DownStream – TUDUM! Part Two: Some Animation

As we get closer to nominations and the full Oscar Blitz, the quest to clear out as many potential contenders as possible continues unabated. If you look on Netflix’s FYC page (you can google it, I’m not giving them extra traffic), you’ll notice five animated features that they’ve put their marketing weight behind. One of them, The Imaginary, I covered a long time ago. So strictly speaking, I have four more to go. However, there are two other eligible submissions that are carried on the platform, so I might as well include them as well. There are 31 entries in total, and it appears I won’t be able to see them all (Captain Avispa and Rocket Club still have no streaming or VOD information), but I’ll try to get through as many as I can, and given that most animated films are in the 80-100 minute range, it’s easier to fit them in.

So as it stands, there are six animated films currently on the U.S. version of Netflix that are ostensibly in the running, so let’s split the reviews in twain. I’ll cover three here tonight, and in a later edition I’ll do the other three. I’ve already handled the films on the Documentary Feature shortlist, and between these two animation blocks I’ll look at the narrative features. Sound good? Good. Like I said earlier in the week, the fact that nominations were delayed until next Thursday might make the actual Blitz more chaotic, but for now it buys me more time to empty the backlog. Let’s get to it!

That Christmas

Netflix got a somewhat surprising nomination a few years back for Klaus, an odd origin story for Santa Claus that didn’t always work for me, but certainly had its moments. The Big Red N is hoping lightning will strike again with holiday fare in That Christmas, but I’d say those ambitions are pretty faint, as this film lacks even the ironic yuletide charms of its spiritual predecessor. This is a fairly standard youth morality tale, but it ultimately lacks anything in the way of stakes, emotional resonance, humor, or even creative animation.

Set in a coastal English village, the locals are preparing for Christmas in their own interconnected ways, almost as if director Simon Otto (who was head of character designs for the How to Train Your Dragon series, making his feature-length directorial debut here) is attempting to make a kiddie version of Love Actually. There are three main groups. First we have Danny (Jack Wisniewski), the new kid in town who has trouble making friends, doesn’t get good grades, and has a crush on a girl called Sam (Zazie Hayhurst). He lives alone with his recently-divorced mom (Jodie Whitaker; given her time on Broadchurch it is really weird to hear her talk affectionately about a son named Danny, rather than full of grief), who has to work several long shifts as a nurse to make ends meet. The only things he wants for Christmas are for Sam to notice him and for his dad to come and visit. Second is Sam and her twin sister Charlie (Sienna Sayer). Sam is somewhat nervous and overly obsessed with being on the “Nice” list for Santa (it’s odd that in this British movie they keep calling him Santa rather than Father Christmas, but I’m guessing that was a studio note to appeal more to American viewers), while Charlie is all about pulling pranks, leading Sam to fear she’ll be forever branded as “Naughty.” They just want a happy Christmas for each other, however that may come about. Finally, there’s Bernadette (India Brown), a hyperactive Type-A child who appears to abhor everything “traditional” about the holiday, particularly from her parents (Lolly Adefope and Rhys Darby), and wants to change everything to suit her momentary fancy. For example, she directs the school Christmas pageant, and yet somehow doesn’t understand that everyone isn’t super on board with her making it all about veganism and late-stage capitalism. Her obvious wish is to be fully in charge of remaking the holiday according to her whims.

You’ll notice that pretty much none of this is compelling, and a lot of it is just an excuse for Gen Z pandering. There are interesting touches here and there, like Danny and his mom mostly communicating through hastily-placed post-it notes around the house, but everything feels like a misinterpreted focus group where Netflix only registered suggestions that would aid their “second screen” content philosophy. Anyway, a snowstorm cancels the final day of school before winter break, leading to various shenanigans, and when Santa does arrive (voiced by Brian Cox), his gifting influence creates a few more wrinkles. Really, the big man is barely involved, with the blizzard being the real inciting incident, but there is a curiosity as to why he can or can’t intervene.

For me, the only one of these three stories that really worked was that one that featured Danny, and even then we’ve got to wade through some bullshit. During the unexpected snow day, Danny still goes to school, having missed the closure announcement. However, his stern teacher, Mrs. Trapper (Fiona Shaw) is there as well, and somehow she’s able to force him to do a normal school day since he bothered to show up. How that’s possible I have no idea. If any of my readers grew up in British schools and can explain it, I’d love to know. While the two have never gotten along, this extra day of solo study helps them come to an understanding, and eventually a rapport, based on mutual empathy regarding lost family and the need to cope. It’s a bit clunky at times, but it’s the only part of the film that feels remotely heartfelt (save for one moment between Sam and Charlie).

Beyond that, this is mostly just noise. The animation is run-of-the-mill CGI, the unifying character of Lighthouse Bill (Bill Nighy) only adds enough to the proceedings for you to notice him, and every minute spent with Bernadette feels like waterboarding. Maybe I’ve just gotten too old, but this sort of manufactured treacle just doesn’t have the same effect on me that it once did. This just comes off more as a bland branding exercise for Netflix than it does anything else. You can tell there’s a great film trying to escape the mountain of clichés, but it just doesn’t get there. The smallest of children will probably enjoy it, and if you’re desperate for a holiday distraction, this will likely mollify them enough to let you take an aspirin, but I don’t see any future where this becomes a beloved classic, or is even spoken of in the same breath as Klaus ever again.

Grade: C

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Nick Park is back, ladies and gentlemen! Nearly 20 years after The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won the Animated Feature Oscar, our favorite claymation inventor and his dog have once more graced our big-ish screens in a feature-length romp. It may not reach the heights of its predecessor, but it certainly delivers everything fans would expect, and even includes a salient point about modern technology.

The film serves as something of an indirect sequel to the 1993 short, The Wrong Trousers, beginning with the capture of Feathers McGraw (a penguin who “disguises” himself as a chicken by wearing a rubber glove on his head). After his attempt to steal the valuable Blue Diamond, he’s sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment at the local zoo, where he has spent the intervening years biding his time in hopes of escape. If you’ve never seen The Wrong Trousers, worry not, as all the relevant information is delivered in a clever and easy-to-follow introductory sequence.

Fast forward to the “present” day, and Wallace (Ben Whitehead) has come up with another delightfully daft creation, a robotic garden gnome that can do various handyman jobs, which he calls Norbot (Reece Shearsmith). If you’re at all familiar with the dynamic between the boisterous Wallace and the silent Gromit (and even if you’re not, there are plenty of Rube Goldberg devices in the house to firmly establish things), you’ll understand instantly why this is a well-meaning but terrible idea, and Park’s wonderful visual style plays it out terrifically. When Norbot becomes famous enough to draw local media attention, Feathers takes notice, and through a pristine series of intentional bullshit finds a way to hack Norbot to do evil and create an army of robots, which he then uses to escape so that he can reclaim the Blue Diamond and frame Wallace for its theft.

On the case is Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay), reprising his role from Were-Rabbit, along with his young protégée Mukherjee (Lauren Patel). Mukherjee is fastidious with an intense eye for detail and thoroughness, evidenced by her opening scene, where she’s compiled hundreds of pages of evidence and testimony for a missing bicycle (the payoff for this is fantastic). This is a bit overwhelming for Mackintosh, who’s looking forward to a quiet retirement after he presides over a rededication ceremony for the Blue Diamond. Their contrasting styles are a lot of fun, and there’s a cheeky bit of poignancy in how they relate, with Mackintosh emphasizing a “copper’s gut” as a resource when investigating a case, while Mukherjee represents the ideal we all have for law enforcement, where factual certainty takes precedence over aggressive actions. They strike a nice balance in their respective absurdities, giving us a fun and safe representation of how we’d like police to operate versus how they actually do.

Aardman Animations properties typically have tight action and sight gags to beat the band, and Vengeance Most Fowl is no exception. My personal favorites involve the news program that makes Norbot famous. A reporter on the scene has the very silly name of Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan), and she throws to her anchor in the studio, Anton Deck (Muzz Khan), which is a great reference for British TV fans. The set pieces are gloriously over-the-top and highly detailed, and they’re completely illogical in that way that just weirdly makes sense within this universe, whether it’s a high-speed chase that crashes through the farm from Shaun the Sheep, or concerns about Feathers making a break for “the border,” but it’s with Yorkshire. It’s hard to put a fine point on it if you haven’t immersed yourself in this world, but once you do, you understand exactly what I’m talking about.

On top of all that, there’s a clever throughline about the unfettered expansion of technology and artificial intelligence. Norbot is a convenience to many but an annoyance to Gromit, and it turns out it’s way too easy for Feathers to commandeer the machines for his comically nefarious purposes. But the film doesn’t just broad stroke things as being universally bad or as yet another way for lazy people to become even lazier. Instead, the focus is on motivation. Why Norbot even has a setting for “Evil” is anyone’s guess (it worked for the Krusty doll in “Treehouse of Horror”), but advanced tech is not unethical on its own. It’s what people choose to do with it that determines the outcome. Now sadly, real-world tech has been monopolized in recent years by people who only have self-serving motives at best and outright malevolence at worst, but the point remains valid. If good people use these tools for good ends, then we’ve little to fear, but we should absolutely take it out of the hands of those who use it improperly. If there’s one so-called “woke” message that should definitely be taught to young viewers, it’s that.

Grade: A-

Spellbound

Skydance Animation is not off to a good start. Whereas the likes of Cartoon Saloon and Laika Studios make gorgeous, profound works that dazzle children and adults alike, expanding the possibilities of what the artform of animation can do, Skydance has thus far given us the lackluster Luck, and now Spellbound, an absolutely putrid take on fractured fairy tales filled to the brim with bad acting, uninspired songs, and an entry-level moral that simply does not fit the characters.

Helmed by Vicky Jensen (who co-directed the first Shrek film), and produced by John Lasseter (the trailer went out of its way to not name the somewhat canceled Lasseter while still giving him sole credit for everything successful Pixar ever did as a selling point), you get the sense that this movie started out as an attempt to make a new story in the vein of DreamWorks’ beloved ogre-centric franchise, but it gets far too bogged down in pure stupidity and convoluted obstacles. Even worse, for a project that claims to be a comedy, it feels like the writers have no idea what a joke actually is.

Rachel Zegler, soon to ruin Snow White, gets a practice run at spoiling fairy tales as Princess Ellian, the teenage scion of the magical kingdom of Lumbria. I already can’t take her seriously, mostly because every time I hear her name all I can think of is Elián González. We meet her flying around the skies of her land, along with her friends, on the back of these giant cat-dragon things whose wings are too small to even lift themselves off the ground, much less adolescent passengers. With her 15th birthday approaching, Ellian’s friends wonder if there’s going to be a big party at the castle, but she declines, saying she’s going to have a small affair with just her family. This is all a lie, of course, because Ellian’s parents, the king and queen, have been turned into large monsters that vacillate between feral and domestic pet states of behavior, and she’s been working with two royal advisors, Bolinar (John Lithgow) and Nazara (Jenifer Lewis, probably best known as Mama Odie from The Princess and the Frog) to keep it a secret, particularly from the head of the royal military, General Cardona (Olga Merediz, aka Abuela Claudia from In the Heights).

This has been going on for a year, and I already call bullshit. There is no way that, in an entire year, everyone who knows about the royal couple’s condition would keep quiet, even under the threat of death. But hey, let’s just lazily gloss over that while Zegler sings her “princess song” about wishing her folks were just normal annoying parents who set boundaries and punish her for breaking curfew. This is the most inaccurately-drawn teenage character since Ian Malcolm’s daughter in The Lost World. Bolinar and Nazara, having something of a villain song (somehow Alan Menken wrote these horrid late 80s-era Disney knockoff tunes) even though they aren’t villains, propose that Ellian assume the throne herself, because conveniently she’ll be considered to have come of age when she turns 15 the following day. This will allow her to run the affairs of state and send her parents to a lovely place where they can run and play to their hearts’ content. Yes, we’re really proposing the “farm upstate” with no hint of irony.

Ellian invites two oracles, Sunny and Luno (Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane, the latter using a strange German accent for some reason) to see if the spell can be broken, as they both come from the Dark Forest of Eternal Darkness (yes that’s the name, yes they repeat it ad nauseam, and no I don’t know why they think it’s clever to do so), which is where her parents were transformed by a weird black tornado thing that reminded me of the opening to the Dennis the Menace sitcom from the 50s. They arrive by gargantuan frog transport and give said amphibian “five stars” for his service, which literally entails throwing five stars into its mouth… this counts as a joke, start to sing a song, and right as they’re about to reveal how to reverse the enchantment, some bullshit happens that forces them to flee. Ellian even calls out to them to at least finish their sentence, but that would mean we could end the movie quicker, so no. The General finally gets wise to the situation, and Ellian takes her parents and escapes to the forest, but not before her pet purple rodent thing (Dee Bradley Baker doing squeaks) somehow figures out how to use the oracles’ magical key fob (I’m not kidding) in ways that suggest sentience, and accidentally switches bodies with Bolinar. This is dumb beyond words.

Anyway, after paying a home visit to the oracles, the fetch quest is put in motion at long last, nearly halfway through the picture and after at least half a dozen god-awful songs. The king and queen transformed because they “lost their light,” and so Ellian must take them to a “Lake of Light” to get it back. As they go, obstacles are thrown up that they instantly learn how to solve, and eventually the royals get enough of themselves back that they can talk (voiced by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem). Ellian is overjoyed, as she’s spent the last year trying to understand what her parents might be thinking, so what’s the first thing they can properly communicate? A pee joke. I want to murder people.

All of this leads up to a moment of realization about how they lost their light, and it might almost have redeemed things if it wasn’t handled so clumsily. Essentially, it all boils down to the king and queen realizing they’re not in love anymore and wanting a divorce. Now, this could be rich ground to explore how ending a marriage can sometimes be the healthiest thing for two people to do, a la Mrs. Doubtfire. Instead, the entire plot turns on its heels and Ellian becomes a self-centered brat who basically demands that her parents stay together for her sake, because everything has to be about her. This might make sense if she were six, but she’s fucking 15. Are you seriously asking me to believe that the concept of divorce exists in this land, but that a 15-year-old has never been exposed to it? Because that’s what these moments suggest. We don’t even bother with the trope of the kid thinking it’s their fault and needing the reassurance that mom and dad will still love them no matter what. We just go straight to “stay together or you don’t love me” mixed with “you owe me because I bothered trying to save you.” It’s as awkward and artificial as the dresses Ellian wears that look like plastic potato chip bag clips.

This sucks. I mean this just sucks. It’s horrendous. The voice acting is pretty terrible across the board, especially Zegler. The jokes feel like intentional anti-humor, filled with modern references that are already dated. The songs are either overly simplistic, clear “legally distinct” copies of better animated movie tracks, or just outright gross (even rodent Bolinar gets an absolutely heinous number about the joys of eating slimy grubworms). The animation is standard-issue, doing absolutely nothing with its supposedly fantastical setting. The story is just a series of roadblocks that are immediately cleared by deus ex machinas and plot bots. And worst of all, the lesson we’re all supposed to learn is that sometimes parents separate. Freaking DUH!

My only comfort is that I know there were worse movies in 2024, so it escapes the absolute bottom of the barrel for the genuinely creative designs of the monster parents and the few moments where the film actually inspired thought. Sadly, most of the time that thought was something along the lines of, “If this is an attempt to do another Shrek, it’s playing out like one of his swamp farts.”

Grade: D

***

That’s all for this edition. We’re slowly but surely chipping away at the glut of films crammed into Awards Season, so keep it locked and we’ll keep going!

Join the conversation in the comments below! Have you seen these films? Do you agree with Netflix’s model? Why does Ellian call herself and her family “humans” when they have pointy elf ears? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!