Though intended as praise, the phrase “fun for the whole family” might be the single most off-putting way to describe just about anything. What it implies, for starters, is that the family unit—not the individual—is the fundamental consumer of experiences. How un-American. On top of that, it’s a lie. “Fun for the whole family” does not mean the alleged fun will be equally had by all. It means the kids will lose their little minds, while the adults, if they try hard enough, might eke out some fraction of forced enjoyment too. For proof, look no further than the medium to which this Chuck E. Cheese sentiment is most routinely applied: animated entertainment.
As usual, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated five films in the category of Best Animated Feature this year. Just as usual, all five have been called some version of “fun for the whole family” by critics and/or mommy-bloggers (same thing, nowadays)—as if that’s the best that animated cinema, more than a century after the birth of the art form, can hope to accomplish. For some, like A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, it is. A Santa hat–shaped alien named Lu-La crash-lands on Earth, makes friends with some farm animals given to heroic feats of bipedalism, and tries to find her way home. Stop-motion and mostly shorn of dialog, it’s a visual pleasure, and nothing more. At one point, Lu-La burps so loudly in a grocery store that idlers continents away glance up in alarm. At another, a scared robot shits out a sheet of paper. In terms of what whole families might consider hilarious, this evidently qualifies.
Farmageddon, so named because mild destruction is visited upon a remote field, is probably about something like learning to belong, but the happy ending—not a spoiler, because whole families tolerate nothing less—softens the theme to baby-food mush. After a climactic battle fizzles out amid flashbacks and tears, Lu-La is reunited with her parents, and even the villains appear reformed. Broadly, it’s the same strategy employed by fellow Oscar nominee Wolfwalkers, which many consider the best animated film of 2020. “Kids will be enchanted, adults will be enraptured,” Vulture writes, after consulting a thesaurus. NPR: “It isn’t made for kids. Or at least, not just for kids.” Wall Street Journal: “The film is terrific fare for kids … [But] adults will be eager to see where it’s all going to go.” Mama’s Geeky (whatever that is): “A must watch movie that is fun for the whole family.”
These reviews, picked entirely at random, verge on embarrassing—the overexertions of adult writers desperate to relive incomplete childhoods. Of course Wolfwalkers is for kids. Lovingly made in traditional 2D by the great Irish animators at Cartoon Saloon, it’s about kids, to begin with: one young girl with a single (human) dad, another with a single (wolf) mom. Also, it ends happily. Excessively happily. As the parties go to war in the last half hour, an escalating series of closer and closer calls, you’re convinced at least one of the parents will fall off a cliff to their tragic but meaningful doom. They don’t. Instead, everybody comes together, Farmageddon-style, in a big, smiling, part-human, part-animal embrace.
Nobody ever dies at the end of an animated movie. They die, tragically and motivationally, at the beginning. Sure enough, not one but two of this year’s remaining nominees follow this Bambi rule. In Pixar’s fantasy-quest film Onward, Dad dies, leaving behind two distraught sons. In Netflix’s fantasy-quest film Over the Moon, it’s Mom who falls ill, leaving a distraught daughter. The best that can be said of both these efforts is that the dead parents, though partially resurrected by various magical means, ultimately stay dead. Again, not a spoiler. When the goal is fun for the whole family, you already know how it all wraps up: with a family, newly whole, having fun. Mom finds a new boyfriend in Onward, and her sons warm up to him. Dad marries a new woman in Over the Moon, and his daughter warms up to her. Life goes onward, they’re over-the-moon happy, etc.
