DreamWorks Animation's return to form

With Puss in Boots getting a round of applause, Mark looks at DreamWorks Animation's return to form, noting the triumphs and trip-ups along the way...

Arch your left eyebrow, for a moment. Good. Now, tilt your head to the side. I'll leave the smile up to you, but you must either smirk or give a big cheesy grin. You're now on your way to looking a lot like the DreamWorks Face, the expression that appears in pretty much every DreamWorks Animation film, usually on a talking animal of some description.

It's one of the many tics of the studio that has been lampooned by animation and film fans over the last ten years or so. Having really broken through as a serious competitor to Pixar with Shrek in 2001, they followed it up
with Shrek 2 in 2004.
The film is probably the best of the Shrek sequels, but it set the tone for some of the studio's lesser films thereafter. Shrek ends with a perfectly serviceable moral, that true beauty lies within. Yet Shrek 2, focusing on what happens after the happily-ever-after of most fairytales, finds the jolly green giant with body insecurity issues.
The Shrek series eventually became what it started out satirising- a churning commercial machine, while elsewhere, Disney was actually upping their game. They've even returned to traditional “hand-drawn” animation, with The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh, a form which DreamWorks completely abandoned after 2003's Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, in favour of CG.

To be completely fair though, anything is going to look bad when its nearest relevant competitor is Pixar, so it's fair to outline some of the persistent problems to be had with DreamWorks films. For one thing, the pop culture references have tended to date some of their films quite badly already, and most of them aren't even ten years old yet.
Secondly, look at the vocal talent lent to a film like Finding Nemo, one example of a well-cast Pixar film. Albert Brooks, a boon for animated voiceovers, voices Marlin, backed up by Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett and Geoffrey Rush. Not huge names, but talented vocal artists who gave their characters distinctive personalities.
Then consider DreamWorks, who frequently cast big names and give them top billing in the marketing. Shark Tale is the worst culprit for this stunt casting, with Will Smith playing a fish version of Will Smith, and Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese(!) being cast to bolster the not-funny crime movie parody.

Does anybody, honestly, say “Hey, let's go and see the new Jack Black movie!” when a new Kung Fu Panda movie comes out? Stunt casting isn't too problematic when the star in question brings something to the table. Jerry Seinfeld brought his shtick to Bee Movie and Will Ferrell did a cracking  impression in Megamind, but in the middle of the 2000s, the casting seemed to go along the lines of “I know! What if Ben Stiller were a lion?”
Thirdly, there's the general commercialism of the studio's output. In interviews, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is more often heard talking about the success of the studio's films, than the quality of the stories. A sequel to Monsters vs. Aliens was called off because the numbers didn't add up overseas. Every studio wants to make money, but DreamWorks plays it unerringly safe.
DreamWorks has always been financially successful, of course, but certain of their films have failed to land with the critics who'd been so eager to praise the original Shrek. All of their films are bright and colourful enough to be popular with kids too, so let's not understate their successes there. It's purely in the grown-up domain that we could grumble about how those films used to be fun for adults too.

That is, until the release of the aforementioned Kung Fu Panda. I would suggest this film as the beginning of DreamWorks' steady return to form. Coming hot on the heels of the disappointing Shrek the Third, the film doesn't look like anything special. However, it benefitted from astonishing technical aptitude, which gave the film some of the best action sequences of any film in the year in which it was released, and a funny script that didn't fall back on the studio's usual tropes.
It was unfortunate that the awful Madagascar- Escape 2 Africa followed, but this and Shrek Forever After were blips in a continuing improvement of the studio's output. Just as Kung Fu Panda successfully aped 70s kung fu movies in its design and action sequences, Monsters vs. Aliens proved to be an enjoyable B-movie take-off, and Megamind made the best out of a frustrated supervillain, even if it did fall under the long shadow cast by The Incredibles.
Which brings us nicely to the studio's next watershed moment- 2010's How To Train Your Dragon. Based on the children's novels by Cressida Cowell, the film was something different to all of DreamWorks' other animations. They're almost all comedy films, first and foremost, whereas How To Train Your Dragon is far more a fantasy film with funny moments.

Perhaps somewhat deceptively, it seems like a self-contained film, made with no intention to launch a franchise, nor any premature allusions to any sequels. But given the critical praise for the film, DreamWorks have planned to at least round out a trilogy of How To Train Your Dragon movies, with the second instalment coming in 2014. They seem to know what they have though, and they haven't immediately announced adaptations of all seven of the remaining books in Cowell's series.
Unaccountably, the Madagascar saga is due another two instalments before it finally wraps up, the first of which is due next summer, but perhaps the idea of six Kung Fu Panda films seemed most excessive. That is, until this summer's release of Kung Fu Panda 2, which was at least as good as, and perhaps even better than the first film. While I can't say the next four sequels will definitely be as good, you can see that they found something for Po to do.

So what could be behind the recent up-swing in quality? Following on from Seinfeld contributing the script for Bee Movie, the company have enlisted Guillermo del Toro as a creative consultant, having thus far worked on punching up Megamind, Kung Fu Panda 2 and the upcoming Puss in Boots. Most unusually, Charlie Kaufman was brought in as a punch-up writer on Kung Fu Panda 2.
This does sort of link back to DreamWorks' magpie-like behaviour when it comes to star-grabbing. Note that the studio hasn't brought up new screenwriting talent, but instead enlisted two of the most respected and talented writers in the business. You'll hear no complaints from us, though. del Toro has recently agreed to direct two animated movies for the studio- Trollhunters, and a feature-length adaptation of a short called Alma.
Additionally, the studio has pretty much finished up with Shrek, having established a channel for any follow-up impulse, through the direct-to-DVD short films, such as Shrek the Halls or Scared Shrekless. Although we probably would have been more excited about Puss In Boots had it been made shortly after Shrek 2, the trailers for the spin-off are looking pretty good, and word-of-mouth is positive.

All of which is not to say that DreamWorks is now better than Pixar, but that they've proven themselves better than the incidental comparisons to the golden calf of animated studios. Let's not forget, Pixar hit a real bum note this summer, with Cars 2, a sequel that seemed purely motivated by box office returns, and which lacked anything of what made Cars  palatable.
DreamWorks might work faster than Pixar, sometimes to their detriment, but they're currently turning out at least one good feature per year, which is better than Pixar did in 2011. We can't pretend that DreamWorks Animation makes anything other than safe films, but they're recovering the fact that “safe” and “commercial” aren't assets which should get in the way of the film being good.