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Best Animated Films of 2014

2014 was one of the best movie years in history and that reflected on animation as well. For my list, I chose a wide variety of films to just showcase how incredible this year was. Although a big-budget US feature reigned supreme, others range from smaller independent efforts to foreign charmers. No Disney movie ended up on my list as their film released this year was among their weakest efforts.

5. The Book of Life

The fifth place goes to this movie about Dia de los Muertos that came out three years before the much more famous Pixar film with that same subject. While the storytelling is anything but original, the subject matter and audio-visuals made The Book of Life quite unique. This is a film about Mexican culture that honors that culture wonderfully thanks to incredibly unique CGI animation and a fittingly traditional, lively soundtrack. The characters are only okay and the story is mostly too rote, but the moving themes and colorful aesthetic made it a treat to watch.

4. Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants

It may be hypocritical on my part to not have put ‘Marcel the Shell’ on my best animation list of 2022 and yet I am putting this live-action/animated hybrid in, but I personally view this film as an animated one due to a higher number of CGI characters in it. This underrated French gem brought back the classic traditions of silent cinema while imbuing it with modern technologies. The animation is absolutely gorgeous and it’s so well juxtaposed with the real environments while the insects are all adorable and very memorable. It’s an intrepid adventure first and foremost and one of the most charming animated features of the decade.

3. Song of the Sea

An exquisite film with a captivating tale and wonderful artistic quality to it, Song of the Sea is to this day the best movie that Tomm Moore has directed so far. It is populated by lovely characters while it’s imbued by a beautiful soundtrack and stunningly old-fashioned and unique hand-drawn animation. It’s a simple story, but at its core it deals with great themes while in essence presenting to the world Irish culture and mythology in such a riveting way. In many different years, this would have been my number one choice, but in the stacked 2014 its gets the number three spot.

2. When Marnie Was There

With a complex story handling some deep ideas and themes, When Marnie Was There succeeds in a dramatic sense, but is also very much a great representation of genre cinema too as it’s a terrific fantasy with an intriguing mystery that paid off in its conclusion. This is one of the best and most underrated Studio Ghibli movies and one that has universal appeal as I cannot really think of anybody not liking it. This was one of the last Ghibli movies released and let’s hope that this incredible studio will return to us sooner rather than later.

1. How to Train Your Dragon 2

And the number one is very easy to pick for me as this movie is one of the best overall released in 2014. How To Train Your Dragon 2 is epic, smart, funny, devastatingly sad, exciting and heartwarming all at the same time thanks to fascinating characters and some refreshingly adult, dark and heartbreaking scenes. It does what a sequel should do – it gives us new and interesting characters while improving the original ones, it improves the technical aspects and it builds on its mythology and explains a lot of the things we wanted to know, while also laying the groundwork for the finale. This franchise remains the best thing that DreamWorks has ever done.

Honorable Mentions:

Mr. Peabody and Sherman – Mr. Peabody and Sherman has its flaws including a rushed and too fast paced nature and a convoluted storyline, but this is still a very fun film that benefits from enjoyable characters, beautiful animation and an engaging time travel plot filled with a couple of wonderfully explored time periods. DreamWorks really had a strong 2014.

The Lego Movie – This overrated animated flick has solid storytelling, some superb characters, excellent parody humor, very strong dialogue and effective animation throughout, but it simply never got to explore its vast, interesting world owing to extremely excessive action and frantic pacing which made the movie very exhausting to me. It really did not age well.

The Boxtrolls – The Boxtrolls is undeniably endearing in its titular characters and an old-fashioned approach to storytelling. The villain is delightfully over-the-top and memorable, but the voice performances aren’t great. The stop-motion animation here is so wonderful and endearing. But the movie is thinly plotted and not one of Laika’s best efforts.