Movies That Deserve More Love: Five Animated Films not from Pixar

November is a really boring month. It follows in the wake of midterms, which may have turned out badly. It’s sandwiched between two really festive months, but November itself has only Remembrance Day, which isn’t really an excuse to drink and make merry. In the spirit of combating November, here are five animated English movies that have aged relatively well and should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with recent Pixar offerings, listed in order of seriousness.

The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

The Incan emperor Kuzko is turned into a llama by his evil witch advisor and shipped out into the backwoods of his kingdom. In order to travel back to the capital and reclaim his throne, Kuzko must join forces with the good-hearted, humble Pacha, whose village he was planning to pave over to build a summer palace. Pacha himself doesn’t really have time to trot a llama across the country but agrees anyways to save his village.

The Emperor’s New Groove makes no pretences at seriousness or Academy Award-mongering. This is good, because it means that the movie can be as irreverent and careless as a Saturday morning cartoon. The plot is a big happy excuse to string together neurotic llama jokes and ridiculous visual gags, both of which are forces of pure and unequivocal good in the wasteland of modern animation.

The Road to El Dorado (2000)

Two guys Miguel and Tulio win a map to El Dorado in a game of loaded dice and stowaway on a ship on its way to the New World. Along with a stolen horse, they discover the City of Gold and are mistaken for gods. Miguel and Tulio struggle to maintain their deception and to decide whether to stay and be worshipped or to bring their discoveries back to Spain.

The bromance of Miguel and Tulio deserve to go right up there with Harold and Kumar, Timon and Pumbaa, and the two incompetent soldiers from Pirates of the Caribbean. The whole movie runs off the development of their brotherly relationship, so that by the time they leave El Dorado, it’s really all they need. I completely disagree with the addition of the love interest the producers decided was necessary to divert viewer attention away from the clear alpha couple. Ah, it doesn’t work anyways.

Chicken Run (2000)

Ginger the hen has spent her life looking for a way for the chickens on Tweedy’s Chicken Farm to escape their fate as pot pies. But her life is thrown into a loop when a rooster by the name of Rocky crash-lands into the complex and claims he can teach them all to fly out and over the fence.

This is the best movie featuring talking livestock that you could ever hope to see. Ever. As you might expect from the people who brought the world Wallace and Grommit, Chicken Run sports a particularly wicked brand of humour that doesn’t gloss over the details of chicken-killing. (Hint: It involves an Indiana Jones-esque minecart sequence and boiling vats of doom.) The chickens themselves exude contagious warmth, zeal, and desperation. Their demeanor and plotting (Mr Tweedy: “Oh, yes. Those chickens are up to something.”) remind me of prisoners in war movies, except Chicken Run serves up more moral fibre and pleasant entertainment than any Oscar-gunning war movie in recent memory.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Milo Thatch is an extremely nerdy early-twentieth-century cartographer/linguist/plumber toiling in the basement of the Smithsonian because his plans to find Atlantis are always shot down by the museum directors. But a wealthy benefactor takes interest in him and Milo finds himself on a dream expedition to find the titular mythical city under the sea with an extremely sketchy crew that includes a chain-smoking cantankerous communications officer, a medical doctor who looks like Mr. Clean, and a geologist raised by mole rats in Paris.

This is a great movie in the vein of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. From the steampunk-influenced submarine to the crumbling majesty of Atlantis, it’s beautifully animated, thanks to the direction of Hellboy’s Mike Mignola. He makes all the explosions and beams of light in the final sequence so beautiful that it’d make James Cameron and his oversized budget weep tears of futility. Also, the crew’s dialogue is really snappy for circa 1912 (“To whoever took the “L” from the “Motor Pool” sign, ha-ha, we are all very amused.”). Atlantis: The Lost Empire is bold, brisk, and breathtaking. Definitely my favourite movie on the list.

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Moses, raised as ancient Egyptian royalty, discovers that he was adopted. He embarks upon a spiritual journey to come to terms with his baseborn birth and returns to his homeland, asking his brother the Pharoah to free the slaves of Egypt. In case you couldn’t tell, The Prince of Egypt is adapted from the biblical tale of Moses.

The Prince of Egpyt is the Ben-Hur of the age of traditional western animation: a critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning historical epic that was forgotten soon after since Disney didn’t make it. That’s too bad because this movie is nowhere as stuffy as you might expect it to be, until the plagues of Egypt throw a shadow on things. But the first part of the movie, during which Moses and Ramses are still princes and brothers, is as effervescent as any Disney movie. Watching them grow apart after Moses’ revelations is heartbreaking.