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Mindenki (2016)

You know a beef I have with Illumination that most others put behind its communist-border marketing plans? The way they animate their films. As destructive as the CG comedy is to animation's reputation and comedy itself, animation quality is something Illumination Mac Guff lacks. Rather than staying true to their influences in a technically impressive way they instead opt for a kind of drabness to their CG, pushing motion blurs and quasi-realistic movement and detail even further than Pixar themselves. Cartoonish energy without hyperreal details is something they pretty much nailed in Despicable Me 1, when computer animation still couldn't get as detailed as it is now, but for their future features they appear to have lost much of the spirit and see it mattering less than merchandise potential. Cartooning has been done correctly in CG under lots and lots of hard work; Illumination want to get their toons out as quick as possible, and the result ends up just bland no matter how hard they try.

It's hard to look at a film by IMG and find a facial expression or piece of acting that exemplifies and adds to the visual humour, and leaves a positive impression in any kind of way, something that could inspire someone in the audience to start animating. Their films can have more redeeming value as scripts than several films by their rivals but the problem is that - it's just the scripts. With Warner's underrated Storks, Imageworks contrasted realistic environments with cartoony, whimsical character animation and designs, blurred but still retaining a spark of artificial life. Sure, the unstable, handheld camera motion spoiled most of the pose-to-pose animation but the whimsy as well as the squashes, stretches and smears were still there. Junior bumping into glass multiple times would be a nothing more than kid-friendly slapstick had the result not been outsourced to artists with such passion.

Disney, whether you're beefed by their most recent strategy or not, are soft on the blurs, giving just about enough detail and fluidity to see through a frame skip. Pixar characters have been brimming with life every step of the way, and Inside Out was their cartoon pinnacle. Even the humans had about as much spunk as the characters inside their heads. They know how animation should feel and how it should act, no matter what the medium. Studios like Imageworks, DreamWorks, Animal Logic, Blue Sky, Disney and even Reel FX to an extent are keen on experimenting on a marriage of modern CG with a traditional or stylistic aesthetic no matter what dumb, safe, inoffensive ideas are pitched to them. Illumination wants to be a juvenile Pixar by means of recognition. That's it.

No matter how bad a CG comedy is written, Blue Sky and Sony Pictures Animation being key examples, the animation can still be funnier than what is being spoken. Blue Sky have hardly been top-notch storytellers but their visuals have been bursting with life since Meledandri left and with Scrat they embrace this talent of theirs to their fullest. Scrat is the ray of sunshine in the Ice Age franchise's verbal blandness because his misendeavours are so fluidly animated with Clampett-level energy that I cannot help but enjoy what I'm watching, disregarding what else I'm subjected to.

With Imageworks' Sony-funded films it's absolute style over substance and yet pre-Emoji films have offered something special for animation hardcores to enjoy immensely amidst the lazy writing (not counting the live-action hybrids). With the aforementioned Storks it's both. With even Sausage Party, a film that cost $20m to make under Walt-Disney-esque treatment, it's both. With The Secret Life of Pets it's a whole Tori Kelly elephant of substance and a Seth MacFarlane mouse of style, complete with a personality swap. No squashes or stretches, few zany expressions, no subtle, hand-drawn motion details, it just feels too REAL and soulless. There have been more visually unique things accomplished for less or just a tad more than the average Illumination budget; not even Balthazar Bratt's animation holds up too well the second time watching the DM3 trailer. You have all the money in the world to make something lively, so put more effort into your cartooning, Illumination.

Even though I cringed less at Sing than I did watching Trolls (aside from their equally vapid song covers and fart jokes), as one was written and directed by Garth Jennings, the latter showed more genuine respect for animation as means of storytelling and surrealism. The character animation felt different to DreamWorks' other projects, more exuberant and subversive than, say, Home. This is the kind of thing Illumination have yet to take note of; as of now they are the epitome of product, taking ideas that have been done before and making a big deal out of them everywhere you go. Visuals don't make a movie unless they share the value of what's going on in the story. Products aren't movies unless there's a semblance of artistic merit hidden within. If Chris Meledandri wants a cartoon, he'd have to take a page from DreamWorks under his new domination as well as his competitors in keeping script and visuals at least close to half-and-half. Be your own thing, Illumination, but also be like WAG, Disney and Pixar and make sure your animation is more than just a cash cow.