“Raya and the Last Dragon” was the best animated movie out of all the nominations I watched. It wasn’t just because of the real life animation style, but also because the captivating plot. This animation style let me imagine a live-action version of this movie, which I appreciated. The story itself was also good. Raya is the princess of the Heart of Kumandra. Her main goal is saving the land from the Druuns that are threatening to destroy it. She ends up bringing back the dragon who destroyed the Druuns hundreds of years before, Sisu, in hopes of getting help to bring her dad back. The storyline gets emotional and I found myself on the edge of my seat multiple times watching the fight scenes. I’ve never seen Disney and Pixar produce something this action packed, outside of “The Incredibles,” but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Although the storyline was good and almost got the movie to the top of this list, I believed the animation was just barely better than “Luca,” another movie Disney recently produced. I would have liked to have seen something different in the animation style. Disney has a pattern of creating characters with big heads and small bodies that make the characters look unproportional. It would have made the story so much better if I could picture these characters in real life. That’s hard when things are far from realistic. Besides that, the plot wasn’t bad. This movie starts out with the backstory of the family receiving a miracle that blessed them all with “gifts.” These gifts are special powers that each member of the family has. The main character, Mirabel Madrigal, didn’t get a gift, and her family has a secretgrudge against her for it. It turns out that later in the movie, Mirabel not having a power ruins the miracle, and it’s up to her to fix it before it’s too late. Overall, it was a good movie that I’d watch it again. I just think that it needed to be a little more unique and more realistic with the animation style.

This movie was interesting but not necessarily in a way where I was captivated. The movie was strange. The whole concept of a fish that can turn into a human and wipe away water from its body is a little weird to me. The animation was decent and I thought it felt like a normal Pixar movie animation. “Luca” had an okay storyline that could have been improved to make it so much better. The sea monsters were able to just wipe away water that fell onto their skin, and they’d lose whatever color was showing up on them. I think if they weren’t able to just wipe it away and had to struggle to find something to cover it up for a while, it would have been a more enjoyable movie to watch. There would have been another challenge that the characters were trying to solve. Overall, the movie in the animation aspect and storyline was okay.

The “Mitchells vs The Machines”gets 4th place in my rankings, not just for animation, but for the story. The plot takes place in 2020 where robots start to take over the world. In an attempt to try and save the human race, the dysfunctional Mitchell family is left to play heroes. They meet two malfunctioning robot friends that help them with their mission. There are quite a few weird scenes that include giant furbies shooting lasers out of their eyes and appliances trying to steal the “kill code” that is designed to stop the robots. It sounds like an interesting and fun movie, but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I was hoping to. This movie seemed to be geared more towards a younger audience around 7 or 8 years old. It made me laugh sometimes, but overall, it wasn’t a great movie. On the other hand, the animation wasn’t bad in my opinion. It just wasn’t good, either. I’ve seen better animation, but this wasn’t the worst I’ve seen. I could somewhat picture how these characters could look in real life, same with some of the scenes. For the most part, I couldn’t picture it though. It’s unlike any other animated show or movie I’ve seen before, which made it unique, still, Disney and Pixar movies seem to just come out on top with their animations.

“Flee” is a very tear jerking and heart-wrenching story that is an animated documentary, told predominantly in Danish. This true story follows the story of Anim and his journey escaping Afghanistan with his family. The time frame is set when the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s. This story was nice and it was very captivating, but the animation itself is why I’ve placed it last. The animation reminds me of the American sitcom, “King of the Hill,” and personally, I got a headache watching and trying to follow along with the choppy movements from the characters. I can’t see why this film is nominated for the best animated award. If I’m getting a headache from watching an animated film, I think there’s something wrong with the animation. I liked the story of this movie though. It was interesting to learn a little bit about the fall of the Soviet Union, which is something I didn’t know much about. This movie gave me some more knowledge on the subject.