Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah ranks the ten feature films from Pixar, worst to best.  Heh.  “Worst.”  What a silly word to type in an article about Pixar.

(10)  Cars

Was there any doubt?  Hands down THE worst Pixar movie, this is still better than all but a small handful of the CGI-animated features all the other studios have ever produced.  (In my opinion, of course.)  Kung Fu Panda is better; that’s one.  Um … um … um … hold on a sec, I feel certain there are others … um … um … oooh!  Bolt!  That one’s better.  Um … oh!  Surf’s Up is better, arguably.  Yep, that’s about it.

So for this to be Pixar’s “worst” movie is hardly an insult.

Truth be told, it’s marvelous, with some of the best animation Hollywood has ever produced, and it seems to have an imaginative hold over small children that is perhaps unparalleled.  I guess I can sympathize with some people not liking certain of the vocie actors (Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, George Carlin, Cheech Marin; all have their detractors), but I like them all, and my goodness, Paul Newman…?  Awesome.

Points off for having the least-inspired music of any Pixar film.  The Randy Newman score is unmemorable, and at least one of the songs — the James Taylor ballad — is nausea-inducingly bad.  A few points returned for use of “Sh-Boom.”

(9)  Up

I think most of the rest of the moviegoing world is a leeeetle more impressed by Up than I was, but don’t take that as an insult against the movie.  It’s an(other) instant classic from the studio.  However, some of the adult content — all of which is exceedingly lovely — feels a bit out of touch with the more fantastical, childish elements.  I mean, really, it’s a little hard to believe that the scene in which Ellie sits in her front yard (eyes closed to the wind, calmly trying to accept the fact that she and Carl can’t have children) exists in the same movie as dogs who pilot fighter planes.

Really, in Up, it’s the sillier elements that feel out of touch with the serious moments.  Weird to say, but it’s true.

However, on their own merits, those silly moments are awfully amusing and satisfying.  My only complaint with Up isn’t much of a complaint: that it doesn’t quite manage to fully work as an entire, complete movie in the way that Pixar’s other movies have.  But who cares?  All of the parts are awesome.

Awesome score by Michael Giacchino, his best to date as of this writing.

(8)  A Bug’s Life

Hilarious, exciting, and beautifully animated, this take-off of Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven had people worried for Pixar prior to its release.  DreamWorks had the similarly-themed Antz in the pipeline at the same time, and rushed it into release several months before Pixar’s film was ready, prompting fears that the showdown between the two would be a serious case of early-bird-gets-the-worm.

Instead, it was a serious case of tortoise-beats-hare; A Bug’s Life got better reviews AND made more money.  It’s also still talked about over a decade later, whereas Antz (an admittedly decent movie), not so much.

A wonderful score by Randy Newman is one of the film’s highlights, and if you don’t love those pill bugs, then go sit in the corner and think about it for a while until you’ve changed your mind.  The voice cast (including Dave Foley, Dennis Leary, and Kevin Spacey) is typically awesome, and those end-credits “bloopers” remain an often-imitated, never-bettered exit plan.

(7  Toy Story

Shocking that the classic Toy Story would be this far down my list, is it?  Stripped of my credibility, am I?  Well, I can live with that, and I stand by my ranking like Joachim stood by Khan even after Kirk blew ‘em all to hell.

Toy Story IS a great movie, there’s no disputing that.  The animation is (still) great, the voiceover work is some of the best animation has ever seen (it remains a signature role for both Tom Hanks and Tim Allen), the Randy Newman songs and score are lovely, the concept is genius, the execution practically flawless.  There is practically nothing bad you can say about this movie, and it single-handedly changed the entire industry.

That’s just how good the next six movies on this list are.

(6)  Ratatouille

Here’s how good Pixar is: they took a movie with a title most people can’t pronounce about a sewer rat who not only spends most of the movie in a kitchen in and around people’s food but BECOMES A GOURMET CHEF and they turned it into a hit.  A BIG hit, at that.  Even in France; hell, especially in France.

What’s next, a charming romance between cockroaches set inside a septic tank?  If Pixar makes it, it stands a decent chance at success.

A great Parisienne score by Michael Giacchino is one of the movie’s many virtues; others include gorgeous animation (particularly the backgrounds), good characters,  and Pixar’s continued refusal to pander by including lowest-common-denominator jokes every ten seconds.

(5)  Toy Story 2

Creating a sequel to a genuine classic is never an easy task, especially when the sequel is mostly unnecessary.  So, of course, leave it to Pixar to make a movie that is not only better than the first, but quite a bit better.  Along with several other 1999 animated releases (such as the classics The Iron Giant and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), Toy Story 2 was instrumental in convincing the Academy to introduce an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  After all, there was serious talk of Toy Story 2 receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and if it hadn’t come out during a relatively strong year for movies, it might have happened.

As with all the best sequels, this one doesn’t settle for rehashing the plot of the first film; instead, it takes the themes of the first film and grafts them onto a new story, deepening the meanings that were present initially.  More (most?) importantly, it’s just as entertaining, if not more so, and introduces new characters who fit seamlessly into the mix.  This is all a good omen for Toy Story 3, although the bar is raised so incredibly high that they’ll be forgiven if they can’t quite manage to clear it this time.

(4) WALL*E

Remember the “complaints” I had about Up feeling a bit like two movies that don’t quite mesh together?  Well, a lot of people feel that way about WALL*E, claiming that the silent-film section with WALL*E and EVE is betrayed by the tubbo-humans-in-space resolution.  I can see where they’re coming from.

They’re wrong, of course, as far as I’m concerned.

The whole point of the movie is that WALL*E’s optimism and exuberance and determination are exactly what humanity — not just the ones on the future, but the ones in the present (us, in other words) — needs to avoid ruining the planet.  It’s a heavy topic for a kid’s movie, but who said this was actually a kid’s movie?

Not only is it one of Pixar’s best, it’s one of the best sci-fi movies that’s ever been made.  Some of the animation is so good it’ll make you wonder how it was even possible.  I mean, that CGI Fred Willard looks just like the real thing!

(3)  Monsters, Inc.

With perhaps THE best final shot in movie history (I’ll put it up there against anything, you just bring it right on), Monsters, Inc. was probably marked the moment in time in which Pixar became an entity separate from Disney in the minds of moviegoers.  Toy Story had certainly been primarily seen as a Disney movie, and neither A Bug’s Life nor Toy Story 2 was entirely able to reverse that trend.  By the time Monsters, Inc. left theatres, however, something had changed, and the world has never really looked back.

To think that Shrek got the first Oscar for feature animation instead of this movie makes me want to poo in a box and mail it to someone.  I don’t have Oscar’s address, though, so I might have to settle for sending it to the local newspaper, and I’m just not sure how effective that would be.

Aided once again by an excellent Randy Newman score, this movie has everything: laughs, thrills, even a couple of very mild scares.  The chase inside the door factory remains one of the best action set pieces ever committed to film; it’s good enough that you can imagine Spielberg and Cameron nodding their heads in appreciation.

(2)  Finding Nemo

Pixar’s biggest hit, this undersea tale hits all the right notes on every count: Thomas Newman’s score is a classic, the voice cast is terrific (especially Albert Brooks and Ellen Degeneres), the colors are vibrant as vibrant can be without being in a movie titled Speed Racer, the story is exciting and touching and sentimental without being gooey.

The mind shudders to think how many times the word “mine!” has been blurted out by the people who have seen this movie.

Pixar might have lost the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but they won on their second nomination, with this movie … and they’ve only lost one since.

(1)  The Incredibles

It may be my inherent love of superhero movies coming through, but I do think this is marginally the best movie Pixar has yet made.  (Although really, any one of my top seven is a strong contender.)

This was the first time Pixar had really tried to tackle animating humans as their primary characters, and there was every possiblity that it might end up not working.  Well, so much for that fear.

The Incredibles remains the best superhero (or comic-book-inspired, if you’d prefer that designation) film ever made.  And yes, I am including The Dark Knight, which is a great, great movie; this one is better.  The superhero action makes a great argument for the future of an entirely CGI-based film industry.  It’ll never happen, and probably shouldn’t, but if Pixar and other similarly talented companies were running the show, and they could come up with action movies as good as this one, I’d be all for it.  (And both Up and WALL*E prove that animation is perfectly capable of delivering drama as well as “real” movies.)

Sure, certain elements of The Incredibles seem to be cribbed from Marvel’s Fantastic Four and from DC’s Watchmen, but that’s okay.  Because in postmodernism, that sort of thing is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged.  And make no mistake about it: though it’s also quite traditional in its plotting, this is very much a postmodernist, deconstructionist take on superheroes.  The fact that kids seem to have either picked up on that and accepted it or just sailed right over it without a bump speaks awfully well of Brad Bird.

Bird also lays down some excellent refferences to the supervillainy of the more cartoonish James Bond movies (!), and he does it better than all of them do it.

The movie also benefits tremendously from an awesome score by Michael Giacchino, who here provides the best John Barry score John Barry never wrote.

Where is my sequel?

Final Thoughts

Pixar is truly on a streak unlike any other in cinematic history.  I’m well aware that not every viewer loves each of their movies, but plenty of viewers — and critics alike — do love each of them, and each movie has extremely ardent admirers of all ages; there is no other filmmaking entity out there that has put together that type of track record.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixar is making films that are bound to last from one generation to the next, making film lovers out of millions of children every year.

There’s no telling how much longer this streak can continue, but it certainly shows no signs of ending any time soon, and every film fan should be very grateful for that.