Animal Crackers - Movie Review

Earlier this year I finished up the well known sitcom series, The Office, and had a blast going through the show. One of the big highlights of the show was John Krazinski as Jim, the prankster who (at first) is the most normal male in the office. Recently though I found an animated film that only includes him, but also his wife Emily Blunt, Ian McKellen (Gandalf from Lord of the Rings), Danny DaVito (Frank Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), and Sylvester Stallone (Rocky), to name a few. That movie is Animal Crackers, which originally premiered in 2017 at Annecy International Animation Film Festival, but only now has be released to the world on Netflix. To make the story short, it went through distribution hell, going through several big companies until Netflix eventually picked it up.

The story follows Owen Huntington, nephew of a famous circus owner, and his family who, after finding out that his aunt and uncle have died, return to said circus only to find it in chaos as the uncle's cousin, Horatio Huntington, tries to take it over. As they escape the chaos Owen is given a magic box full of animal crackers/ cookies and he discovers that eating one the eater into the animal he ate. Soon afterwards, while he's trying to deal with this development and his boring job as as a dog biscuit taster, his wife, Zoe, tries to restart the circus while Horatio plots to get the cookies back.

I don't normally start off with negatives, but I feel like I got to for this one: The story is kind of a mess. Not a fun mess like a well-trained circus troop, but a mess like that of a bunch of children in elementary school. There's just too many plot points in this film and some of them could be removed and the movie would improve. For instance there's a characters played by Patrick Warburton (Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove) who basically messed with Owen and his coworker, Binkley, who just does that and doesn't provide anything meaningful to the plot. There's not much of a clear focus for the audience and I find even younger audiences (like this film is intended for) might get confused by what's going on.

When you don't have a clear path for your story the whole thing can become a giant mess. For example, the Star Wars sequel trilogy was not planned out and had two different directors with their own agendas and it became a mess. Here in Animal Crackers we have Owen dealing with his boring job and trying to impress his boss (who is his wife's father), Horatio trying to take over the circus and the magical cookies, Zoe trying to restart the circus, Patrick Warburton acting like a Looney Toons character and causing mischief, and Owen eventually stuck as an animal since he cannot find the one cookie to change him back to his human self. Then we get near the end of the film there's a sudden shift in tone and the villain's plan and while watching that I was like, "Wait what? Where did that come from?" Now I'm not saying these plot points are bad, they're good for the type of film being made. There's just too many of them. If a couple of these are wiped away and we had a clearer story and character motivations the movie would improve a lot. I also did enjoy some of these moments because feel at home in this film. I just wish some of the unnecessary moments were removed.

Now on the opposite end of the spectrum is the animation. It's really, really good! I can see the studio behind the film making more movies in the future. All of the characters stood out with their designs while fitting the universe, the fur and visuals like the fire and water were well rendered, and the characters were very expressive. It reminded me of Klaus from last year, like the people behind the film animating the film really cared about what they were making. And they had about a 10th of the budget a normal Pixar movie would have, around 17 million dollars. What they did with such a budget is great! I feel some people won't like the animation because it's not as high of a quality as normal animated films, but I'm definitely satisfied with it.

Another positive of the film is the voice acting. Beyond who I've mentioned already we also got Wallace Shawn (Vizzini from The Princess Bribe), Gilbert Gottfried (Iago from the animated Aladdin), Tara Strong (from almost any animated show ever) and James Arnold Taylor (Obi Wan from The Clone Wars animated series). That is a lot of notable actors/ voice actors in this movie! Additionally every one of them seemed be having a lot of fun with their roles and it felt like they were all putting on good performances. All of the characters had some charm to them, the highlights being John Krazinski and Ian McKellen. Last time I saw Ian was in Cats (2019) and he was a cat that was into theater and he sang a song and I felt I was laughing like I should be locked up in an asylum and- OKAY, no more. I cannot return to that madness. Anyways, Ian McKellen, his work on stage (outside of film) gave his character a very puffed-up personality and it was really fun to watch. John Krazinski, as usual, was very likable as Owen and he just had great chemistry with other characters.

As I said before though the story and motivations of the characters really brings down the film. If I wanted to improved the film I would remove a majority of everything relating to Owen's time/ experience at the dog biscuit factory and with Zoe's father. The plot points associated aren't very important to the main story about the animal crackers, which aren't fully introduced into the movie until past the 30 minute mark. I was starting to get board, hoping for something meaningful to happen when we finally saw the magical cookies in action. I wanted to see more of the circus, more of Horatio, and more Owen trying to return to his family roots.

One thing I am mixed about is the humor and tone of the movie. The tone can relate to how the story is structured, but it also can apply to some of the jokes. There's one with a large lady and one of the henchmen of Horatio that just made me go, "...Why is this in a kids movie?" Additionally, the ending feels weird because it goes from lighthearted to rather creepy and dark, especially with what the Horatio does. As for the humor I did have some laughs but some of the jokes were pretty obvious and not too clever. It's hard sometimes to review a kids movie without adding in adult thinking because some kids (like me when I was younger) just liked flashing lights and bad guys being beat up. I have a feeling though that some people will find the humor to be cringy.

Animal Crackers is an... acceptable movie. It's not bad, but it's not great. It has some great animation for its budget and a lot of talented people voicing the characters, but the story is a mess and there's no clear focus for the film. I think kids will enjoy it, but beyond them I think most people would want to watch something else. I personally am very happy that at least it finally got out for everyone to see because I love seeing smaller studios make their marks on the world. Hopefully the next movie will have a better story while keeping the great visuals.

Tentative Score: 6/10

Definite Score: 6/10

I feel like just the fact we have so many big names in this movie is enough to give it a watch. I mean Sylvester Stallone in an animated kids movie?! That there is amazing.