The BEST Animated Movies of 2024

So... I'm gonna be honest, 2024 sucked for animated movies. I have made my opinions clear on the matter, but let me state, now that the year is over, Two-Thousand-Twenty-Four Common Era absolutely SUCKED for animated movies, that isn't to say this was a totally bad year for animation entirely though, animation critics who, y'know actually do this for a living, or are just better than me, might be able to point you in directions I couldn't for things like TV animation, Anime, Indie Animation, Hell they might even be able to point you into directions to movies I haven't, couldn't, or wouldn't see. Basically what I'm saying is just because one area of the year wasn't great, doesn't mean the whole year was bad, and also please support other animation reviewers, we're a small community we need attention.

That all being said, this year wasn't a completely barren wasteland for movies either, it's just that... well, you're less likely to see them in theatres, I think. Most of the movies I heard of this year, were not theatrically released, The Tiger's Apprentice, the Megamind sequel, at least half of my worst list, all went directly to streaming in one form or another. This is a problem because it means accessibility to thee movies is very limited, so while really big movies might get a theatrical release, others that are still fairly notable might not. I'm not entirely convinced their isn't some other motive to putting movies directly on a streaming service, like other than a studio having full control over something, but it is kind of concerning.

Anyway, here are the movies that didn't completely suck.

5. Kung Fu Panda 4

I know not everybody has positive feelings for this movie, but I gotta be honest, I had a good time with it. I am always in awe about how well each Kung Fu Panda sequels feels like a natural step in the story being told, going from Po learning to become the Dragon Warrior and ending with Po having to pass on the title. Sure, it isn't as good as Kung Fu Panda 2 or 3, but those are immensely tough acts to follow, so the fact that it is good in general is good enough.

A lot of people also criticize the villain's backstory, saying that it makes no sense, I have wanted to talk about this for a while, but it does make a lot of sense that Po, a person who faced discrimination and prejudice in the Kung Fu circle due to his body, is facing a villain who also faced discrimination and prejudice in the Kung Fu circle against them due to their body, again, it's these links that make the Kung Fu Panda villains great.

No, the movie isn't perfect, I do miss the Furious Five as much as everyone else, the Mr. Beast cameo was kind of dumb, then again most YouTuber cameos in movies tend to age poorly, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Awkwafina as an actress, but over all, I had more positives with the movie than not, and James Hong and Bryan Cranston were easily the highlights of this movie, so that has to be worth something.

4. Piece By Piece

It might seem crazy what I'm about to say, but I never really got into Pharrell's music. It isn't all bad, but when you tend to gravitate more towards Alt. Rock and Metal, you do tend to miss out on some good stuff. That all being said, the idea of doing this documentary in Lego style intrigued me, not that animated documentaries haven't been done before, but doing it in Lego, why not?

I was ultimately more interested in how the story was told instead of what story was being told, but that isn't to say I don't think Pharrell is an interesting person, I'm just stating my biases as someone who isn't really into this kind of music. Still, the way a lot of the things were visualized, like the different beats that were produced and how they're stored, a lot of it really is complimented by the Lego visuals, and I don't think you could really do scenes like that in a traditional style. I think this is one of movies that does still make me hold onto hope that there are still unique animated movies out there, and I won't say this is one of the most unique or risky movies, but this was an idea, and not a bad one at that. I can't really say more about it, this was just a good movie.

3. The Wild Robot

I can hear it now, "The Wild Robot at Number Three? It should be Number One!" and yeah, I see why, this was a really beautifully done movie, easily one of DreamWorks' best in recent years. It's these kinds of movies that really do show how different DreamWorks is from studios like Disney or Illumination, and why they are my favourite of the big three.

That all being said, I am a little disappointed in this movie. I never read the book this movie was based on, though I might give it a shot in the future, my disappointment comes from one thing; from the initial trailer, I thought this movie was gonna be a really powerful movie told with zero dialogue, imagine DreamWorks taking a risk like that, making a movie with zero spoken dialogue with such a grand scale that their best movies have, that would be so cool. I'm not going to say that this movie failed to live up to my expectations in terms of quality, if anything, when I learned it was going to have dialogue I grew a bit worried, so the movie exceeded my expectations. Still, I think it would have been cool if this movie had no spoken dialogue.

2. Flow

Flow is the movie I thought I was going to get out of The Wild Robot, a truly unique and risky animated feature. Flow was such an interesting movie, there is zero spoken dialogue, not even subtitles, and yet you can still infer what the characters are thinking, feeling, in some cases even saying. I love moments in movies and cartoons where the imagery tells the story more than the dialogue does, how the body language and facial expressions speak about the characters thoughts more so than can be put into words. Flow is entirely that, it's just reading the animals' body language.

On top of that, this movie got really tense at points, there were several moments I thought this poor cat was gonna drown or get eaten by something, and it always kept me on edge, it was fantastic. I also have to applaud the fact that the team used the open-source Blender to render this movie, which really does prove you can do fantastic things with available tools. Now we just have to wait for the animated movie where each and every frame was hand drawn in Microsoft Paint.

So, if this is my choice for the most unique animated movie of the year, why isn't it number one? Well... Maybe I didn't actually want The Wild Robot to have zero dialogue, because I think this movie is more fascinating than it is entertaining, and don't get me wrong, I think it's a great movie, but in the same way I think Fight Club or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are great movies, where there is just something fascinating about them, that keeps them in my mind, but very rarely do I ever think about actually watching them that often. I would love to re-watch Flow with friends, but it might not be one I watch that often. What movie would I watch more often?

1. Transformers One

If you were to tell me that a Transformers movie would top my list of best animated movies any year, I'd be open to the possibility. Even though I'm not huge into Transformers, I have a fondness for the franchise, the original Michael Bay movie completely blew my mind when I was a kid, and I'm not completely shocked that Transformers is still a popular franchise, but at the same time I was not a huge fan of the original 1980s Transformers movie, even putting it on the list of the worst animated movies I reviewed. So this is still a little bit of a shock.

It's also shocking because, is this movie unique? Not particularly. Is it groundbreaking? I don't think so. Is it a risky movie? Not in the slightest. You know what this movie is though? This movie is damn good, and in 2024, I needed a Damn Good movie, I love when a movie is unique and takes a risk, but I don't think 2024 needed that, I think 2024 needed movies that were good before they were risky or groundbreaking. 2024 needed a Transformers One, because everything else before it... No, not all of it was bad, but very few of it was better than "Okay", I know a lot of people like Ultraman Rising, and it wasn't bad, but it just felt pretty standard. Transformers One was the first movie of the year that I watched as thought, "Yeah, that was pretty good". What does that say about this year as a whole...

If I had to give a theme to the movies on this list, I would probably say... Ambitious? Each movie is taking a fairly risky step in one way or another, DreamWorks' best movies are often pretty risky in one way or another, Flow and Piece by Piece are certainly unique movies that are begging to attain a cult following, honestly, even Transformers One, the notion of making an animated Transformers movie after the Michael Bay movies, with Michael Bay as a producer, frankly I respect the gall. Was this year completely bad? I don't think so, but I also thought negative about 2022 and now I'm willingly looking back on that with rose-tinted glasses, maybe 2025 will be a different year, one with better and more interesting movies to talk about. Well, let us leave 2024 behind us, and look forward to something better... 2030! Yes, I'm talking about more than animated movies here, let's just move on to the Honourable Mentions.

1. Ultrama: Rising - I mean, it was okay, kind of predictable, but kinda cool seeing Ultraman get a fairly big push in the west.
2. Rotten: Behind the Foodfight - This doesn't count, it's a live-action documentary about an animated movie, but it is worth the mention.
3. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - This also doesn't fully count, but if it did, it would easily be number one.

The WORST Animated Movies of 2024

How would I describe 2024 for animation? Well, that is kind of a meaningless question. As a whole, animation has had its ups and downs this year, and there was plenty of good stuff, like The Amazing Digital Circus, that was absolutely peak. LS Mark released the pilot to his new animated series this year, and that was pretty good. There was A New Wish, which I hear most people quite liked. Batman: Caped Crusader, which was... I mean it was alright. X-Men '97 has gotten some good attention, and there is probably quite a bit I am not mentioning, mostly because I just don't really have any time for animated shows, I barely have time for new movies, but I did watch quite a few, but I do want it known that I couldn't watch everything, so if you want a more thorough look at the Animated Cinema of 2024, I'm sure Animated Antic can give you that.

There really is no other way to say this, but for animated movies, 2024 sucked, and this will not be the last time I say that in 2024, I'm repeating myself a lot but I really don't know how else to word it. It's not that this line-up was completely bad, there were some good and unique pieces of animation this year. However, it's very clear that we are officially finished that wave of "Pandemic Ideas", ideas that were bred out of artists of many varieties finally being able to take a breather and let their creativity flow and allow them to work on and polish up something truly unique. It would almost be amusing that we have learned nothing from the pandemic if the world wasn't completely on fire, both metaphorically and practically literally.

Really, all this list really goes to prove is that I'm a miserable curmudgeon who wants to go back to the days of watching Disney VHS tapes and racing around to get my pajamas on and my teeth brushed before the previews were over, and that was awful. Still, 2024 is not over until the worst of the worst have been named and shamed, so let's get to it. Here are the worst animated movies of 2024. 

6. Despicable Me 4

Oh... we're starting this list off strong when Despicable Me 4 is only the bottom of the list. Really, this movie should be higher considering it's from my least liked studio, Illumination. Still, I can't be surprised this movie wasn't good, I mean, did we really expect them to start making masterpieces after The Super Mario Bros. Movie? It's not like they were suddenly gonna start making things that would actually rival Disney or DreamWorks, though movies like this don't help with the feeling that The Super Mario Bros. Movie was not a total fluke.

The big problem was that, they had a lot of ideas and just didn't flesh any of them out. The movie is mainly a combination of three major ideas, Gru goes into witness protection, Gru assists a young villain-to-be in pulling off a heist, and the Minions become superpowered, and then a bunch of smaller ideas that spring off of those three plots. Really, I think if they just picked one plot here, the movie would have been a Hell of a lot better, and picking one or another would give them the chance to flesh out some of these ideas. I like the idea of one of the characters having to lie about their identity while not wanting to lie, that is a good dilemma, but that goes nowhere. I also like the idea of Gru having to decide about whether he wants to have his family and his good guy image or if he does miss the thrill of villainy, but that ultimately does not happen. I'll say it again, if the movie was just Gru and Poppy or Gru and Maxime, it would have been much better, but they had to go with Gru and Poppy and Gru and Maxime and also Super Powered Minions because... we need a new way to get merch sales out of these giant sentient tic-tac mutants.

It's only number six on this list because... let's be real, it's an Illumination movie, and Illumination is pretty much incapable to making anything that's really worth getting angry at.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Easily the most disappointing movie on this list, if the only thing I took into consideration for this list was wasted potential, this would be number one, because there is almost a good movie creeping through here. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say there is a great movie hidden within, something to prove that the Lord of the Rings extended universe can be just as good as the Peter Jackson Trilogy. Instead, we got definitive proof that maybe the Tolkien estate should have kept the film rights under lock and key.

It's not even that there is one glaring issue that makes this whole movie suck, it's a bunch of small things that chip away at my enjoyment of the movie bit by but until the massive marble block is little more than a pile of rubble with a Squidward nose stuck to it. My biggest issue was the camera, they tried so many 360 shots and pans and all kinds of camera movement that half the time I swear I was watching The Gondor Witch Project instead, and it doesn't help that the animation just doesn't look right. I am going to say it, I think this movie has worse visuals that Ralph Bakshi's movie, because I'm not convinced that A.I. wasn't involved in this movie whatsoever. Characters look separate from the backgrounds as though they're greenscreen, which should not be a problem because this is 2D Anime inspired animation, but even then the characters are often too anime, Héra often looking more like a character out of Final Fantasy than Middle Earth. On top of that, she just isn't a good character, she's hyped up to be this badass character, but her God damn horse gets a more badass moment than she does, she really does fit the whole "Strong Female Lead TM" nonsense.

On top of that, it was just so anti-climactic, the antagonist gets killed by being choked with a shield, like come on, like their could have been something more to it, which would have made it more tragic too. Just a disappointing movie, and the archived recordings of the late Sir Christopher Lee do not help, yeah, you totally just added them for marketing hype, you printed that archived recordings were used and gave him a total of eleven lines. I really hope that we don't get anything more like this in the future.

4. The Garfield Movie

I think the main reason I can't say that this is the most disappointing movie of the year is that, I did kind of anticipate a middling, mediocre at best, but still watchable movie. Maybe it was just because Chris Pratt was involved, I dunno.

Really, the strengths of this movie is that, on some level, the crew behind it really did have some understanding of  Garfield, like this wasn't just a quick cash-in like some other Garfield movies were, but at the same time, it doesn't get as heavy or rough as some of the earlier Garfield specials did, or even as some of the comics did. Garfield saying goodbye to his mother is ten times the heart-breaking moment that anything in this movie, and they really do try, but it just didn't come together. Maybe with a better script something may have been decent, but it is kind of difficult to really do a decent Garfield anything when Garfield hasn't been good for a long time. The dry wit and sarcasm of the original strips long since been replaced and so are nowhere to be found in this movie, which sucks because there are moments that do almost, if not entirely, feel like Garfield.

It really is clear to me that Mark Dindal's strengths as a director do not like in movies like this, they lie in the zanier movies like Cats Don't Dance or The Emperor's New Groove, but even then, maybe not. Maybe those movies were just flukes, and The Garfield Movie might just prove it.

3. The Casagrandes Movie

On some level, writing these year end lists is easier for me than other reviews because I can just paraphrase or truncate any First Impressions that I have done, or expand upon any Social Media post I made. That being said, when a movie as completely boring and uninspired as this one comes out, really what else can I do?

I don't want to lift my original First Impressions word for word, but there are only so many ways I can say something is boring and doesn't put any new spin on old, tired jokes and clichés. I was finished with this movie when the ancient God was speaking in modern teenage slang, but I kept soldering on, because maybe this movie would have been somewhat watchable. Instead, it was the most boring animated movie of the year, and at one point I might have put it at the top of this list.

2. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie

Frankly, I still think y'all are too harsh on this movie. No, it is not good on any level, but it is still better than Sponge on the Run, I mean do you guys remember Sponge on the Run? No, of course you don't, you remember zombie pirates with Snoop Dogg and Dany Trejo, Keanu Reeves in a Tumbleweed, Plankton Booty and Mr. Enter doing another Angry SpongeBob Review. Let me tell you, Sponge on the Run is the worst, because it does not feel like a SpongeBob movie, with the soundtrack full of modern popular acts (seriously the days of Ween and Motorhead cameoing in SpongeBob are over), attempts to satirize common animated movie tropes and moral about inner beauty or whatever... you know what all that reminds me of? Shrek, Sponge on the Run is a Shrek movie with SpongeBob's skin, and worse, it's not even a good Shrek movie in SpongeBob's skin.

With all that in mind, comparing it to a movie that didn't even feel like SpongeBob, what does this movie have? A line about SpongeBob not being able to watch his streaming shows? Uncanny live-action mixing? A weird moment where Sandy Cheeks gets DeviantArt Inflation put upon her? Yeah, really the worst thing about this movie is that even with all of that, this still isn't as bad as Sponge on the Run, there were moments here that did feel like SpongeBob, which I guess is more the shame all things considered. Really, it just falls under the category of "That Kind of Animated Movie", but even then only barely, and really it's only at number 2 because frankly, it's a much more interesting entry than The Casagrandes Movie. Still, I do think there is something that you can get somewhat upset with here, like SpongeBob means a lot to a lot of people and seeing stuff like this doesn't help. In any other year, I probably would have conceded to popular opinion and put this at number one, just because it would have given me the most to talk about, you know without the stigma of a good movie trying to break out of it like with The Lord of the Rings movie.

But this shockingly, was not just any other year, this was 2024 and 2024 gave us one massive surprise that we frankly should have seen coming, yet none of us did.

1. Where the Robots Grow

What, you didn't see this movie? Of course you haven't, at most, you watched Saberspark's video about it and promptly forgot it existed, lucky you.

Really, on principle this has to make number one, because the use of A.I. in creative spaces has truly been the death of creativity. A.I. is little more than legalized plagiarism stuck inside the uncanny valley, and the fact that any movie can be made with A.I., that just has to make it the worst animated movie of the year by default, doesn't it? I don't blame people for not watching it, why would anyone bother to watch a movie that nobody could be bothered to make? At least with the Lord of the Rings movie, I can convince myself that it was all done by human animators, I can believe it was all humans who made it. Really though, this is just giving the creator, or should I say the prompter, what they want, attention. They probably did hope that this was the movie that would make everyone change their mind about A.I. in creative spaces, or maybe they just wanted to show it can be done and get all the attention off of it, well guess what; No.

Come to think of it, I haven't actually watched this movie myself, really. Can I qualify it for this list if I didn't watch it? No joke, I seriously did not watch this movie before writing all of this about it, it is literally number one because it was made using A.I. and really that isn't entirely fair, is it? Can I put this movie on here by principle? Yes, the answer is yes. Yeah it isn't fair, but it also isn't fair that A.I. is being used to replace genuine creative talent while also stealing from said creative talent so I think it's fair game for everyone to call this the worst animated movie of 2024, even if they haven't actually watched it. I don't swear on this blogs, but ---- this movie, just for existing.

Well... that was fun, 2024 was not a great year for animated movies, but I am hoping that 2025 will be better. Like I said, I couldn't watch every animated movie this year, so while Megamind 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King would have been total shoe-ins for this list, sometimes I am just going to have to miss a few things. That being said, the big trend I notice in this batch of garbage is that, at the core of every movie here, there isn't a bad movie, except maybe for the A.I. movie, but honestly most of the movies here weren't even that infuriating, like I genuinely can't think of any real reason why to be mad at the existence of most of these movies, which is entirely why Where the Robots Grow was an easy number one entry. Really, 2024 was the year of the disappointment, where some movies just were not as good as they could have been.

Anyway, to round out the list, here are a few dishonorable mentions:

1. Orion and the Dark - I just did not enjoy this messy film, but I can see why some might like it.
2. Thelma the Unicorn - A very predictable and very mediocre movie, but harmless enough.
3. The Imaginary - This movie just... rubbed me the wrong way, would have been on the list if I actually got around to finishing it. Maybe I'll give it a review in 2026 or something, but no promises.