10 best Dreamworks animation movies ranked, from How To Train Your Dragon to Kung Fu Panda

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Harry Fletcher6 February 2019

For years, Dreamworks has been seen as the pretender to Disney Pixar’s throne, the secondary studio in the world of animated blockbusters.

While box office receipts suggest that's largely still the case, the studio has enjoyed a real creative resurgence over recent years and the balance looks to be changing.

Since its first animation Antz, in 1998, the studio has released a string of highly original movies. Despite the occassional dip in quality, they continue to find huge audiences around the world.

With the success of such franchise films as How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks is finally beginning to come into its own as an innovative force — matching Pixar every step of the way.

With How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World new in cinemas, revisit our pick of the studio’s best films below – but note that, while Dreamworks distributed Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, both are primarily Aardman Productions, so we've intentionally not included them below.

10. Antz (1998)

Woody Allen as a neurotic ant, falling in love with a Princess, before reluctantly going to war and discovering the world outside the nest — as far as ideas for animations go, this is a pretty neat one, carried off with real verve.

Antz, the studio's first ever animation, was released within a few months of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, and while the film’s animation work pales in comparison, Allen’s Z proved a much more compelling protagonist than Dave Foley’s Flik — probably Pixar’s most uninteresting lead character.

Allen’s involvement gave the film a boost in profile, but the voice cast is actually full of A-list names — Sharon Stone, Sylvester Stallone and Gene Hackman are all involved. Though a little rough around the edges, Antz is still one of the studio’s most enjoyable films.

9. Bee Movie (2007)

Depending on who you ask, Bee Movie is either Jerry Seinfeld’s career nadir, or his most inspired project since Seinfeld came to an end in 1998. It’s much derided by some, with a lowly 50 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and a string of mediocre reviews — NPR at the time went as far as say “it's a movie with no particular style to its animation, no point to its plot twists, and no real reason for bee-ing” — but it’s a since developed something of a cult status among fans.

Despite its lukewarm reception in 2007, the film became the subject of a meme craze a few years ago, which helped raise its profile again and caused everyone to re-evaluate the film for what it was — an utterly bonkers piece of filmmaking, with an eccentric script from Seinfeld.

The plot reads thus: Seinfeld’s Barry the Bee sues the entire human race for ‘enslaving’ bees to make honey, before falling in love with a human woman, who subsequently leaves her fiance for him. It’s the kind of film that’s hard to imagine a studio like Dreamworks taking a risk on in 2019 and in truth it’s a wonder that it was ever made, but it’s a loveably odd triumph, one which often wins sceptics over, given the chance.

8. Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

The third instalment in the Kung Fu Panda series features some of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring animation work the studio has ever conjured, transporting viewers to the stunning landscapes and intricate interiors of ancient China.

It wasn’t just the visuals that made the film such a success — while Kung Fu Panda 2 felt like little more than a retreading of the initial film, the third movie took the narrative to new, enticing places and gave Jack Black’s Po more to get his paws on. The filmmakers added a new dynamic too, with the introduction of Po’s father — beginning an absorbing new relationship that felt like a justified and effective addition to the franchise, rather than a lazy plot device.

Black, as ever, managed to find a balance between whimsy, endearing naivety and scatterball eccentricity to lead the extensive celebrity cast in style. The likes of Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman, JK Simmons, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Kate Hudson and Jean-Claude Van Damme are all involved. Like many of Dreamworks’ recent films, the quality of the film’s production — from script, to animation and casting — is undeniable.

7. Flushed Away (2006)

Dreamworks’ modest hit Flushed Away focuses on the Kensington pet rat Roddy St James, who has his world turned upside down after being flushed down the toilet and ending up in the underworld city of Ratropolis, meeting all manner of characters as he goes. Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Shane Richie all contribute their voices, helping bring the vivid characters to life. It’s by no means perfect — the slightly overbearing and genuinely creepy look of the sewer inhabitants makes it a difficult film to love, and it only made $187m worldwide off the back of a $178m budget, but it’s still a very solid piece of filmmaking that holds up well on re-evaluation.

6. The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Dreamworks’ 90s and early 00s animations are certainly a mixed bag. For every success (the touching Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron), there are duds (the tedious Road to El Dorado, for one). However, the studio’s second ever animation is something of an anomaly, with an atmosphere unlike anything that would follow from the studio.

The biblical tale, following Moses and the events of the book of Exodus, features music from Hans Zimmer and vocal performances from an impressive roster of talent, including Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum.

It’s a serious and rather fraught epic, as far as family animations go at least, with the film sticking pretty rigorously to the biblical story — it’s safe to say the slavery storyline doesn’t translate to many comedic moments either. However, it was a bold statement of intent from the studio in 1998, with an original and rather beautiful look. Perhaps surprisingly, the film proved to be the biggest non-Disney animated hit at the time, taking $218m worldwide.

5. How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

Dreamworks’ record for sequels isn’t exactly spotless, with follow-ups to Madagascar and Shrek failing to capture the same spark that inspired the originals. However, they got things just right with this one.

Importantly, the stakes genuinely felt high throughout the film, as the adorable dragon Toothless battles the mysterious bewilderbeast in a key set piece, while viewers also see the parents of protagonist Toothless meet after years apart in one particularly emotional scene.

It didn't just regurgitate what made the original so compelling, but instead further developed the film’s central relationships and added extra layers to the characterisation of key players. As ever, the animation is stunning, treating viewers to striking, sun-drenched landscapes and cool, moonlit vistas. It’s a real accomplishment, both technically and narratively, which makes the prospect of How To Train Your Dragon 3 all the more exciting.

4. Madagascar (2005)

Madagascar tells the story of a ragtag bunch of animal friends in Central Park Zoo, who are torn away from their cushy life in captivity and forced to fend for themselves in the wild. While the leads, voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith, are charming enough, the real strength of the film lies in the excellently drawn supporting characters. The equally civilised and primitive chimpanzees Mason and Phil, the lemur King Julien XIII and the dastardly penguin escapees — who’d go on to receive their own spin-off film Penguins of Madagascar in 2014 — are all a real treat.

There’s bright characterisation and snappy writing on show throughout, even if the movie feels jarringly episodic at times and jumps from location to location a little too freely. Still, it’s one of the studio’s most striking movies of the 00s, and while the adults might not be fully satisfied given the lack of real depth, there’s a huge amount on offer for younger fans.

3. Kung Fu Panda (2008)

Unlikely heroes are an evergreen trait in Dreamworks animations, but Kung Fu Panda’s Po might just be the most likeable of the lot. The bumbling bear, who is raised to work in a noodle shop by his adoptive father, the goose Mr Ping, learns the ancient art of Kung Fu against all the odds, becoming a hero of ancient China in this imaginative and stunningly captured movie.

The film’s mantras of self-belief, self-determination and fighting against boundaries may feel a little hokey at times, but the movie’s lightning pacing, visual flair and loveable heart make it one of the most gleefully enjoyable Dreamworks films ever made, and one of the most successful too, generating $215m at the box office in 2008.

2. Shrek (2001)

Shrek is, far and away, the funniest animation Dreamworks have made to date and it’s down largely to two factors — the snappiest writing the studio has ever seen and an indefatigable performance from Eddie Murphy in the recording booth, who delivers a perfect performance as Donkey, alongside Mike Myers as Shrek.

Like other early Dreamworks films, the animation is a little less-than-perfectly rendered on occasion, but the way the film subverts the fairytale format is inventive, and still feels fresh even 18 years on. The film spawned a series of sequels that differ in quality, but continues to be the studio’s most profitable franchise — Shrek 2 remains Dreamworks’ highest-grossing film, with $920m at the worldwide box office. That’ll do Donkey, that’ll do.

1. How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

The most accomplished film the studio has made is, by some distance, How To Train Your Dragon, which marked a huge step up for Dreamworks in 2010.

Based on the 2003 book by Cressida Cowell, the film tells the story of misunderstood teenager Hiccup, who is overlooked and underestimated by his warrior father, and who forms an unlikely friendship with dragon Toothless. On the face of it, it’s not the most original idea (the ‘outsider finds dragon’ story has been done before, as anyone who saw the hugely disappointing 2006 adaptation of Eragon will testify) but there’s a freshness in the storytelling that elevates it above its contemporaries. It’s the perfect mix of beautiful animation, larger-than-life characters, star-studded voice casting, narrative clarity, clearly defined and well-told relationship arcs and a fully realised fantasy world — which all combine to create something a little bit magical.

Significantly, the hugely impressive film coincided with a run of less-than-inspiring Pixar projects, including Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University. For the first time it suggested a levelling of the playing field and proved that Dreamworks could finally stand toe-to-toe with the very best in the business.

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