Greetings, folks, and welcome back to Rhode Island Movie
Corner’s DreamWorks Retrospective series, where I tackle the extensive
filmography of one of the most prolific animation studios in the film industry,
DreamWorks Animation. Over the past few years, I’ve gone through the studio’s
most prominent franchises, from the one that started it all, Shrek, to
more modern hits such as How to Train Your Dragon and Trolls. I
even did a whole post dedicated to the studio’s brief run of traditionally animated films. And for today’s post, we begin the final stretch of this
journey through DreamWorks’ filmography as I go through the 24 films that I
haven’t covered yet in one of these posts. As I’ve stated before, my primary
criteria for doing the posts that were based around DreamWorks’ biggest
franchises was if they at least produced a trilogy's worth of films. Some of the
films that we’ll be talking about throughout the next few posts have
gone on to have a sequel, but at the time that I’m writing this, Trolls is
the most recent franchise to achieve the trilogy mark. Still, with so many
films to get through, I’ll once again be splitting this section up into
multiple parts to avoid one super-long post. Today’s part will be tackling the
studio’s filmography from 1998 up till 2009, which means that we’ll go through
DreamWorks’ partnership with Aardman Animations, see their first endeavors in
the world of computer animation (that were, admittedly, accused by some of
being knock-offs of their competitors’ productions), and answer the age-old
question… you like jazz? Without further ado, here’s Part 1 of Rhode Island
Movie Corner’s final stretch of DreamWorks Animation Retrospectives.
ANTZ (1998)
Shrek may have been the film that effectively made
DreamWorks a household name in the world of computer animation, but it wasn’t
the studio’s first computer-animated feature. Instead, that honor goes to
DreamWorks’ first collaboration with Pacific Data Images from 1998, Antz,
directed by the duo of future Madagascar director Eric Darnell and
future Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas director Tim Johnson, both making
their directorial debuts here. The film follows an ant named Z (voiced by Woody
Allen) who has become disillusioned with being a lowly worker drone in a colony
of millions. On one fateful night, he meets and falls in love with the colony’s
princess, Bala (voiced by Sharon Stone); hoping to see her again, Z switches
places with his best friend Weaver (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), a soldier
ant, unknowingly ending up as an unwilling participant in a deadly battle
against the ants’ dreaded enemies, the termites. Somehow managing to be the
only survivor of the battle, Z then finds himself thrust out of the colony
along with Bala and heads off on a journey to the mythical insect paradise
known as ‘Insectopia’ while also dealing with a sinister plot enacted by Bala’s
fiancé, General Mandible (voiced by Gene Hackman), to take over the colony and exterminate
most of their fellow ants. Antz started out life a lot like The
Prince of Egypt as a proposed project for Walt Disney Animation during
Jeffrey Katzenberg’s tenure as the studio’s chairman under the name Army
Ants. When Katzenberg left Disney to start DreamWorks, Army Ants was
repackaged as the studio’s first computer animated feature… but, of course,
anyone familiar with this film knows that this would then lead to what is
easily this film’s most notorious aspect; its major similarities to Pixar’s
1998 film A Bug’s Life and how that became one of the cornerstones of
the intense rivalry between the two studios.
Simply put, when Pixar chairman Steve Jobs and then-Chief
Creative Officer John Lasseter learned about Antz’s production… they
weren’t too happy about it. Citing a meeting between Lasseter and Jeffrey
Katzenberg in 1995, where the former revealed the plans for A Bug’s Life,
Lasseter and Jobs believed that Katzenberg stole their ideas despite
Katzenberg’s claims that suggested otherwise. This budding rivalry between the
two parties even extended to a war over the films’ release dates, with Disney
scheduling A Bug’s Life to open the same weekend in November as
DreamWorks’ first official animated production, The Prince of Egypt. When
Disney refused to move A Bug’s Life’s release date and even scheduled a
remake of Mighty Joe Young to go up against The Prince of Egypt
when its release got moved to December, Katzenberg moved Antz’s release
date from March of 1999 to October 2nd, 1998, a little over a month
before A Bug’s Life was to hit theaters on November 20th,
just so that DreamWorks could get their ant film out first. And while A
Bug’s Life would ultimately be the victor financially (earning over $363
million worldwide compared to Antz’ $152 million+ haul), both films were
relatively neck and neck in the eyes of critics, thus solidifying what is, to
this day, still one of the most prominent examples of two studios releasing
similarly themed films in the same year.
(Heck, this wasn’t
even the only time that Disney and DreamWorks were involved in a film-centric
rivalry that year given their involvement in the blockbuster double feature of
space-based disaster flicks that was Armageddon (released under Disney’s
Touchstone Pictures label) and Deep Impact (which DreamWorks produced with
Paramount, who would become their animation studio’s distributor in 2006))
Now, I’m not really going to spend any time today comparing
the two films from a quality standpoint because both films are genuinely great
in their own unique ways. However, it is fascinating to discuss how vastly different
these two films are from a tonal standpoint. Whereas A Bug’s Life is
your traditional family-friendly Disney/Pixar film that keeps its proceedings
light-hearted and appealing to all ages, Antz has a lot more edge to it
despite it still having quite a lot of kid-friendly elements. As one can only
expect from a project starring Woody Allen, there’s a whole bunch of adult
references and profanity; PG-rated adult humor and profanity, to be clear, but
nevertheless, still not the kind of thing that you’d normally expect from an
animated film like this, whether it’d be Z stating that he’s uncomfortable
“drinking from the anus of another creature” or him telling Bala during an
argument between them that “he was going to let her become a part of his most
erotic fantasies”. It also gets incredibly dark and violent at times; not only
are major characters killed off… they’re often killed onscreen. At the end of
the ants’ battle against the termites, Z finds his new friend Barbatus still
alive for a few moments… albeit as a severed head. And in another scene, Z and
Bala barely survive the scorching beam of light from a magnifying glass that
directly vaporizes one of their fellow ants on the spot (in a close-up shot, no
less!) and then proceeds to eradicate two of the other ants that were there
with them.
I still vividly remember when I rewatched this film for the
first time in quite a few years sometime in the mid 2000’s when it aired on
Cartoon Network (I’m somewhat confident that I watched it on VHS at least once
when I borrowed it from my hometown’s public library) and, even at age 10 or
so, being completely surprised at how surprisingly dark it was for a film
geared toward my demographic [at the time]. And yet, it does work out in this
instance because it results in a delightfully off-beat comedic adventure that’s
chock-full of quotable lines (e.g. “Who the hell is that?”, Z proclaims when he
and Bala (who are trapped in the gum stuck on a human’s shoe) are wiped off by
a penny and they see the profile of Abraham Lincoln rapidly approach them).
Much of this is thanks to your typically stacked all-star DreamWorks Animation
voice cast, with practically everybody being perfect fits in their respective
roles. Woody Allen, as expected, brings his trademark neurotic humor to the
role of Z and it translates well to the medium, undoubtedly thanks in large
part to Allen doing some uncredited rewrites to ensure the dialogue matched his
style (Disclaimer: To be clear, though, this is NOT a defense of Allen given…
well, everything that we know about him…). And then you have other perfectly
cast roles like Sharon Stone as the no-nonsense Bala, Sylvester Stallone as Z’s
happy-go-lucky best friend Weaver, and Gene Hackman as the commanding yet subtly
terrifying General Mandible. Plus, while it goes without saying that computer
animation has come a long way in the nearly three decades since this film’s
release, much of its animation still holds up relatively well today barring a
few dated aesthetic choices; namely, the weirdly lanky proportions of any
human characters. Granted, that can reasonably be seen as intentional given
that the film is set from an ant’s perspective (especially since we don’t see
any humans fully on-screen), but it still feels considerably off in a few shots
during the previously mentioned ‘gum on shoe’ scene.
Ultimately, though, Antz is the perfect counterpoint
to what Pixar gave us that year with their insect film, A Bug’s Life.
With the latter, Pixar firmly established that they weren’t going to be a one-trick pony after the success of 1995’s Toy Story with another prime
example of a classic Pixar masterpiece full of bright and colorful animation, heartfelt
themes, and lovable characters. But as for Antz, both it and DreamWorks’
other animated feature of the year, The Prince of Egypt, firmly represented
the kind of films that the studio were striving to make out the gate; edgier
animated films that weren’t afraid to go to much darker places narratively
speaking than what we tended to get out of Disney and Pixar films while still
balancing all that out with more light-hearted elements so that the films could
effectively appeal to both kids and adults. And unlike DreamWorks’ subsequent
breakout hit Shrek, Antz’s sharp sense of humor isn’t driven solely
by the need to one-up Disney, which is saying something given that this was literally
DreamWorks’ whole modus operandi. Obviously, once Shrek came out and
became a generation-defining hit, DreamWorks’ approach to developing their
animated films changed considerably, thus leaving a film like Antz as a
relic of a bygone era, especially since it’s one of their rare one-off features
that didn’t get a sequel. One was planned back in the day, originally set for a
direct-to-video release but potentially viable for a theatrical release, before
it was scrapped not long after DreamWorks shuttered its television animation
department. But for those curious to see where DreamWorks truly got their start
in the world of computer animation, Antz is a solidly entertaining ‘first
feature’ that, at the risk of using an incredibly cliched phrase to properly
describe it, is certainly not your typical animated feature when compared to its
peers.
Rating: 4.5/5
CHICKEN RUN (2000)
In the process of turning DreamWorks Animation into a
legitimate rival to Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg sought to have the same kind of mutually
beneficial relationship that Disney had achieved through their work with Pixar.
Ultimately, DreamWorks’ answer to Pixar would end up being Aardman Animations,
the U.K.-based stop-motion animation studio well-known for their beloved
Claymation projects such as Wallace & Gromit and Creature
Comforts. During a pitch meeting between the heads of the two studios,
Aardman mainstay (and Wallace & Gromit creator) Nick Park and studio
co-founder Peter Lord presented a story of chickens attempting to escape from
their farm in a manner reminiscent of the 1963 classic war film The Great
Escape. DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg was instantly won over by
this pitch, citing his love of The Great Escape and the fact that he
owned a chicken farm, thus resulting in the two studios agreeing to a
five-picture deal and Park and Lord teaming up to co-direct Aardman’s first
feature-length film, Chicken Run. As noted earlier, the film follows a flock
of chickens, led by the strong-willed Ginger, as they try to escape from their
farm, which is run with an iron grip by the malicious Mrs. Tweedy and her
dim-witted yet obedient husband, who kill off any chickens who aren’t providing
them with enough eggs. When the threat of death starts to become more
inevitable when Mrs. Tweedy elects to turn the farm into a chicken pie making
operation to improve its overall profit, Ginger and company attempt to try and
‘fly’ out of the farm with the help of an American rooster named Rocky, who
they believe can fly… completely unaware that Rocky is just a circus performer
who only ‘flies’ when he is shot out of a cannon.
It should go without saying that Aardman’s first
feature-length production proved to be the most ambitious and challenging
project that they’d ever made at the time, but for the most part, Katzenberg
and his team at DreamWorks didn’t interfere with the production too much, which
is something that, unfortunately, can’t be said about the two studios’
subsequent productions. Katzenberg even publicly defended the film’s
unmistakably British nature when some press outlets took note of it, stating
that it didn’t matter if you weren’t able to fully understand the British terms
that it used because you could still understand ‘what’ is being said and that
this was all an essential part of its charm. And thankfully for both parties, Chicken
Run proved to be a sizable hit upon its release. With a $227 million+ haul,
it became the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time, a record
that it still holds to this day. Critically, the film was so well-received
amongst critics and audiences that it is often cited as the primary catalyst
behind the Academy Awards creating a category for Best Animated Feature after
it didn’t garner a Best Picture nomination despite being one of the
best-reviewed films of the year. Simply put, calling Chicken Run a
success story would be a massive understatement as it’s a first-class example
of all the talent and craftsmanship that has gone into every single Aardman
production. The hand-crafted charm of their Claymation process (which, for those
unfamiliar with stop-motion animation, is the very definition of an arduous
process that usually only elicits about a minute of film per a single week of
filming) shines through in every single meticulously constructed and exquisitely
detailed frame of animation, resulting in what
is not only one of the best-looking animated films of its time but quite
frankly still one of the best two and a half decades later.
Of course, as one would expect from Aardman, their
sharp-witted sense of humor is also on point throughout, with all sorts of
great visual gags that are naturally complemented by the equally terrific
animation and snappy one-liners delivered by a fun cast of characters, with
notable supporting players such as the good-natured yet ditzy Babs and the hilariously
cranky and old-fashioned rooster Fowler (“WHAT WHAT!?”). But as delightfully comedic
as Chicken Run is, it also fully succeeds in endearing you to the main
protagonists by properly illustrating how utterly desperate of a situation
they’re in at the farm, where the threat of death is always apparent to the
point where, in an early scene, one of their fellow chickens is executed by the
Tweedys in a sequence that, while not directly shown on-screen, doesn’t shy
away from its horrific implications that could very well affect the other
characters if they ever ended up facing the same fate (and in a G-rated film,
no less!). The film itself ultimately results in a much happier ending for our
main protagonists than the one for the characters in the film that it was directly
inspired by, The Great Escape, but that doesn’t mean that this film’s main
antagonist, Mrs. Tweedy (brilliantly voiced by Miranda Richardson), isn’t one
of the most wicked antagonists in animation history, thus making the chickens’
escape from the farm an undeniably cathartic moment. In other words, this is a
film that, while largely comedic in tone, is also smart enough to be serious
and emotional at precisely the right moments, thus finding a perfect tonal
balance.
Really, what more can be said about Chicken Run that
hasn’t been said already? There’s a damn good reason why this is still regarded
as one of the best animated films of all time as it wholly exemplifies why
Aardman Animations continues to be one of the most revered animation studios in
the industry. Easily one of the best examples of all the hard work that the
team at Aardman has put into every single one of their projects, Chicken Run
is an animated flick whose overall quality shines through in every
considerable aspect of its production, whether it’s its charmingly hand-crafted
animation, its lovable characters, or its sharp-witted script that effortlessly
mixes in moments of innate emotional poignancy throughout this primarily
comedic spin on the wartime genre. Thus, it’s not too surprising to see that not
long after the film’s release, Jeffrey Katzenberg was eager to see Aardman
produce a sequel, which they declined to do at the time given all the effort that
was needed just to finish the first film. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be until
after Aardman severed ties with DreamWorks that they would finally make the
long-awaited follow-up, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which was
released on Netflix in 2023. That film would go on to garner similarly positive
reviews from critics but, at the same time, was seen by some as an
underwhelming sequel (not to mention the controversy that emerged over the
decision to recast the role of Ginger, with original voice actress Julia Sawalha
stating that it was due to her being considered ‘too old’ to return). But
regardless of where you stand on Dawn of the Nugget, the original Chicken
Run still stands as an indisputable Aardman classic.
Rating: 4.5/5
SHARK TALE (2004)
Earlier, we discussed all the hubbub surrounding the release
of DreamWorks’ first computer-animated film, Antz, in 1998 due to its
many similarities with Pixar’s own insect-based film from that year, A Bug’s
Life. Well, if you need another example of when DreamWorks was accused of
trying to copy the winning formula behind one of Pixar’s many hits, look no
further than their holiday 2004 release Shark Tale, directed by the trio
of Shrek co-director Vicky Jenson, The Road to El Dorado co-director
Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman, who went on to direct films like 2019’s Pokémon:
Detective Pikachu and notably produced the original animated test footage
for Shrek alongside none other than J.J. Abrams. Shark Tale (originally
titled Sharkslayer before it was rebranded into its current (and much
more family-friendly) title) hit theaters a little over a year after
Pixar’s fish-centric 2003 release Finding Nemo and, while completely
unrelated to the Pixar-DreamWorks rivalry, just one month before a certain
sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea made his big-screen debut with The
SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Finding Nemo would go on to become one
of Pixar’s biggest hits up to that point, earning nearly $1 billion worldwide, that
year’s Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and eventually securing the record for
the best-selling DVD of all time. Shark Tale, on the other hand, didn’t
end up reaching those same heights. It did a respectable run at the box office,
earning nearly $375 million worldwide, and it even earned an Oscar nomination
for Best Animated Feature. But aside from the argument that it more than likely
stood no chance against the likes of DreamWorks’ other 2004 release Shrek 2 and
that year’s eventual winner, Pixar and Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, Shark
Tale was a dud with critics; its 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes still stands
as the lowest-rated film that any DreamWorks film has garnered on that site
more than two decades since its release. Simply put, this is quite arguably the
one DreamWorks film that is cited as the epitome of the studio’s long-standing
reputation for making animated films that were often accused of being nothing
more than pop-culture dependent kiddie flicks… and in this instance, it’s easy
to see why.
Shark Tale revolves around a fish named Oscar (voiced
by Will Smith), a lowly worker at the local Whale Wash who dreams of getting
out of his life as a ‘nobody’ and becoming rich and famous so he can become a
‘somebody’ within his community, the Southside Reef. However, most of Oscar’s harebrained
attempts at making it big end up failing spectacularly, often putting him in serious
financial trouble with his pufferfish boss, Mr. Sykes (voiced by Martin
Scorsese… yes, THAT Martin Scorsese), who is financially pressured himself
by his ‘boss’, Don Lino (voiced by Robert De Niro), the leader of a shark mob
that has been regularly terrorizing the Southside Reef. But, amid dealing with
the consequences of his latest failed attempt at a get-rich scheme, Oscar
suddenly finds himself blessed with the opportunity he’d been looking for when
he gets chased by a shark, Don Lino’s son Frankie (voiced by Michael
Imperioli), who ends up getting killed by a falling anchor. With any potential
onlookers being led to believe that Oscar was the one who killed the shark,
Oscar boldly proclaims that he did and promptly becomes Southside’s most
popular celebrity, the ‘Sharkslayer’… despite having never killed an actual
shark. Thus, to help maintain his newfound fame, Oscar ends up teaming up with
the most unlikely of allies, Don Lino’s other son Lenny (voiced by Jack Black)
who, unlike his father, brother, and fellow sharks is a vegetarian, to keep
convincing everyone that he’s the real deal, all while dealing with the
inevitable retaliation that’s sure to come from a vengeful Don Lino.
Plot-wise, Shark Tale is probably one of the most
blatant cases of the straightforward trope of a main protagonist who profits
off a lie that eventually comes back to bite them in the end. And in this case,
the results are largely disastrous since Oscar is an incredibly unlikable main
protagonist because of his self-serving motives. Most of the characters in this
film are downright unlikable, in fact, with the only major exceptions being the
wholly sympathetic Lenny and Oscar’s best friend and love interest Angie
(voiced by Renée Zellweger), who is constantly taken advantage of by the
supposed love of her life. But, of course, when it comes to Shark Tale,
the one point that always gets brought up when it comes to the major critiques
of this film is its animation; specifically, its character animation, where a
considerable effort was made to make all the fish characters’ facial designs
resemble their respective voice actors. This method of animation has been a
staple of the medium for several years and has appeared in plenty of DreamWorks
films both before and after this film, but in this case, I do agree that it
doesn’t work as well as the animators hoped it would as it ends up making the
fish characters in this film a bit too humanlike in design. At the very least,
the rest of the animation helps to make up for this shortcoming with a nicely
cool color design that never gets dark to the point of looking too creepy for kids
and some fun set/location visuals that do a great job of crafting a unique
underwater metropolis regardless of how much it may rely on product placement.
As for the film’s voice cast, one could say that this is one
of the most flagrant examples of DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s method
of relying primarily on a celebrity voice cast to sell the studio’s animated
films rather than the usual merits of the medium. Still, for what it’s worth,
this film does feature a solid voice cast, even if none of them get that much of
value to work with. Oscar may be an unlikable main protagonist, but Will Smith
still manages to convey just enough of his well-established magnetic screen presence in the role. Meanwhile, Jack Black (four years before he would take on his
definitive DreamWorks role as Po in the Kung Fu Panda films) brings
solid laughs as Lenny, Renée Zellweger is her typical adorable self as Angie,
and as crazy as it is to see legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese in a voice
role, he surprisingly does an incredibly respectable job as Oscar’s
short-tempered boss Mr. Sykes. Plus, it is rather fun to see him work directly
with Robert De Niro, his most frequent acting collaborator, in any scenes that
involve Sykes and Don Lino. Ultimately, though, Shark Tale’s status as
one of DreamWorks’ worst-received films is, admittedly, quite well-warranted.
Sure, this was one of the many DreamWorks films that I grew up with right
alongside the likes of Shrek and Madagascar, but upon rewatch, this
was very much a prime example of ‘a film you liked as a kid that doesn’t hold
up as well as it used to’ as it’s wholly undone by a weak script, poorly-conceived
and unsympathetic characters, and some highly questionable animation choices.
Rating: 1.5/5
WALLACE &
GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (2005)
With the success of Chicken Run under their belt,
DreamWorks was more than ready to see what Aardman’s next feature film was
going to be. After considering an adaptation of the classic Aesop fable The
Tortoise and the Hare, which was ultimately abandoned due to script issues,
it was decided that it was time to bring one of Aardman’s most beloved
franchises to the big screen. Thus, Nick Park teamed up with Aardman animator
Steve Box to direct the first feature film to star the iconic duo of the
good-natured yet bumbling cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his loyal (and
quite arguably smarter) canine companion Gromit, Wallace & Gromit: The
Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Ever since their original debut in the 1989 short
film A Grand Day Out, the ambitious college project that led to Nick
Park becoming an Aardman mainstay, the dynamic duo have gone on to become
certifiable animated icons, with all four of their short films (the other three
being 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, 1995’s A Close Shave, and 2008’s
A Matter of Loaf and Death) earning Oscar nominations for Best Animated
Short, with The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave winning in their
respective years. As for the film (which was originally subtitled The Great
Vegetable Plot before it was retitled due to negative feedback from test
market researchers), it follows Wallace and Gromit as they deal with a
mysterious creature dubbed ‘the Were-Rabbit’ that has been threatening their town
by eating their neighbors’ produce that was intended for the local Giant
Vegetable Festival. However, their efforts to try and capture the creature end up
becoming more difficult than anticipated when the catalyst behind its creation is
revealed to be something that ends up hitting a bit too close to home.
Unfortunately for Aardman, this is where DreamWorks started
to exert a more controlling presence on their work. There had been a few
creative conflicts between the two studios during the production of Chicken
Run (such as DreamWorks tapping John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams to
do the score rather than Wallace & Gromit composer Julian Nott), but
it started to become more of a problem once DreamWorks’ outlook on animation
changed drastically into a more commercial mindset following the success of the
first Shrek in 2001. As a result, Nick Park frequently faced executive
meddling from DreamWorks higher-ups, who encouraged him to make the film more
‘American’, whether it was giving Wallace a nicer car rather than his beat-up
van or even daring to suggest that Wallace’s longtime voice actor, Peter Sallis, be replaced. Thankfully, neither of these suggestions ended up being
implemented into the film, with Aardman seemingly appeasing DreamWorks’
voice-acting request by bringing in big-name stars such as Helena Bonham Carter
and Ralph Fiennes to play the film’s new characters. And even then, DreamWorks
was apparently still unsatisfied with the lack of a trendy voice cast, which is
ironic since this was right around the time that Fiennes and Bonham Carter
would become involved with one of the biggest film franchises of the era, Harry
Potter, by playing the series’ main antagonist Voldemort and his dedicated
lieutenant Bellatrix Lestrange, respectively.
Fortunately for Aardman, all this interference didn’t end up
having that big of a damper on the film’s reception once it was released. While
it did underperform in the U.S. financially, only doing about $56 million,
international audiences helped it make over $192 million worldwide on what was
notably the lowest budget that any DreamWorks film at the time had at just $30
million. And despite being nominated the same year as legendary filmmaker Hayao
Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit would
end up netting the Wallace & Gromit franchise its third Oscar, Nick
Park’s fourth overall, and its first for Best Animated Feature, which was also
DreamWorks’ second in that category after Shrek won the inaugural award
in 2001. Despite all this, however, it seems that fans of Wallace &
Gromit tend to be a bit split on this installment of the franchise. Now, to
be clear, that’s not to say that it’s considered ‘bad’ or anything; it’s just
that, given everything that we’ve gone over about all the times that DreamWorks
attempted to make it more appealing to American audiences, many have debated
whether this did end up having a significant impact on the film by ‘robbing’ it
of the franchise’s trademark British charm. Personally, I’d say that Aardman
thankfully managed to largely maintain all their usual narrative trademarks;
their reliance on top-notch visual gags (complete with a few risqué ones, even),
their sharp and dry-witted sense of humor, and of course most importantly with
the Wallace & Gromit franchise, keeping Gromit as the silent yet
fully expressive protagonist that he’s always been. As a result, I’d dare argue
that Curse of the Were-Rabbit ends up being the funniest installment of
the entire Wallace & Gromit series, which is truly saying something
given all the brilliant comedic highlights that have come to define it.
And yet, even the creative decisions that, by most accounts,
were the ones mandated by DreamWorks end up working out all right. Helena
Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, AKA who Aardman brought in to appease
DreamWorks’ demand for a star-studded voice cast, are both fantastic in their
respective roles; Bonham Carter as Lady Tottington, the kind-hearted aristocratic
socialite and proprietor of the Giant Vegetable Festival who becomes Wallace’s
love interest, and Fiennes as Tottington’s smug game-hunting suitor Victor
Quartermaine. And, of course, Peter Sallis is just as great as he’s always been
as our favorite lovably short-sighted cheese-loving inventor Wallace. Pair all
this with Aardman’s fantastic stop-motion animation and you have yet another
one of their many masterpieces. While I didn’t end up seeing this one in
theaters, I was, at least, familiar with the Wallace & Gromit franchise
back when this came out thanks to my fourth-grade teacher showing us the
original trilogy of A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A
Close Shave. That still stands as a fond memory of my elementary school
years (minus the part where my classmates teased me for having the same first
name as A Close Shave’s breakout supporting character and future
Aardman superstar Shaun the Sheep (even though that’s not how I spell my first
name, Sean)) and I would end up seeing the film once it hit DVD when it was
played for me and my classmates on one of those end-of-the-year off-days in
fifth grade. Simply put, regardless of whatever DreamWorks tried to do to give Wallace
& Gromit an American identity, Aardman successfully managed to stick to
their guns and, thus, thoroughly proved why this iconic BRITISH
duo was truly worthy of gracing the big screen.
Rating: 5/5!
OVER THE HEDGE
(2006)
In 2006, DreamWorks Animation (now its own publicly traded
company once DreamWorks spun it off from the main studio and put its shares up
for sale on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004) agreed to a distribution deal
with Paramount Pictures, thus resulting in the U.S.’ second-oldest film studio taking
on the distribution rights to not only DreamWorks’ pre-existing lineup of
animated films but also their newest releases up until the tail-end of 2012.
And as for the first major production that was released under these two
studios’ newfound partnership, that honor would go to Over the Hedge,
based on the 1995 comic strip of the same name by author Michael Fry and artist
Thomas Leslie Lewis III (AKA T Lewis) and directed by the duo of Antz and
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas’ Tim Johnson and, in his directorial
debut, Karey Kirkpatrick, who wrote the screenplay for DreamWorks’ first
Aardman feature Chicken Run and would then go on to create the
Tony-nominated musical Something Rotten! with his older brother Wayne.
The film follows a gang of woodland creatures who awaken from their annual hibernation
to discover that much of their forest home has been leveled and replaced with a
massive suburban neighborhood; only a small patch of the forest now remains, separated
from the neighborhood by a giant hedge. Now finding themselves in a perilous
predicament over the fear of not being able to scrounge up enough food to last
them through the next winter, the gang is approached by a charismatic raccoon
named RJ, who shows them the ins and outs of the suburbs so that they can
collect food from their new human neighbors… all while being completely unaware
that RJ is secretly using them to collect enough food so that he can pay off
the massive debt that he owes to a bear named Vincent after accidentally
destroying Vincent’s own stockpile of food.
Over the Hedge did quite well for itself upon its
release on a critical and commercial level. It earned nearly $340 million
worldwide and while it ended up getting snubbed for Best Animated Feature at
that year’s Oscars, it was still well-received by most critics. That said,
though, it seems to me like a lot of DreamWorks critics tend to view this as
another one of the studio’s generic ‘pop culture dependent kiddie flicks’,
especially since it ended up being one of the studio’s rare one-offs as,
despite a $340 million cume, that, apparently, wasn’t enough to convince studio
executives to greenlight a sequel… and that’s a shame because this is easily
one of DreamWorks’ most underrated gems. For a film that does, admittedly,
revolve around quite a few of the common narrative tropes that populated some
of DreamWorks’ films at the time, it works far better with those concepts in
ways that a film like Shark Tale didn’t. Sure, its main character RJ may
be your standard smooth-talking con artist selling a lie that he gradually
loses control of over time, but thanks to a charismatic lead voice performance
by Bruce Willis, RJ manages to be a decently likable character who, thanks to
the genuine bond that he forms with his new friends, gets to have a
legitimately satisfying redemption arc when the time comes for him to save
those whom he now considers his family. RJ’s maverick personality is then
contrasted perfectly by Garry Shandling as the woodland gang’s leader, Verne the
turtle, who, despite his generally cynical attitude, is a dedicated paternal
figure to the rest of his pals.
In general, Over the Hedge sports a delightful (and
all-around likable) cast of main protagonists, voiced by a highly entertaining
voice cast. There’s Steve Carell in one of his first big roles after his
breakout turn as Michael Scott in the U.S. adaptation of The Office as
the hilariously hyperactive squirrel Hammy, Wanda Sykes as the no-nonsense skunk
Stella, and William Shatner as Ozzie the opossum who, in classic Shatner
fashion, goes fully over-the-top whenever he ‘plays possum’, just to name a
few. The film also features a hilarious trio of main antagonists in the form of
RJ’s aggressive adversary Vincent the Bear (voiced by Nick Nolte), the suburbs’
easily short-tempered ‘Karen’ of a Homeowners’ Association President Gladys
Sharp (voiced by Allison Janney), and comically pompous exterminator Dwayne
LaFontant AKA ‘The Verminator’ (voiced by Thomas Haden Church). And while I
can’t say that Over the Hedge features some of the most polished
animation to come out of DreamWorks, it still deserves quite a bit of credit
for its pleasantly bright Spring-based color palette and for being one of the
first DreamWorks films at the time to showcase the kind of zany and energetic
animation techniques that would come to define a bunch of the studio’s best
films circa the start of the 2010’s. Bear in mind, this all comes from one of
the rare instances of a DreamWorks Animation project that did not go on to
become one of the studio’s big franchises; it only ever garnered a few video
game spin-offs that were released the same year. As such, Over the Hedge easily
stands as one of DreamWorks Animation’s most underrated films thanks to its
hilariously sharp-witted satire of suburban culture and its lovable characters
who epitomize its heartwarming vibes.
Rating: 4.5/5
FLUSHED AWAY
(2006)
Despite all the success that Aardman had managed to achieve
with DreamWorks thanks to Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The
Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it was clear that the relationship between the
two studios had started to become incredibly rocky in the mid-2000’s due to the
latter starting to exert a more aggressive level of creative control over the
former. As a result, the two studios announced in 2006 that they would
terminate their contract with each other (albeit in a reportedly amicable
fashion, per their words) by the start of the following year, with the
announcement coming just a few weeks before the release of what would be their
third and final film together, Flushed Away. Later, the film itself would
be cited as a major factor behind the dissolution of their partnership since,
upon its release, Flushed Away would end up being one of DreamWorks’ biggest
commercial duds. While not outright panned by critics, it only earned a little
over $178 million on a rather hefty $149 million budget (with only a little
over $64 million of that coming from the U.S.), which led to DreamWorks
suffering a $109 million loss, the second highest in their history at the time after
the $125 million loss that they had gone through back in 2003 with Sinbad:
Legend of the Seven Seas. At the same time, the team at Aardman were also dealing
with quite a lot on their plate after a fire had destroyed the warehouse where
they had been archiving the materials from all their previous productions a
year prior and were once again hounded by DreamWorks to make the film more
American in tone and style while also being rushed to have it done in time for
a holiday 2006 release date.
Flushed Away first came to be during the production
of Chicken Run as a pitch made by Aardman animator Sam Fell, who would
later go on to direct the Chicken Run sequel Dawn of the Nugget. The
project was officially announced in 2002 under the direction of Fell and fellow
Aardman animator David Bowers, who would later go on to direct the sequels to
the 2010 live-action adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and would end
up being a major first for the studio as it was set to be their first computer
animated production. The decision to do so was due to the team at Aardman
realizing that it’d be difficult to film a stop-motion animated film with a
plot that heavily revolves around water since real water would damage their distinctive
plasticine models and it’d be far too expensive to composite it all digitally (them
being forced to have the film done in time for its holiday release certainly
didn’t help, either). The film revolves around a rat named Roddy St. James
(voiced by Hugh Jackman), who lives a charmed life as the pampered house rat of
a family from Kensington. Whilst enjoying the house to himself when his family goes
on vacation, Roddy’s peaceful solitude is broken by the arrival of a rowdy rat
from the sewers named Sid (voiced by Shane Richie) who has no intention of
leaving. And unfortunately for Roddy, his efforts to get Sid out of the house
by flushing him down the toilet end up backfiring as Roddy gets flushed down
instead by Sid and ends up in an underground city of rats known as Ratropolis.
There, he teams up with a street-smart scavenging boat captain named Rita
Malone (voiced by Kate Winslet) to hopefully get back home and to stop a sinister
Toad (voiced by Ian McKellen) from flooding the city as revenge against all
rats for being replaced by a rat as the favorite pet of Prince* (at the time of
release, anyway) Charles.
While this may have been Aardman’s first time producing a CGI-animated
film, they still made a considerable effort to make the animation look and feel
like it was done like one of their stop-motion animated features. Not only do
all the character models often feature the type of fingerprint marks that are
left by stop-motion animators whenever they move practical models around for
each shot, but their facial and mouth movements are also animated in a way to
make it look like they’re being animated frame-by-frame. This significant
attention to detail feels very much in line with Aardman’s typical level of
artistry and helps to make up for the incredibly rare instances of any shot
where it does, admittedly, feel like a studio’s first foray into computer
animation (which wouldn’t be the case with Aardman’s other computer animated
film, 2011’s Arthur Christmas). But regardless of how it was animated, Flushed
Away still boasts all the classic narrative trademarks of an Aardman
production such as a sharp sense of humor and its delightful cast of
characters. Roddy and Rita are a naturally likable lead duo (with Hugh Jackman
and Kate Winslet boasting phenomenal comedic camaraderie and romantic
chemistry) but the true stars of the show are the villains; Ian McKellen as the
sinister yet classy Toad, Jean Reno as the Toad’s sardonic French cousin Le
Frog, and Andy Serkis and Bill Nighy as the Toad’s bumbling lackeys Spike and
Whitey (Nighy, especially, as the hilariously daft Whitey).
It's safe to say that Flushed Away is the one Aardman
film that tends to get overlooked the most, whether it was due to it becoming
defined by all the chaos that was going on behind the scenes between DreamWorks
and Aardman, its lackluster run at the box-office, or perhaps most significantly
of all, its status as one of Aardman’s rare forays into computer animation
that, to some, makes it feel like the black sheep of their filmography. And
yet, I must admit that upon my most recent rewatch of this film, I found myself
liking it even more than when I reviewed it as part of my Aardman Retrospective
back in 2018, where I gave it a 4/5. Because of this, I now consider
it to be a highly underrated gem of the early 2000s, which may have something
to do with the fact that this may be the one Aardman film that I have the most
experience with. Like Curse of the Were-Rabbit, this wasn’t a film that
I saw in theaters… but it WAS the only Aardman feature-length
film that I owned on DVD growing up and I can safely say that I rewatched this
one just as much as I did with the likes of the first two Shrek films
and Madagascar even if plenty of Aardman’s trademark referential jokes
undoubtedly flew over my head as a kid. Thus, just like many other DreamWorks
films that tend to have a lesser reputation given their status as a notorious
box-office flop like The Road to El Dorado and Penguins of Madagascar,
Flushed Away is a film that’s far better than what its reputation as the
film that largely killed the working relationship between DreamWorks and
Aardman may imply. Sure, it may not have the exact same level of visual
splendor as one of Aardman’s stop-motion animated features, but that doesn’t
mean that it lacks the studio’s trademark sense of humor and charm.
Rating: 4.5/5
BEE MOVIE (2007)
Welcome to Rhode
Island Movie Corner’s review of DreamWorks’ Bee Movie, where,
every time the word ‘Bee’ is mentioned, the font size increases by two points.
How many times will the word ‘Bee’ pop up? Peruse this review of Bee
Movie to find out…
Ok, ok, I’m not really going to do that; that
was just my way of acknowledging the… ‘unique’ reputation that this film has
garnered in the years since its release. Directed by the duo of Simon J. Smith
(The Penguins of Madagascar) and Steve Hickner (The Prince of Egypt),
Bee Movie was notably the first major project that legendary comedian
Jerry Seinfeld headlined after the conclusion of his eponymous sitcom, the one
and only Seinfeld, in 1998. Along with co-writing the script, Seinfeld
stars as Barry B. Benson, a young bee who’s about to join his hive’s
honey-making business. However, upon learning that he’ll be stuck in whatever
job he picks for the rest of his life, Barry starts to become uncertain of what
he wants to do with his life. On a whim, he manages to sweet-talk his way into
tagging along with the hive’s most famous workers, the Pollen Jocks, on their
next trip outside the hive to harvest the pollen that the hive needs to make
honey. And once Barry gets to experience the outside world for the first time
in his life, he soon finds himself in all sorts of crazy situations. He meets
and befriends a human florist named Vanessa (voiced by Renée Zellweger) after
she saves him from getting squished, learns that humans have been exploiting
many of his fellow bees for their honey, sues the human race over this, and
ends up partaking in a time-sensitive heist revolving around the annual Rose
Parade when his honey-saving crusade starts to have a significantly negative
impact on the environment.
So yeah… this is an incredibly weird film once you start
delving into its plot. Heck, I didn’t even mention some of the other surreal
aspects of this film, such as its random cameos from the likes of Sting and Ray
Liotta or, of course, the infamous sexual undertones revolving around the
relationship between Barry and Vanessa that even Jerry Seinfeld eventually
admitted were a step too far. But as far as it fares as a comedy, I’d say that Bee
Movie delivers plenty of laughs. To be clear, not every joke hits, and, as
you might have guessed, this film does not relent on its efforts to utilize
every bee-related pun imaginable no matter how forced it may be. Ultimately,
though, there are quite a lot of funny quotable lines in this film, though I
must stress that I’m not just saying this because practically all of them have
been meme’d to death at this point by the internet. Animation-wise, Bee
Movie is, surprisingly, one of DreamWorks’ best-looking films of the era.
Like Over the Hedge, its color palette evokes a pleasant spring aesthetic
and the film does a great job of presenting the massive scale of the human
world through the eyes of a small bee. As for its voice cast, Jerry Seinfeld
is… well, basically Jerry Seinfeld in the lead role of Barry, but he’s clearly
having a lot of fun in the role and he manages to keep Barry as a likable main
protagonist throughout. The same applies to Renée Zellweger (in her second
appearance in today’s post, no less…) as Barry’s kind-hearted human friend
Vanessa with additional solid performances from the likes of Matthew Broderick
as Barry’s neurotic but loyal best friend Adam and Chris Rock in a small but
memorable cameo as a happy-go-lucky mosquito nicknamed ‘Mooseblood’ that Barry
befriends during his adventures out in the human world.
But now it’s time to address the elephant in the room… the
fact that, in recent years, Bee Movie has gone on to join the likes of Shrek
as one of the most prominent sources of the internet’s modern meme culture.
Now, there are a lot of factors behind this, as many would describe it,
‘inexplicable’ turn of events; as we alluded to earlier, much of this is thanks
to all the discourse surrounding the film’s notoriously surreal story elements.
This, of course, includes the infamous subtext surrounding the relationship
between Barry and Vanessa, which, for the record, has always been something of a
public misconception about the film as it never goes ‘that far’ with any
‘romantic’ implications; Barry and Vanessa’s friendship is simply a platonic
one. But if you were to delve into what is arguably the primary catalyst behind
the film’s memetic nature, that largely stems from a seemingly endless array of
videos on sites like YouTube that edit either the film itself or its theatrical
trailer to achieve a certain comedic effect. One of the most popular was a 2016 video posted by the YouTube account ‘Avoid at All Costs’, which edited the film
to speed up whenever the word ‘bee’ is mentioned (side note, for those who are
curious, it is said 135 times). Other videos might replace the word ‘bee’ with
another line from the film, such as when Barry attempts to talk to Vanessa for
the first time and wonders if he should start the conversation by asking her, “You like jazz?”. Ultimately, though, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of
this film’s transformation into a memetic phenomenon is the fact that, unlike
something like Shrek, which still stands as one of the most iconic
animated films of all-time even with all the bizarre (and sometimes obscene)
memes that have been made about it, the same can’t exactly be said for Bee
Movie if based on how it fared with critics and audiences upon its initial
release.
It only did moderately well at the box office, grossing
about $293.5 million on a rather hefty $150 million budget. Critics, meanwhile,
were largely split about the film, often citing its unabashed randomness as the
source of its polarizing nature, and sure enough, that’s a near-perfect
summation of exactly what kind of film Bee Movie is. Its
unapologetically offbeat nature is quite arguably its biggest selling point,
which I’d say is ultimately both its best and worst feature. On
the one hand, there’s something to genuinely admire about how it certainly
doesn’t abide by the traditional standards of animation and storytelling… but
on the other hand, some of the tangents that it goes off on are, to put it
nicely… odd. But thanks to some legitimately solid animation and a fun voice
cast, Bee Movie is a largely harmless family flick if you’re able to
come into it without being completely influenced by the seemingly endless
impact that it’s had on meme culture. That’s certainly where someone like me
comes into play as I do remember this being one of my favorite DreamWorks films
growing up (even if I never owned it on DVD) and I’m not exactly someone who’s
particularly well-versed (or quite frankly interested, for that matter…) in the
world of memes. Thus, while I realize that I must always stress from now on
that my reasons for liking this film are not because of all the memes that it’s
inspired, I can also feel quite confident in saying that this is one of
DreamWorks’ most casually enjoyable outings.
Rating: 4/5
MONSTERS VS.
ALIENS (2009)
The final film that we’ll be discussing in today’s
installment of the DreamWorks Retrospective series is DreamWorks’ 2009
outing Monsters vs. Aliens, directed by the duo of Conrad Vernon,
co-director of Shrek 2 and voice of the Shrek franchise’s fan-favorite
supporting player Gingy the Gingerbread Man, and Rob Letterman in his second of
two directorial outings for DreamWorks after Shark Tale. And on a
personal note, it’s ultimately quite fitting that this is the last film that we’ll
be discussing for today’s post as this was the last DreamWorks film that I saw
in theaters back when I used to see them all whenever they came out. After this,
I only proceeded to go see a couple on occasion, which means that apart from
one notable exception in Part 2, every subsequent DreamWorks film that we’ll be
discussing from here on out will be a first-time viewing for me. Anyway, going
back to Monsters vs. Aliens, as that title suggests, the film is a
send-up of classic sci-fi B-movies of the 50s, utilizing plenty of imagery and
archetypes from the films of that era. When Earth is invaded by the sinister Gallaxhar,
who is hellbent on conquering the planet, Army General W.R. Monger encourages
the President to assemble a team made up of monsters that the government has
been holding captive in Area 51 to take on this alien threat. Said team
consists of a prehistoric primate/reptile hybrid known as ‘The Missing Link’, Dr.
Herbert Cockroach Ph.D., a scientist who fused his DNA with a cockroach a la The
Fly, a sentient gelatinous blob known as B.O.B., a massive radioactive-mutated
bug known as Insectosaurus, and the latest addition to their roster… Susan
Murphy, a young woman from Modesto, California, who, after being randomly struck
by a meteor on her wedding day, grows 49 feet and 11 inches tall*, thus earning
her the nickname ‘Ginormica’ from the government.
(*DreamWorks’ way of
avoiding copyright infringement in its parody of the 1958 sci-fi horror flick Attack
of the 50 Foot Woman)
The film originally started out as an adaptation of a 1981
comic published by Warren Publishing known as Rex Havoc: Raiders of the
Fantastic, which follows the titular Rex, a monster hunter who leads a team
of monsters in a fight against aliens. Gradually, the film moved away from
being a direct adaptation of the comic once Vernon and Letterman came on board and they ultimately reworked its plot into what we know it as today. But
perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this film’s production is that, thanks in
large part to a $15 million budgetary increase, it became DreamWorks’ first
film to be released in theaters in the 3-D format right around the time that
3-D films were starting to experience the major revival that they went through
in the 2010’s. Now, obviously, this wasn’t the first production from a major
studio to be released in 3-D during this timeframe; films like Beowulf and
Journey to the Center of the Earth were given highly publicized 3-D
releases before it and Disney had found much success back in 2006 when they
debuted a 3-D version of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Nevertheless, it was very much the most prominent aspect of Monsters vs.
Aliens’ marketing and, sure enough, that’s exactly how I ended up seeing it
in theaters. And while it’s obviously been such a long time since that viewing,
I generally recall its 3-D effects to be quite good. As I’ve mentioned in
previous DreamWorks Retrospective posts, while I didn’t end up seeing
the likes of How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, or Puss
in Boots in 3-D, I’m well-aware that DreamWorks’ 3-D efforts were often
cited as being some of the best examples of the medium, especially since this
was right around the time where many studios were starting to hastily convert a
bunch of their 2-D-produced films into 3-D releases, often to not-so-great
results.
But what about the film itself? While it did garner solid
reviews from critics, some felt that it didn’t quite live up to its full
potential as a love letter to 50s-era B-movies since it didn’t try to match
those films fully on a narrative or stylistic level. And to be fair, I’d say
that this is a valid argument as the film’s cultural nods to the works of a
bygone era are just that… nods that younger audiences might not pick up on.
However, the film more than makes up for this by being one of the most
hilarious films to come out of DreamWorks Animation, with a non-stop array of funny
quips and satirical jabs at how society would react to an alien invasion. Much
of this film’s success with its humor is thanks to its top-notch voice cast.
Will Arnett, Hugh Laurie, and Seth Rogen are a phenomenally funny comedy trio
as the boastful yet lethargic Missing Link, the ‘totally not a mad scientist’
Dr. Cockroach Ph.D., and the dimwitted yet lovable B.O.B., respectively.
Meanwhile, Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Colbert are memorably hysterical as
the hilariously jingoistic General W.R. Monger and the recklessly dimwitted
President (you know, back when the idea of an incompetent President was considered
inconceivable) and Reese Witherspoon is her usual perky and adorable self as
Susan, who is easily one of DreamWorks’ most sympathetic protagonists given everything
that happens to her.
When it comes to being one of DreamWorks’ many franchises, Monsters
vs. Aliens didn’t become as big as the likes of Shrek or Kung Fu
Panda but, at the same time, still managed to fare a lot better than the likes
of DreamWorks’ other one-off features of the 2000’s like Shark Tale or Over
the Hedge. With a $381.7 million run at the box office under its belt, the
film would go on to get a few spin-offs in the years following its release. There
was a Halloween special, Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer
Space, which aired on NBC later in 2009, a pair of animated shorts, 2009’s B.O.B.’s
Big Break and 2011’s Night of the Living Carrots, that were released
on various DreamWorks home media releases, and a 26-episode series that debuted
on Nickelodeon in 2013… and was subsequently the final DreamWorks show produced
for the network. However, it never ended up getting a proper film sequel, which,
according to Jeffrey Katzenberg, was mainly due to it not faring as well overseas
as it did in the States. But just like earlier when we talked about Over the
Hedge’s unlucky fate as a one-off feature without any sort of onscreen
follow-up, that shouldn’t be what ultimately defines Monsters vs. Aliens’
overall reputation as its sole feature film outing was an utter delight to
revisit. Sure, it may not be the full-on tribute that it easily could’ve been
to the classic genre films that inspired it, but with one of the most sharply
comedic scripts to come out of any DreamWorks film up to this point, it more
than succeeds in being an all-around zany and unabashedly irreverent sci-fi
comedy.
Rating: 5/5!
And that’s where we’ll
be ending today’s installment of Rhode Island Movie Corner’s DreamWorks Retrospective
series. As always, thanks for following along and be sure to be on the
lookout for the next installment of this series, where we’ll be delving into
the films that DreamWorks produced between 2010 and 2017 (not counting anything
we’ve already covered in any previous posts). In doing so, we’ll cover some of
the studio’s most notable cult classics, conclude DreamWorks’ run of films that
they produced for Paramount, and go through almost the entirety of the films
that they made under the 20th Century Fox banner (which, again,
doesn’t include anything that’s already been covered).
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