Could an animated movie win Best Picture at this year's Oscars?
By C. Robert Cargill, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, November 23, 2009
This hasn't been the year we expected at the outset. After the writers strike crippled the industry, leaving a spate of terrible, underwritten films poised to assault the box office, we critics battened down the hatches and prepared for the worst year of the decade. But a funny thing happened. While we were battered by a number of awful films -- both big- and small-budget -- there was something no one had anticipated: films that had been in development long before the strike was even discussed. For every Transformers 2 there was a Star Trek and for every G.I. Joe there was a District 9. And stranger still, for every big blockbuster there was an animated film to go toe-to-toe with it.
This year saw the release of an unprecedented 20 big-budget animated features. Ranging in size and scope from the stop-motion Coraline and the terrible Spanish-produced Planet 51 to the surprise hit Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and the titanic Up, there was always something new and different awaiting families not happy with the live-action alternatives. And while a number of mediocre to just-plain-bad films stunk up the box office, the animated fare often proved a reliable, if not superior, option. But hold the presses, folks, because that’s not all. Complicating things further, Hollywood forgot to schedule an Oscar season. No, really.
Usually, this time of year brings a slate of highly anticipated, big-budget Oscar hopefuls, indie darlings and Holocaust films -- all vying for the coveted nods that will bring both the prestige of gold and coins in the coffers. And with this being the first year to allow 10 nominees for Best Picture, you’d think that there would be an absolute glut of buzzworthy Oscar films waiting in the wings, skulking where only critics can see them before their late-December/early-to-mid-January releases. Instead, where we expect fanfare, there are only crickets. You see, most of the studios have already rolled out their Oscar films (or have at least shown them to us critics). There’s little to nothing left sitting beyond the horizon ready to sweep in at the last moment to steal thunder from this year’s other great releases.
Making things even more interesting is that no less than two of this year’s animated releases are Oscar-worthy (if not shoo-ins), and there’s a chance that a few more might sneak in.
The praise for both Up and Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (which gets a wide release this week) is pretty much across the board. The former will appear on virtually every top 10 list you’re about to see in the coming month and a half, while the latter is beloved here in the U.S. but mocked in Roald Dahl’s native UK, where the film is derided as being “too American” of an adaptation. Pixar is no stranger to the Best Animated Oscar category, but a Best Picture win could be just the thing to legitimize CG family films as being considered every bit as important as historical costume dramas and dark indie morality plays. And while not yet a winner, Anderson has been nominated for an Oscar before himself and will definitely be considered this year -- especially since his film is brilliant, original and altogether groundbreaking.
There’s not really a lot standing in their way. This has been a great year for film, but mostly due to the large number of long-in-development genre properties ranging from dystopian, end-of-the-world pictures like The Road to the scathing rebuke of apartheid in District 9 to the wild ride of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. Against likely contenders like Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, films like Up and Fantastic Mr. Fox stand a real chance of not only being heavily nominated but also of being within a hair’s breadth of the big prize. Could we see an animated Best Picture this year? Yes, we could.