Animated sequels have yet to disprove that timeless adage about movie sequels, but they’re giving it a real go. DreamWorks Animation hasn’t always gotten the formula right (the “Shrek” movies got worse and worse), but even “Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa” had entertainment to offer. “Kung Fu Panda 2” marks the studio’s third try at [...]

The Pixar library stands as modern animation’s most impressive by far, partly due to both the studio and Disney’s belief that sequels should only be made with the right artistic reasons in mind, namely a good story. That’s why, to date, we have just “Toy Story 2,” “Toy Story 3″ and … “Cars 2″ … [...]

Animated talking-animal films since the dawn of CGI have gotten much more prolific. Now that animals can be illustrated with ease and superb realism (namely in textures such as fur, feathers and scales), the supply can meet the demand and almost every major movie studio has either its own animation division or a relationship with [...]

It seems to have taken until the eleventh hour, but Disney has finally found a way to make its classic fairytale stories work in the 21st Century. Thanks to longtime Disney animator Glen Keane (serving as producer) and directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard (“Bolt”), the film stays true to Disney’s long line of rich [...]

It’s always nice when a movie surpasses expectations. It’s even nicer when that better-than- expected film negates the potential title-related puns that critics could have used to lambaste it. In other words, there’s nothing despicable to say about “Despicable Me” other than the title’s overall irrelevance and potential roadblock to making more money.

No matter which way you shake it, “Shrek Forever After” amounts to nothing more than a way to capitalize on a profitable franchise for a fourth time. Many fans will see this as proper closure to the franchise, but that’s the closure *they* need, not that the films needed. “Forever After” feels much more like [...]

Watching “How to Train Your Dragon” on DVD, I had my first (and what could well be my last) case of 3-D regret. Watching the young viking Hiccup soaring on the back of his new pal Toothless the dragon made me seriously wish I’d seen the film in theaters and yes, in 3D, a medium [...]

It will always remain a mystery as to what took so long for just a good old computer animation version of a Dr. Seuss story. “The Grinch” and “The Cat in the Hat” had their entertainment value, but the confines of the real world simply don’t reflect the towering imagination of one Mr. Theodor Geisel. [...]

There really is something a bit fantastic about Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation debut “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” The quirky spirit of the Roald Dahl book could only be captured by a filmmaker with a deep and unforgiving wit. Anderson’s dry and subtle sense of humor might not translate into big dollars (at least by comparison to [...]

I don’t have anything against talking animals. I love Disney movies like the rest of them. I’ll take talking toys, bugs, bears, penguins, fish, you name it — but an elite force of special unit guinea pigs in a live action setting is not something that screams fun for the whole family. No doubt that [...]

“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” is about the closest any major CGI animation studio has come to a classic cartoon done in a modern style. It would appear that somewhere between “Looney Tunes” and Pixar’s “Up” that animation has lost a bit of its rule-bending nature. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, co-executive producers of [...]

After tackling rats with chef skills and voiceless robots on journeys of self-discovery, leave it to Pixar to make the star of its latest film an elderly man and continue to defy Hollywood’s long-held belief that animated films have to zero in on children and concepts that can be marketed into hats and toys and [...]

It seems like Pixar is the only company producing outside-the-box animated adventures these days, but don’t discredit “Coraline,” Laika Entertainment’s second stop-motion feature after Tim Burton’s “The Corpse Bride.” Based on the Neil Gaiman book, “Coraline” is one of the more creative stories and executions of family entertainment to have come out in awhile and [...]

Hayao Miyazaki has captured the imagination of audiences young and old across the globe, and his most recent cinematic work of art is “Ponyo,” a children’s fairytale borrowing on story elements from The Little Mermaid. Of course like other Miyazaki classics such as “Spirited Away” and his last film, “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Ponyo” is full [...]