Over the past decade, the winner of the best animated film Oscar has often been a better-reviewed movie than the best picture winner. Is The Hurt Locker, victor in 2010, really a superior movie to Up? Will future generations hold 2009's Slumdog Millionaire in greater regard than the beguiling Wall-E? There's often been a sense that the very existence of the animation category serves to restrict the genre come awards season, limiting its potential to challenge for other prizes.
Disney-owned Pixar, which made both Up and Wall-E, carried off the animation Academy award six times between 2003 and 2010. But the pioneering studio has suffered a slow descent into relative mediocrity since the halcyon years of Ratatouille and The Incredibles. Now it looks like the animated award may itself be following a downward path, despite the much-improved standard of material from Dreamworks Animation (Kung Fu Panda, How to Train a Dragon), Universal (Despicable Me), Laika and indeed Disney in recent years.
Looking down the list of movies for this year's longlist, announced earlier this week, it's almost frightening to think that these are the films that will vye for one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' more competitive prizes come next March. Last year, Pixar managed to carry off the gong with one of its weaker efforts (the still very good medieval fantasy Brave) despite remarkably strong competition from films such as Wreck-It Ralph, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman. This year, the best the studio can offer up is Monsters University, a fun but slightly throwaway prequel to the classic Monsters, Inc.
The runaway favourite on the list of 19 films (which will be whittled down to five nominees) has to be Despicable Me 2, a follow-up to the Steve Carell-voiced supervillain caper that's so sharp you could cut your fingertips on its spiky comedy. The Universal sequel would be a worthy winner in most years, even if it doesn't quite have the unorthodox clout of some of Pixar's best work. A 75% Rotten Tomatoes rating (compared with 98% for Up and 96% for Wall-E, both of which enjoyed best-reviewed film of the year status) tells its own story.
Elsewhere though, there isn't much in the way of competition. We can put aside joyous but generic fantasy fable Epic and zany comedy sequel Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. Neither has the quality level truly to challenge. Dreamworks' psychedelic caveman caper The Croods is gorgeous to look at and has a strong voice cast, but owes way too much to the studio's brilliant How to Train Your Dragon and that movie's incisive depiction of a collision between wide-eyed, hopeful youth and fearful middle age. It should get a nomination ahead of the studio's other 2013 effort, Turbo, but really should not be pushing for the top prize.
Disney's Planes is a weak spinoff from Pixar's commercially-oriented Cars series of films. The Wind Rises is a typically offbeat, gorgeously hand-drawn Studio Ghibli effort, and the last film from animation pioneer Hayao Miyazaki. But unless the Academy is planning to offer one of the milieu's true greats a final prize to mark his long and distinguished career, it does not have the broad appeal and mesmeric quality of a Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away. Besides, voters are unlikely to give the top prize to a far-out biopic about the Japanese inventor of a fighter plane that killed thousands in the second world war.
Last year, Disney's Wreck-It Ralph made a late charge for the Oscar but ultimately had to settle for a nomination (despite garnering superior reviews to Brave). This year, most critics have yet to see snowy tale Frozen, which has been picking up some encouraging early reviews. "Given that it's a Disney cartoon, you probably already know how it ends, but what's interesting about Frozen is that you may not predict how they're going to get there," writes Alonso Duralde of The Wrap. "And for children's animation, that's a wilder ride than we usually get."
France's Ernest and Celestine, about a mouse and bear who earn each other's friendship in a world where the two animal tribes are fiercely at odds, is too full of Gallic whimsy to challenge. The Smurfs 2 … well, it's The Smurfs 2.
I could go on, but will instead furnish you with the full list and hope someone may point out a hidden gem among the remainder that I've not yet had the chance to catch. Otherwise, this is looking like a pretty fallow year.
Full Oscars animation longlist
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Epic
Ernest and Celestine
The Fake
Free Birds
Frozen
Khumba
The Legend of Sarila
A Letter to Momo
Monsters University"
O Apóstolo
Planes
Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie – Rebellion
Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury
The Smurfs 2
Turbo
The Wind Rises
More on the 2014 Oscars and Despicable Me 2
• More Oscar predictions 2014
• Despicable Me 2 - Peter Bradshaw's review
