5 Best & 5 Worst Dreamworks Animated Movies (According To Metacritic)

From pioneering influential animated films to working for a paycheck, here are five of Dreamworks’ greatest animated movies, and their five worst.

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DreamWorks Animation’s first project was Antz in 1998, the tale of fun-loving colony-members voiced by notable names like Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, and Gene Hackman. From there, the animation studio went on to make 38 movies in the span of a little over two decades. Of course, a good number of those are sequels, with the Madagascar, Shrek, and How To Train Your Dragon franchises, among many others, spawning plenty of subsequent films.

Additionally, DreamWorks Animation has a curious habit of moving forward with sequels for a movie that wasn’t well-received by critics or audiences. Thus, the original shouldn’t warrant a sequel, but they move ahead anyway in hopes of similar box-office success, which comes despite the paying audience voicing displeasure afterward.

For instance, a sequel to the middling Boss Baby is underway in 2021. The studio seems to have such a constant audience that they “can do what they want” with pictures of lesser quality, yet, at the same time, they produce incredible pictures that don’t get a second shot, as some may argue was the case for Flushed Away. It’s confusing.

10 Worst: Shark Tale (48)

Shark Tale can be conceived as DreamWorks’ much-too-obvious copy of Disney Pixar’s Finding Nemo, which came out the year before its 2004 release. The family/comedy has the plotline of a mafia movie, infused with mob-bosses (Robert De Niro) and debts as protagonist Oscar (Will Smith) is framed for the murder of a shark.

The gritty approach to an aquatic animated flick was certainly not what critics had in mind. Willliam Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also makes a good point while contributing to the majority of bad reviews levied at the film, writing how it seemed too much like a simple “merchandising scheme” rather than a movie.

9 Best: Shrek 2 (75)

Unlike most sequels in cinema history, many Shrek fans have argued that the franchise’s second chapter is the best movie. The sequel largely takes place in Fiona’s (Cameron Diaz) home-kingdom of Far Far Away, as America’s favorite ogre meets his in-laws.

Shrek 2 seemed to do no wrong in critics’ eyes, with a minimum of scores falling below 70. The fish-out-of-water appeal of Shrek 2 is brought to its fullest with enhanced graphics — which have since all been routinely restored to be of the highest definition — and no decline in its off-color humor.

8 Worst: Sinbad: The Legend Of The Seven Seas (48)

DreamWorks Animation’s Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas is one of their sharp 2D animated films that 90s-born fans should find amusingly familiar. Nonetheless, many of the reviews on Metacritic contributing to the downfall of this cinematic journey to find the Goddess of Choas is the bland performances by voice actors Michelle Pfeiffer and Brad Pitt.

Ty Burr of The Boston Globe sums the film up quite nicely as he writes, “Pitt and Pfieffer? Great to look at. Astonishingly dull to listen to.” This opinion also applies to the film in its visual allure but lack of a further appeal.

7 Best: How To Train Your Dragon 2 (76)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is unique from every other DreamWorks Animation film in that it is the only sequel that critics have ranked above its original. The uptick in approval may result from the sequel’s thrilling adventure and exciting pace, along with not having to character/world-build, which seems to be a majorly untapped general advantage for sequels.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Jay Baruchel) returned to the silver screen a third time in 2019 in How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and was much beloved by viewers, but it lags slightly behind its preceding chapters in terms of both merit and financial success.

6 Worst: The Boss Baby (50)

The animation studio finally eclipsed the best of all possible premises for one of these animated flicks by dressing a baby in a suit and putting him in a managerial position—truly innovation at its finest. Nevertheless, Boss Baby did considerably well at the box office and beyond, with an approx. $527 M global gross.

Alec Baldwin, Jimmy Kimmel, and others will return for The Boss Baby: Family Business, which is set to release in September 2021. The second chapter will most likely not reach the financial heights of its predecessor, and the franchise’s discontinuation after this chapter isn’t a very bold prediction.

5 Best: Shrek (84)

DreamWorks Animation’s 2001 comedy/fantasy Shrek is a modern classic that continues to reach today’s children almost 20 years later. The franchise went on to release four films, a spin-off film in Puss in Boots, three TV specials, 14 video games, and a Broadway musical production.

The scale of Shrek is massive, reaching a size only a few franchises in the history of cinema has reached. Despite all the content that’s branched from the first Shrek, nothing can quite beat the original.

4 Worst: Trolls World Tour (51)

The sequel to the similarly un-lauded Trolls released in March 2020, just as COVID-19 began complicating operations for movie theatres. As a result, its box-office performance was fairly minimal, and DreamWorks rushed the musical comedy to streaming/DVD format.

The movies are based on the “Troll doll” toyline, which began in the late 50s–early 60s. The cast of both Trolls films consists of a plethora of notable musicians from Ozzy Osbourne and George Clinton to Justin Timberlake and Chance the Rapper. Nevertheless, critics seem to disfavor the franchise.

3 Best: Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (87)

Characters Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit had first appeared in a series of animated shorts in 1989. Their feature-length debut hit theatres in 2005, posing the claymated duo against a massive, nightmarish rabbit who’s been destroying the town’s crops.

According to Metacritic, both users and critics love the film, as both scored it in the 80s. Critics credit the film’s spooky visual appeal, as well as its blending of deadpan humor and slapstick antics. For this film, William Arnold wrote, “so devoid of the usual coarse Hollywood calculation that it plays like a breath of fresh air.”

2 Worst: Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron (52)

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron takes place in the unindustrialized American frontier, and audiences follow Spirit (Matt Damon), a Kiger mustang set on a hero’s journey, who in the process falls in love with Rain (Amanda Seyfried), an American Paint Horse.

Many who grew up watching DreamWorks Animation’s early films may be surprised to see critics’ negative reception to this enchanting, naturalistic 2D animated family/adventure, as a vast margin is set between the user score of 8.1 and the “Metascore” of 52. Lou Leminick of NY Post makes up one of the very negative reviews dragging the film’s Metascore down, writing, “A boring, wincingly cute and nauseatingly politically correct cartoon guaranteed to drive anyone much over age 4 screaming from the theatre.”

1 Best: Chicken Run (88)

Chicken Run was DreamWorks Animation’s fourth production. While being an absolute favorite of claymation fans, the family/comedy financially outdid all of DreamWorks’ previous projects. Although, its prowess amongst the studio’s collection was quickly surpassed by the release of Shrek in the next year.

The stop-motion animation influenced a new Academy Award category known today as Best Animated Feature. Chicken Run was so highly praised it was nominated for Best Picture, but it lost to Gladiator. Nevertheless, Chicken Run is a much more generation-defining work of art in comparison to its

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