Bad Cartoons

In chapter 14 of Illusion Of Life, it is said that "A good story cannot be ruined by poor animation, but neither can a poor story be saved by the very best animation". I wanted to find examples of each and see how much this statement holds up.

For a good story with poor animation, let us consider the Soviet version of Winnie the Pooh.

I must be clear, I am not saying that "Winnie Pooh" is an outright bad animation. The way the characters move is delightful, the issue of the animation is that, rather than going for the look of an airbrushed story book, like Disney's version, they went with the look of a child's drawings. Because of this, the camera movements seem like a cheap way to fill space, rather than an interesting shift in image. By not trying to emulate the multi-plane camera, they sold their abilities short, but did not harm the story. The story is still just as interesting as Disney's Pooh, so long as we hold our attention during some of the less interesting animation spots.

For a poor story with good animation, let us consider... It actually pains me to do this, because it's still one of my favorite films, but Disney's Dinosaur.

So, the story of Disney's Dinosaur is that they took the same basic dinosaur migration story of the smash hit Land Before Time, and ruined it. In Land Before Time, we want the dinosaurs to survive so that they can see their families again. In Dinosaur, we want them to survive... so they can die later? These are dinosaurs. We know they all die, and if the meteors have started coming and extinction is already started, then watching them struggle for 2 hours to live another month is less a plot of a family movie and more of a Dinosaur hospice. There's no winners in this movie, even if the dinosaurs survive, except maybe the monkeys, who get to evolve into humans and warn their descendants that even though it's one of the most visually stunning films ever, it's really not worth watching more than once for the plot.