Dreamworks Animation

[Lauren]

What are your thoughts on all of the animated movies they've made before from the start to present?

2D (Hand-drawn animated):

The Prince of Egypt (1998)
The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)

CGI:

Antz (1998)
Chicken Run (2000)
Shrek (2001)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Shark Tale (2004)
Madagascar (2005)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Over The Hedge (2006)
Flushed Away (2006)
Shrek the Third (2007)
Bee Movie (2007)
Kung Fu Panda (2008)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Shrek Forever After (2010)
Megamind (2010)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Puss In Boots (2011)
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)
Rise of the Guardians (2012)
The Croods (2013)
Turbo (2013)

[Carl]

Of those, I have seen these:
Antz (1998)
Shrek (2001)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Shark Tale (2004)
Madagascar (2005)
Shrek the Third (2007)
Kung Fu Panda (2008)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Puss In Boots (2011)
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)

Personally, I liked them all, though some much less than others, and some I haven't seen in so long I don't remember much about them (like Antz). My favourites have to be the Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda series, though I also loved Puss In Boots and Shark Tale almost as much. I used to like the Shrek series a lot more than I do now, and I think I saw Monsters vs. Aliens too many times in my music class in high school to fully enjoy it. But I'm not complaining as I would have rather watched it than the other option we had.

[Lauren]

When I was 9, I saw Madagascar back in 2005 and I was obsessed with the whole series and was my favorite movie for about 3 years until December of 2008...TLK replaced my obsession. When I look back to my younger years, I have no idea what the heck was I loving. Now, I don't like the Madagascar trilogy anymore because I find the movies to be kinda stupid. The first one is "meh". The second one sucks and such a complete rip-off of TLK (not 100% but still watch out for the similarities). I did not like Makunga as a character and villain because he sucks as a villain. I just recently watched the third movie and I still did not like it. It was too fast paced, annoying, bad villain, didn't care about the main characters anymore, and so much randomness shoved in my face. When I watched first 2 minutes of Madagascar 3, I was like "What the hell am I watching?". Alex's "nightmare" was just so weird and unpleasant to look at. The only good things about the third movie was the backstory of Vitaly. I felt sad for him because of his past and he's an interesting character. I also liked Gia. She's a cool character too and one of the characters that's not annoying. Other than that, I go "ugghhhh" to the trilogy. >.<

I have always liked Shrek ever since I was 5 back in 2001. I love the first 2 movies. They are good. I hate the 3rd and 4th one. I do like Puss In Boots. ^^

I really don't like Shark Tale. The only character I love is Lenny because it feels like he's an actual character inside the movie and not just a fish version of the actor/actress voicing them. Lenny is sweet, respects the fish population despite being a creature who's supposed to be a threat to them, and is just so adorable! The other characters such as Oscar, Angie, Sykes, Lola, and other characters annoy me so much. There's too many pop culture references that distract me from the plot and some bad moments.

I love Chicken Run. I like the idea of The Holocaust but a chicken version of it. It's so sad when seeing the moments when it comes to animal cruelty. I feel so bad for the chickens and Ginger is a good female character. She's likeable, determined, and does whatever she can to help the others escape the chicken farm.

I find Flushed Away.....Okay. Not the worst, but not one of the best. Rodney and Rita make a cute couple!

I love Over The Hedge. I find it to be one of their underrated CGI movies and I don't know why. It deserves more credit.

I don't like Antz. I find it very boring and I love A Bug's Life way more.

I love Megamind. It's very rare to follow the story of a main protagonist who's actually a really funny character at the same time, and that's what he is! Plus, his backstory at the beginning of the movie was pretty good and I feel bad for him. Minon is such a funny character and awesome as well!

Both Kung Fu Panda movies are good! I love them and Lord Shen is freakin' awesome...So is Tigeress.

How to Train Your Dragon is really good as well. I adore the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless.

The Prince of Egypt...Freakin' AMAZING. Such a sad, but emotional story executed very well.

The Road to El Dorado...Another one of my favorites! I absolutely love Tuilo and Miguel, but Miguel is my favorite character. Chel is an okay character, but I don't care for her that much. Overall, really good movie as well.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is a really good horse movie. I like the fact that for a change, these animals do not talk, but Spirit narrates his thoughts. Matt Damon did a good job on that and a touching movie as well. Spirit's leap jump...SO EPIC.

Rise of the Guardians...Hands down...one of the best CGI Dreamworks movies that has ever been made so far. I absolutely love it in so many ways. It's memorable, has a good plot, has likable and interesting characters that are not annoying, has a great and interesting villain, the animation is awesome, it's very funny, has no pop culture references, the voice acting is amazing, and has emotional scenes. I love all 5 of the guardians: Jack Frost, Bunnymund (He's my favorite character ), Tooth, North, and Sandy. Each of them are likeable and interesting and do their job as a guardian right. Pitch is really cool and I actually feel bad for him at the same time since he, like Jack was, has never been believed in and that's all he wants from the world. Jack's past is really sad and I adore the relationships between Jack and Jamie and Bunnymund and Sophie! Overall, AWESOME movie.

My favorite Dreamworks 2D movies are:

1. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
2. The Prince of Egypt
3. The Road to El Dorado

My top 5 favorite CGI Dreamworks movies are:

1. Rise of the Guardians
2. How to Train Your Dragon
3. Kung Fu Panda 1&2
4. Megamind
5. Over The Hedge

[TheLionPrince]

Sweet macaras, Lauren! Well, I'll post my short reviews later on today. For all you DreamWorks Animation fans, here are the latest trailers for Turbo and The Croods:

[youtube]ADuKkRTiCfI[/youtube]

[youtube]zBdiFU6DgpE[/youtube]

EDIT: Here are the reviews of the DreamWorks Animation I've watched (or remember watching):

I have not seen Antz in its entirety for a long time. I will watch it this week.

I loved The Prince of Egypt for just about everything. I love its beautiful animation, and how it combined beautifully with the computer animation. The storytelling was great and mature, and the characters were very well-developed. I believe this movie better captured the relationship between Moses and Ramases than Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments more personal by making them behave like brothers whereas the latter movie made them like political rivals. Stephan Schwartz's songs and Hans Zimmer's score were breathtaking, and added considerable depth to the story.

I remember liking The Road to El Dorado. The storyline could have been more coherent and developed more, but Tulio and Miguel were just fun characters, and had great chemistry together. The songs by Tim Rice and Elton John may not have been as memorable as their songs for The Lion King, but "El Dorado" and "It's Tough to be a God" are my favorite songs from the movie. Despite the flawed storyline, the movie makes up for it with the animation and the talented voice cast.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is sadly underrated, but I quite enjoyed it. The visuals were great for my tastes despite the overly simplistic story. Overall, I adored how it portrayed the animals different from most animated movies by not giving them spoken dialogue and its setting in the 19th century America, which made the movie suprisingly one of the more realistic animated movies I've seen in some time. Finally, I loved the songs in this movie from Bryan Adams.

I have not seen Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas in like two years, but I liked the romance between Sinbad and Marina. Like all the other DreamWorks animated movies, the visuals were impressive at best, but the storyline could have been a little better.

I loved Shrek and Shrek 2. Shrek the Third wasn't as funny and lacked the charm and wit in the storyline, but the voicework and animation helped make it passable. Shrek Forever After was better, but it still lacked what the first two movies had, and at the end, it felt somewhat pointless.

I'll admit I liked Shark Tale. I saw it in theaters, and I still have it on VHS. It's a guilty pleasure for me. It had too many pop culture references for my taste, but I thought the storyline was inventive, and I liked its morals of acceptance and being honest. Like Lauren said, it did seem like the actors were just playing fish versions of themselves so it didn't make the voice acting believable for me.

I didn't like the first Madagascar. It had a very good, original storyline, but its humor didn't help it since it wanted to appeal more to adults. The animation wasn't as impressive as the earlier DreamWorks movies, but the voice cast was great. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was better in terms of animation and storyline, though it borrowed heavily from The Lion King. I have not seen the third movie.

Over the Hedge was very good. I loved the storyline, and its satirical messages of mass consumerism, and the jokes were delightful. DreamWorks rarely fails with their all-star voice casts, but I loved the voice acting in this movie especially Steve Carell's Hammy. The animation was also very good as well.

I liked Bee Movie. The animation was dazzling, the characters were delightful, and the voice acting was top-notch. As for the storyline, it was predictable at best. The minute I saw what the world looks like without the bees sharing the honey was when I knew that Barry was going to reverse his mistake at the end.

I quite loved the Kung Fu Panda movies. They're funny, animated beautifully, have great characters, and are action-packed and have epic fight sequences. It's too bad we have to wait until 2016 for Kung Fu Panda 3 to be released.

I have not seen Monsters vs. Aliens in a long time, but I remember liking it.

MegaMind was just hilarious. It's a very fun movie, though the storyline borrowed bits and pieces from other movies like the Superman movies and Despicable Me (told from a villain's perspective and has lovable minions) among other movies. I also felt it tried to play it safe by revealing MegaMind did not actually kill off Metro Men. Everything else is top-notch for me.

How to Train Your Dragon is one of the better DreamWorks movies in a long while, though as much as I was impressed with the strong visuals and characters, I was not impressed with the story. It reminded me of the same old stories in movies like Pocahontas and Avatar with the leading protaganist who embraced the other side his side opposes, the friendship/romance of the leading protaganists, some bigoted leader of the protaganist's side who refuses to accept the other side, and the battle between the two sides when the bigoted leader changes his views. Despite the problem I have with the story, I very much look forward to the upcoming sequels.

I liked Puss in Boots as well. Everything in the movie was good with the voice acting, action sequences, animation, characters, and cleverful, witty story.

I have not seen Rise of the Guardians, but if it's as good as Lauren and RainbowDash make it out to be, I'll gladly glad watch it.

[Lauren]

No matter how many times I watch the trailer for The Croods, I'm still not impressed. I feel that I won't really like the movie that much and I won't bond with those characters like I have with some of their past movies (ROTG, HTTYD, KFP, etc...). The plot its giving out to us seems too boring (I know I have seen something like this before...). I don't know. I feel like compared to their last movie, Rise of the Guardians, it's such a turn-off. I'll admit, at least for their last few movies, they haven't been shoving the actors/actresses names in out faces while watching the trailers because the characters and story are more important than the people playing the characters. I'll give that credit for now, but overall, I'm not looking forward to The Croods.

[Gaze]

I quite like DreamWorks Animation's traditionally animated films. Spirt and The Road to El Dorado are particularly great.

As for their CGI films, though...my opinion varies. For one thing, DreamWorks obviously values quantity over quality, and I think that is what will always keep them inferior to their main competitor, Pixar. Pixar puts out one great film per year. DreamWorks churns out as many films per year as it can, meaning we'll usually get one good movie and one or two mediocre movies from them.

I do like some of their movies, but I always have little problems with them. Kung Fu Panda, for example. I really love both Kung Fu Panda films. But why did they need to cram in as many celebrity voice actors as they could? It would have been nice to see some lesser-known actors in those roles, particularly if they could provide the characters with Chinese accents. I know it's an animated film about talking animals, but it's still kind of weird that all the characters were born in China and yet some of them have Chinese accents and some of them have American accents.
And I just hated how Kung Fu Panda 2 ended in a way that made it absolutely necessary to have a sequel. It felt so tacked on. Made it really obvious that they just can't wait to make a third installment and rake in the cash.
I'm also not a big fan of some of the character designs. I have that gorgeous book The Art of Kung Fu Panda and it's really a shame they didn't use some of the character designs they had, particularly the ones for Tai Lung.

Shrek, of course, has far too many sequels. And far too many fart jokes. The style of the film is just so odd...the way it's cartoony, but still looks like an attempt at realism. Shrek has gone too far.
Madagascar is following in its footsteps, with an excess of sequels. I admire some aspects of the first movie.

DreamWorks' CGI animation always looked a little weird to me. I mean, it's certainly not bad. The animation and character designs often seem just a little bit off in an irritating way that I can't quite describe.

I felt even weirder about DreamWorks when I heard that they pay for membership to the International Animated Film Association for all their employees, on the condition that their employees vote only for DreamWorks films in the Annie Awards. That just doesn't seem fair at all. And it seems desperate.

I don't think DreamWorks is incapable of doing good. A lot of their films are really enjoyable. But I feel their work could be so much better if they just tweaked a few things about their company. I'd love to see them start putting quality before quantity.

[Carl]

[quote="Sadiki"]And I just hated how Kung Fu Panda 2 ended in a way that made it absolutely necessary to have a sequel. It felt so tacked on. Made it really obvious that they just can't wait to make a third installment and rake in the cash.[/quote]
Actually, prior to making the first KFP movie, they planned out six movies. There are still four more on the way.

[DGFone]

Before the CGI took off, Dreamworks was great. I absolutely love Prince of Egypt and Spirit (though not as much as TLK). After the CGI took off... meh?

I never liked the CGI films. This is both with Dreamworks and Pixar.

Although I would like to say this: I saw the Father of the Pride topic here on MLK, and I have to say that I like it quite a bit. I don't know who did the writing and all that, but the animation (CGI) was done by Dreamworks. I think it could have been better, and some parts look much better than others, but for 2004 (hint: Original Xbox was releasing Halo 2), it looks quite good.

[Gaze]

[quote="Juliette"][quote="Sadiki"]And I just hated how Kung Fu Panda 2 ended in a way that made it absolutely necessary to have a sequel. It felt so tacked on. Made it really obvious that they just can't wait to make a third installment and rake in the cash.[/quote]
Actually, prior to making the first KFP movie, they planned out six movies. There are still four more on the way.[/quote]
Six!? Oh my gosh. I loved the first one, and the second one was especially visually beautiful, but that is just far too many...

[Carl]

[quote="Sadiki"]
Six!? Oh my gosh. I loved the first one, and the second one was especially visually beautiful, but that is just far too many...[/quote]
So I read. Honestly, I'd like a long series if the movies continue the way of the first two. Quite a lot of films these days are really not that great and the sequels are just bad, and thrown together after the fact. I think if sequels are coming, at least these were already planned, that way there should be less plot holes and such. In addition, if they are making sequels to a good series that are up to par, they'll hopefully have less time to work on movies that won't be as good.