Academy Award Retrospect

The first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2001 when Shrek won the award.  There certainly were deserving winners before that though, and for the most part, animated movies have been neglected when considered for other awards.  So I am going to go back in time and start handing out the nominees and hardware that these greats deserve.  I will be using the Rotten Tomato score as the main determinant, but ticket sales and my own opinion will certainly come into play.

Let’s first look at the decade of the 90’s: 1991 through 2000.

1991

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Beauty and the Beast – WINNER.  Fun fact: this was the first movie I ever saw in theaters.

A Wish for Wings That Work

1992

Aladdin – WINNER.  Not even close

Bebe’s Kids
Tom and Jerry: The Movie

1993
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby
The Nightmare Before Christmas – WINNER.  Grade A Movie.  You can see my review a few days ago.

1994

The Lion King – WINNER.  I hope to review it soon

Thumbelina

The Swan Princess

1995
A Goofy Movie
Pocahontas
Toy Story – WINNER.  I mean, this was a revolution of film making.

1996

Beavis and Butt-head Do America
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
James and the Giant Peach – WINNER.  It was a tough matchup, but this is actually a great movie.
Space Jam

1997

Anastasia – WINNER
Hercules

I Married a Strange Person!

1998
Antz
A Bug’s Life – WINNER.  The Rotten Tomatoes winner was Antz, but c’mon…the Academy loves PIXAR
Mulan
The Prince of Egypt

1999

Fantasia 2000
The Iron Giant
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Tarzan
Toy Story 2 – WINNER.  100% Rotten Tomatoes.  

2000

Dinosaur
The Emperor’s New Groove – WINNER.
Rugrats in Paris

What did we learn?  For the most part, the decade started with one box office animated movie from Disney and nothing else.  The three most important years:

1)      1995 – For the first time, multiple animated box office hits were released.

2)      1996 – The first year Disney did not have the best animated film.

3)      1998 – For the first time, multiple critical hits were released.

I now see why it took so long for the category to be added to the awards.  There sure was a lot of garbage.

@CowGoesMovie