WhenJeffrey Katzenberggot fired from Disney, after the unexpected death ofFrank Wellsand a power struggle between himself andMichael Eisner, he would strike back by collaborating with two powerhouses (David GeffenandSteven Spielberg) and form DreamWorks, the first new full-fledged movie studio since United Artists. A key component of this new endeavor was DreamWorks Animation, a fiefdom ruled over by Katzenberg and designed to challenge Disney’s dominance in the marketplace and cultural zeitgeist. It would come close a few times, but DreamWorks Animation has also had a famously rocky history and was recently purchased, wholly, by Universal (one of three different studios who have distributed DreamWorks Animation features over the years). As of now, the future of DreamWorks Animations seems both assured (with a number of sequels to high-profile originals in development, beginning withTrolls World Tour) and uncertain (they now reside in the same corporate portfolio as Illumination Entertainment, famous for making wildly successful films at a fraction of the cost of DreamWorks Animation features).
Over the past 25 years, DreamWorks Animation has had a huge impact on feature animation, for both good and ill, and have created a house style as easily identifiable (and marketable) as Disney or Pixar. (It’s worth noting that a recent attraction was opened at Universal Studios Hollywood that is physically modeled after the studio’s rambling Glendale, California headquarters.) While three separate studios have released their movies over the course of two-and-a-half decades, “DreamWorks Animated Movie” is shorthand for a certain type of animated movie – irreverent, modern, and with a cast full of starry celebrities.
In celebration of this anniversary, and the release of the truly brilliantTrolls World Tour, we look back at the staggering amount of films released by DreamWorks Animation – all the hits, the misses, and thewhat-were-they-thinkings. Settle in. Fart jokes ahead.
And for another definitive list, check outour ranking of every Disney animated movie.
40. Joseph: King of Dreams (2000)
Good godthis is bad.Joseph: King of Dreamswas ripped out of a page of Katzenberg and Eisner’s playbook – namely, to quickly produce a cheaply animated direct-to-home-video follow-up toThe Prince of Egyptmeant to capitalize on that film’s overwhelming popularity. Unfortunately,The Prince of Egyptwasn’t a sensation and, while pre-release materials stressed thatJosephwas in production concurrently with the theatrical release and shared many of the same creative principals, the animation is noticeably worse and the songs are really crummy. (It doesn’t help that it’s essentially treading the same sandy ground asAndrew Lloyd WeberandTim Rice’sJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.) It doesn’t help thatBen Affleck, at the peak of the “yeah, I’ll do it” phase of his career, is cast as Joseph and ishorribly miscast. He comes across as a whiny farm boy, a “miracle child” with the personality of a desperate millennial. And the guy who supplies his singing voice (Australian musicianDavid Campbell) soundsnothinglike him. It will not surprise anyone to know that the production was a nightmare and the film was dramatically redone after a disastrous test screening. All that work didn’t add much to the film, which still very much sucks. There are a couple of bright spots (Joseph has dreams with backgrounds that look like moving Van Gogh paintings) but this feels more like a quickie knockoff toPrince of Egyptthat they’d sell videotapes of on Sunday morning television, instead of the lavishly produced companion film Katzenberg thought it’d be. Avoid this like the (biblical) plague.
This is a movie that is so “DreamWorks” that it borders on being a parody of itself:Turbois the story of a snail (voiced byRyan Reynolds) who dreams of being a racecar driver and, thanks to a magical accident, becomes super-fast and competes in the Indianapolis 500. Needlessly complicated, shoddily animated, and sort of racist (the two Hispanic characters are, of course, the owners of a taco stand),Turborepresents the very worst that DreamWorks Animation has to offer: high-concept, low-IQ, loaded with pop culture references (who told Katzenberg about memes?) and singularly designed with franchise potential in mind (an animated spin-off series was put into production a year before the movie opened to lukewarm box office). While primarily a waste,Turbois notable for being set where DreamWorks Animation is located: the beautiful San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles. And for featuring what is essentially just an animatedRichard Jenkins(as the owner of a rundown hobby store). Snooze.
38. Shrek 4-D (2003)
If you think puttingShrek 4-Don this list is cheating, then you clearly aren’t aware of just how much play this thing has gotten. In addition to having played at the Universal Studios theme parks in Hollywood, Orlando, Japan and Singapore, was licensed to Warner Bros. Movie World parks in Australia and Germany, aired on television, was released on home video, and played in front of 3D re-releases of several DreamWorks movies in England. Quite franklynotputting this on the list would have been weird. The rare “4D” movie that doesn’t work completely as an animated film or a theme park attraction (where it had minimal in-theater effects, like moving seats and spritzes of water), it’s full of tired 3D gags, along with the patented DreamWorks mixture of gross-out gags and pop culture references (while walking through a haunted graveyard, Donkey mutters, “I see dead people”). It is notable, however, for pre-dating the subsequentShreksequels and Katzenberg’s overzealous embrace of 3D theatrical exhibitions that would ultimately make both theme park attractions like this one and 3D movies in the theater obsolete and unappealing. The only thing worse than the attraction itself is how endlessly repurposed it has become.
37. Shark Tale (2004)
What a headache. Originally envisioned as an underwater noir calledSharkslayer(which makes me immediately think of the short-livedJohn Ritteranimated seriesFish City), it eventually evolved into the broadest of broad comedies. Instead of inspired character design, theShark Taleteam instead to just do boardwalk caricatures of the voice actors –Will Smith’s fish has his lips and ears,Martin Scorsese’s blowfish has bushy eyebrows,Robert DeNiro’s shark has his distinctive mole, etc. This, coupled with the insistence on fish puns, pop culture references (“Baby Got Back” appears in an anthropomorphic fish universe … do fish even have butts?), gives it the aura of a half-written animatedSaturday Night Livesketch. And it’s just as forgettable. Weirdly borrowing the plot of theDennis Quaiddragon movieDragonheart,Shark Taleconcerns a Howard Ratner-esque, gambling-addicted fish (Smith) who accidentally kills a shark and then teams up with a supposedly scary shark (Jack Black) to convince the aquatic world he’s a big hero. So, yeah. Between some startlingly bad racial caricatures (Doug E. DougandZiggy Marleyplay dreadlocked, gap-toothed jelly fish enforcers) and ugly, overly busy animation (and keep in mind this was released a yearafterFinding Nemo) that turns stars likeRenee ZellwegerandAngelina Jolieinto bizarre underwater mutants,Shark Talewas one of the few hits (it was even nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar) that Katzenberg chose not to exploit in any other arena (no sequels, television shows or spin-offs ever materialized). Katzenberg later explained that genre parodies likeShark Taledon’t travel well internationally. Excuses, excuses.
36. The Boss Baby (2017)
In a 1991interview with Entertainment Weekly,Alec Baldwincalled Jeffrey Katzenberg “a short, bald, uppity, greedy megalomaniac” and vowed to never work with him again. Baldwin said: “I will never see him again. I believe God would protect me from that – just like I wouldn’t get AIDS.” Um, the point is that he ended up working with Katzenberg numerous times on the DreamWorks Animation side of things. Baldwin’s most successful partnership with the man he described in the same interview as “the eighth dwarf – Greedy,” wasThe Boss Baby. Maybe he channeled some of his thoughts on Katzenberg into his performance as a tiny cutthroat businessman (it doesn’t make much sense), although that is probably giving too much thought to a movie that is, as far as I can tell, complete nonsense. (This is especially disappointing given that the script is bySNLalum andAustin PowersmainstayMichael McCullers.) At the time people claimed that Baldwin was just transferring hisDonald Trumpimpression, turning the blubbery tycoon-turned-tyrant into an actual baby, but it was based on a picture book from 2010, so not even that reading holds much water. Visually, the film was supposedly inspired by animation from the 1950s (as evidenced by the odd midcentury modern look of the family’s house), butBoss Babyis way too cluttered and busy to actually draw that connection. Of course, it was a smash and an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature. It inspired a 2018 Netflix series and a sequel, again with Baldwin, will open in 2021. Only this time, he won’t have to work with Katzenberg.
35. Bee Movie (2007)
Without a doubt,Bee Movieis the most bizarre movie DreamWorks Animation has ever produced. Writer/producer/starJerry Seinfeldhas said repeatedly that idea forBee Moviewas a pun that he shared with Katzenberg and never expected it to actually become a movie. But it did. And it’s weird as hell.Bee Moviebegins as a sort of pseudo follow-up toAntz, with Seinfeld’s Barry dreaming of escaping the hive and his pre-assigned place in society. From there it makes several jarring left turns, first when Barry bumps into a human woman (played byRenee Zellwegger) and falls in love with her and later, in a true test of the audience’s patience, when the movie transforms into a prolonged legal drama, with Barry suing the human race for their exploitation of bees. Seinfeld brought along several of his sitcom collaborators, including co-writersAndy RobinandMike Ferestenand a number of his costars, includingPatrick Warburtonand, um,Michael Richards, not that it mattered much.Bee Movieis aggressively unpleasant to watch, particularly in the sections set in the human world (and keep in mind that this movie was released the same year as Pixar’sRatatouille, arguably one of the most gorgeous animated movies ever), and the humor largely falls flat. The movie would receive some additional attention in recent years as the subject of widespread memes, leading Seinfeld to publicly play with the idea of developing a sequel. Thankfully, that seemed to be idle chatter and we were spared the indignity ofBee Movie Too. To quote the internet: #blessed.
34. Abominable (2019)
Abominablehad a long and tortured production history, so much so that it’s a miracle it was released at all. Writer/directorJill Cultonwas fired from the production, the film was retooled, and then Culton was hiredback on, this time working alongside one of the filmmakers who had replaced her. Not to mention that, during production, Oriental DreamWorks, the studio’s China-based outpost and main source of animation for the film, shuttered and became Pearl Studios. So now DreamWorks was working with an outside studio and, since the movie was a Chinese co-production, had to deal with the requirements of a state-funded movie. (I remember walking through the production offices before the movie came out and cringing at all the stuff they had to acquiesce to.) Combine all of those complications with a largely limp, simplistic story (which borrows heavily from Pixar’sUp), uninspired characters designs, and a shopworn concept (it was the third bigfoot-themed animated feature to be released in the United States in a year) and you’ve got a labor of love that wasn’t worth the effort. The ending is pretty cute though.
33. Home (2015)
Few films have been as heavily hyped and financially disappointing asHome. Released during one of the studio’s more financially uncertain periods (it swapped release dates withPenguins of Madagascarat the 11thhour, which still didn’t matter much), it was buoyed by a full-court promotional campaign straight out of Katzenberg’s starriest playbook. This onslaught included, amongst other things, a photo op with President Obama visiting the company’s campus in Glendale and the release of an accompanying Rihanna “concept album” that wound up only being a handful of songs (three of which were actually performed by the pop star, who also starred in the movie).Homeis needlessly convoluted (it takes place on an Earth where an invading alien race has harmlessly relocated the entire Earth’s population), with the same pat messages of inclusivity, transparency and forgiveness that wouldn’t be out of place on any Saturday morning cartoon.Jim Parsons, as an annoying alien outcast andRihanna as his human sidekick, give it their all, but the movie is too noisy, cluttered, and cutesy (hello, flying car powered by a Slurpee machine!) to make much of an impact. If DreamWorks had leaned into the strangeness of its source material (an illustrated novel byAdam RexcalledThe True Meaning of Smekday),Homeprobably would have hit harder. Instead, the studio chose to emphasize the sweetness over the satire (hey, first time for everything) and bet hard on the timelessness of dub step.
32. Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014)
In 2012, DreamWorks Animation purchased Classic Media, a kind of holding tank for a number of properties, includingCasper the Friendly Ghost,Lassie,George of the Jungle, andTheRocky and Bullwinkle Show. Most of these titles have been exploited for television and streaming series, but notMr. Peabody and Sherman, based on the “Peabody’s Improbable History” segments ofRocky and Bullwinkle. Why anyone thought that the one-note animated segments should be the basis for an entire animated feature is beyond me, although executives were probably delighted at the possibility of a story centered around time travel.Rob Minkoff, returning to animation for the first time since directingThe Lion King, tries to embrace the hip, off-the-cuff DreamWorks Animation feel (there are references to “planking” and, for some reason,George W. Bush’s assertion thatJohn Kerrywas a “flip flopper”) while also paying tribute to the exaggerated art style of original creatorJay Ward. Quite frankly, turning the intentionally flat stylization of the original series into three dimensions is an awkward fit, as Mr. Peabody (Ty Burell, who replacedRobert Downey Jr.late in production) and his adopted human child Sherman bumble around different, expensively rendered time periods. One of the more public disappointments, especially given Minkoff’s much-ballyhooed return to the world of animation, with the studio admitting to taking a $60 million write down on the film. You have to wonder, if they could go back in time, would they have made the movie at all?
31. Antz (1998)
When Jeffrey Katzenberg founded DreamWorks Animation, he wasn’t just challenging Walt Disney Animation but he was also aiming to take down Pixar, the computer animation studio whose alliance with Disney Katzenberg helped forge. So when Pixar announced that their forthcoming film, a follow-up toToy Story, was calledBugsand would open in the 1998 holiday corridor, Katzenberg clapped back … by ripping them off.Antzwasn’t just a movie; for Pixar principals likeJohn LasseterandSteve Jobs, it was an affront. (Lasseter claims that he clued Katzenberg into the studio’s sophomore feature when Katzenberg visited the edit bay ofToy Story.) Katzenberg offered to cancelAntzif Pixar would move off of their date forBug’s Life; they refused and Katzenberg offered his animators (at Pacific Data Images, a start-up at the time perhaps best known for the Waldo character in the Muppet*Vision 3D attraction at Disney-MGM Studios) huge financial incentives to get the movie ready in time to beat Pixar’s film. And they did. By more than a month. At the time the critical response toAntzwas warm and while the script remains strong (it is telling that they were able to get everyone fromGene HackmantoSylvester Stallone), the fact thatWoody Allenvoices the main ant makes it hard to watch and the animation is alarmingly ugly. (Bug’s Liferemains rudimentary but gorgeous – and that movie is similarly cursed with aKevin Spaceyperformance.) DreamWorks Animation would ultimately hit its stride thanks to its computer-animated films but withAntz, it was off to a rocky start.
