Back in 2015, after the monumental disaster of Home, I was
about ready to completely write off Dreamworks as an animation company worth any amount of
my time. Even compared to films I’ve seen beyond the lists, it still holds up
as one of the single worst things
ever designed for juvenile consumption. Well, not only did they collectively
waste no time in proving my assumptions wrong, they have done in the most
unprecedented of ways.
Kung Fu Panda 3, a film from a critically-acclaimed
series that both felt short of the franchise’s pedigree and held up alongside its predecessors. Trolls, what should have
become a legendary failure of toy-driven marketing in actuality was a
simplistic but still amazingly resonant family film with some truly inspired
musical decisions. The Boss Baby, a film that I actively had to be convinced
was a genuine product and not just a work of Internet parody that went too far,
turned out to have a lot of merit to its name and some very relevant things to say, for both kids and adults.
I
would normally question the studio’s decision to bring one of the most
wholeheartedly sophomoric children’s books into a feature film with today’s
feature, but after that track record,
I wouldn’t put it past them.
