depicts. The mistake of so many critics was assuming this appeal was some kind of mistake when what we need is more films that explicitly court and respect young female audiences in the way Turning Red does. And it is that important little message about not denying those parts of you that an oppressive society may frown upon that will continue to help new generations of female creatives like Shi to change the male-centric dynamic that currently infects the world of cinema. 

15. ONWARD

There was an era of Disney films in the early to mid 2000s, the immediate aftermath of the blockbuster Disney Renaissance, in which the studio struggled to find an identity. It is often referred to as the Disney Dark Age, implying that it was bereft of quality films. I’ve always had a soft spot for this period in which the characters got wilder and the plots more outlandish, because it was fiercely inventive even as it struggled with narrative coherence. Sometimes it worked and you got Lilo & Stitch or The Emperor’s New Groove. Sometimes it didn’t and you got Chicken Little or Home on the Range. Onward feels to me like Pixar’s closest equivalent to one of these Disney limbo films. With its wayward plot that flits between Family Drama, Teen Comedy, whimsical Fantasy and Adventure film with overt Indiana Jones references, it shares that contradictory sense of invigorating abandon and mild desperation. Its subversions are entertainingly bold but also self-sabotaging when it comes to a consistent tone. And yet, Onward is never less than entertaining. It drives relentlessly forward with a stubbornly panicky insistence, knocking down shrubs and pretending it meant to.

There’s a sense that Onward could’ve been tightened up with a more focused approach but I also get the impression that it might’ve been blander in that case. The central premise of two brothers getting the chance to magically revive their dead father for a twenty-four hour period but only managing to conjure up his legs immediately creates a narrative tension between tragedy and absurdity that is compellingly unique even when parts of the subsequent adventure are knowingly derivative. The dynamic between uptight nerdy brother and wild irresponsible brother has been done to death but Tom Holland and Chris Pratt play their parts well and there are some nice, unexpected character wrinkles that flesh out their relationship as the story progresses, rather than just leaning on the odd couple angle. Another more outlandish odd couple relationship is set up in the subplot between Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s determined mother and Octavia Spencer’s conflicted Manticore. The Manticore is typical of the sort of crazy supporting character that emerges in these more unusual animations, at once strikingly amusing and narratively unbalancing. Mel Rodriguez’s centaur police officer is another example of this.

It’s sometimes hard to know whether to applaud Onward’s goofball randomness or be slightly irritated by it but, unlike similar films which aim to engage by putting a hat on a hat on a hat until the craziness topples over, Onward has that solid emotional throughline that readily identifies it as a Pixar movie. The tenuous connection the brothers have with the father who died when one of them was three and the other was still unborn is explored sensitively and with real emotional heft, such as when Barley talks about being too afraid of his father’s deteriorated condition to say a proper goodbye. The father character who, save for a few flashbacks, appears mostly as a pair of slapstick disembodied limbs, is a great addition to the journey, inspiring both comedic relief and palpable pathos. As with Brave, Onward’s strangest narrative twist was hard to get a handle on based on the promotional material alone so first time round the prominence of the father’s legs as a plot point and character can be hard to wrap your head round. Onward therefore plays better for many on a rewatch, when the prepared viewer is not blindsided by the weirdness and can better relate to the emotional content. Perhaps this trickier path towards engagement contributed to Onward becoming Pixar’s first major box office flop, although the COVID 19 pandemic was also a decisive factor. I’ve always been slightly put off by the look of Onward too. The character designs always struck me as a little uninspired and occasionally unattractive and I recall feeling less than excited when I first saw a poster for the film. 

If Onward falls short of being another Pixar classic, it is still nice to see the studio get to point where they begin to have their endearingly strange cult films. Overstuffed with ideas but kept on course by a strong central premise, Onward is like a tightrope walker laden down with heavy shopping. It makes its way from one end of its narrative to the other with a few too many wobbles but afterwards there’s a lot to unpack and much satisfaction to be had as a result.

15. INSIDE OUT 2

There was a time when I was very skeptical about the idea of Pixar sequels. Aside from the Toy Story franchise, which had been sequelising since its early days, I didn’t particularly want to see beautifully crafted stories like Monsters, Inc. or The Incredibles diluted by elaboration. In more recent years I’ve changed my tune, perhaps due to the fact that the sheer number of Pixar sequels has numbed my allegiance to standalone prestige. The main reason, however, is that I like these characters, these worlds, and I want to see more of them. If a sequel happens to be weak, I realised, that doesn’t have to take away from your love of the original. In some cases, such as the first couple of Toy Story sequels and Cars 3, the Pixar sequels have equaled or bettered their origin films, while others like Incredibles 2 have been perfectly enjoyable continuations. For me, Inside Out 2 falls into this latter category. While it doesn’t come close to matching the mighty Inside Out, it’s nice to be back inside Riley’s head for ninety minutes or so.

Like its predecessor, Inside Out 2 is a film crammed with ideas. Some of them are very smart and move the concept forward but too often there’s a feeling of more of the same, revisiting ground the first film did well enough to mark “covered.” So when we get thinks like a stretch of water called “the stream of consciousness” or one of Riley’s snarky teenage responses opens up “a sar-chasm”, there’s an overwhelming urge to roll your eyes. Fortunately, there’s more to Inside Out 2 than a barrage of inner-workings puns. Its examination of puberty, of how we build and sometimes lose a sense of self, and how the good and bad memories all contribute to that process, is sympathetic and intelligent. The climactic realisation that jettisoning embarrassing and shameful memories prevents growth does feel a tad too much like a lesson already learned when we examined the value of Sadness in the first film, but then the fact that the emotion characters can repeatedly make mistakes in the same way as their human also seems fitting.

As Inside Out moves into franchise territory, there is a sense of its world weakening a little. While the first film spotlighted Joy and Sadness, the sequel elevates Fear, Anger and Disgust to the level of joint protagonists. The problem is they worked much better as supporting characters, their extreme personalities proving difficult to develop in a convincing way. When Anger has a small moment of pathos with Joy, it somehow seems hard to accept. Coupled with the fact that two of the original voice actors, Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling, did not return for the sequel, there’s a disconnect with these familiar creations that makes them seem slightly off. Fortunately, the story team know what they’re doing with the original elements they introduce. The new emotions are all fun, with Maya Hawke’s Anxiety stealing the show as a suitably complex not-quite-villain. Moving Riley to the next stage of her development opens up plenty of new narrative possibilities, and crucially the writers know what not to do too. The horrible feeling that they might sully one of Pixar’s most moving moments by trying to bring back Bing Bong thankfully proved to be erroneous.

I’ve always found Inside Out to be one of Pixar’s most emotional films so the fact that Inside Out 2 wasn’t quite hitting in the same way initially felt like a problem. I quickly came to realise, however, that it was actually a strength. Good sequels shouldn’t be aiming to replicate their predecessors beat-for-beat and Inside Out 2 matches its themes of puberty with an edgier palette. The film will likely resonate with teens and parents of teens, neither of which I currently am, although as someone susceptible to overwhelming panic attacks, the fact that the finale plays out against the backdrop of such an experience made it extremely effective for me. Ultimately, I think Inside Out 2 feels like a sequel that is neither strictly necessary nor remotely regrettable. It’s a welcome addition to the Pixar canon.