The past 75 years have seen the humble cartoon elevated to blockbuster status. From the original hand-drawn Snow White way back in 1937 to the latest pictures created entirely using computer graphics, animated movies have become a major staple in the entertainment industry. As the mother of a toddler I love animated films, but my obsession goes back even further than the last few years.

Animated movies allow us to travel back to a simpler time. Beyond the bright colors and dazzling special effects they are morality tales: simple, pure and honest. They are stories of friendship, courage, love and even enmity and, while they may be dressed in ever more elaborate garb to help win the ever-escalating animation arms race, beneath the flashy graphics lie the stories told to us by our parents to soothe us to sleep. They tell of worlds of black and white, with vanishingly few shades of gray. The goodies are good, the baddies are bad, the heroes live happily ever after and, if only until the credits roll, so can we.

Making a Choice

To choose the best of the bunch is complicated. As fewer animated features exist than live action films, the final products are usually outstanding. To narrow the playing field, I decided to evaluate the movies based on the following criteria:

• Animation quality,
• Storyline,
• Humor
• And family appeal.

I quickly discovered than many of the oldest animated films, while outstanding in their own right, simply cannot compete with modern animation. With the humor component, many of the traditional fairy tales failed to deliver as they are generally more depressing or even scary than anything else. The more modern day adaptations of classical fairy tales have a much broader appeal, and were well represented in the finalists.

Unfortunately, in a contest there must be a winner. I say unfortunately only because so many of these films are legendary and well-loved, it is hard to say one is better than the others. Regardless, Finding Nemo finally came out on top.

As a recent addition to the animated film library, Finding Nemo has the advantage of simply amazing computer graphics. The computer animation makes the underwater sequences almost startlingly realistic. As we follow Marlin on his journey to find Nemo, his missing son, our heart goes out to him for the lessons he is learning – as well as his devotion and love for his only son. Hilarious sea turtles and friendly fish with short-term memory loss don’t hurt for style points, either.