DreamWorks is unquestionably one of the most successful and recognizable film studios in the world. The studio is definitely best known for its live-action films, but in the past few decades, the studio has been putting its best foot forward in the animated movie game. When it comes to animated films, it’s nearly impossible to even compete with the goliath that is Disney, but DreamWorks has managed to create its own pocket of the animated film world.
So, even though everyone might recognize that DreamWorks intro at the beginning of so many movies, most people might not remember which movies were actually DreamWorks features. Some of these films are super memorable, some of them just deserve to be remembered, and some of them should probably be forgotten altogether. But which movies out there are DreamWorks films that nobody realizes are actually DreamWorks films?
Shark Tale
Although Shark Tale is one of the older computer animated movies in the DreamWorks vault, it’s also one of the animation studio’s most successful films. The movie focuses on a variety of sea creatures as you might expect, but the plot is not quite what you’d think of as your typical animal animated film.
Shark Tale features Will Smith as the voice actor for the lead character of Oscar, a shark who is always scheming (and failing) at becoming rich and famous. In a particularly fun choice of casting, acting legend Robert De Niro plays the leader of a shark mafia that Oscar gets in a little too deep with.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
When it comes to creative and off-the-wall animated productions, DreamWorks is pretty willing to go wild. One of their weirdest and most fun movies has got to be Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
The movie obviously follows classic cartoon characters Wallace & Gromit (in their only silver screen appearance, actually), a man and dog team who specialize in humane pest control. In the movie, Wallace & Gromit are seeking out the titular were-rabbit, but beyond that, the plot is honestly so delightfully silly and strange that it’s difficult to describe in just a sentence or two.
Flushed Away
People rarely think of rats as particularly high class pets, but the DreamWorks feature Flushed Away follows the saga of a pampered pet rat who is accidentally flushed down the toilet and encounters a whole lot of adventures during his journey home.
Roddy (the aforementioned pampered pet rat) starts off the film as a bit of an elitist snob, but he finds himself in a world of trouble when his new home invader (a street rat named Sid) doesn’t fall for Roddy’s toilet trap and winds up pulling an Uno reverse card on Roddy’s plan. Thankfully, Roddy goes through some character development and gets more down to earth. Or below it, in the literal sense.
The Boss Baby
Obviously DreamWorks has a knack for coming up with some downright strange but somehow strangely perfect movie ideas. The Boss Baby, a movie that features Alec Baldwin as a giant-headed baby with the intellect and attitude of an adult, is one such movie.
Unsurprisingly The Boss Baby follows the adventures of bossy baby Theodore, who is initially disinterested in his family and only cares about advancing his career at Baby Corp, but ultimately comes to realize the importance and value of family. I guess it’s never too early to teach kids that financial and career success isn’t all that matters in life.
Megamind
Animated children’s films that feature villains as their main protagonists have become a bit of a movie trend, but the DreamWorks feature Megamind was kind of ahead of the curve on that one. Megamind focuses on an alien supervillain who ultimately becomes a superhero, and features a star studded cast that includes Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, and even Brad Pitt.
Megamind’s seemingly never ending rivalry with the superhero Metro Man finally does come to an end, and Megamind realizes that he actually misses Metro Man. That, in addition to some sudden romantic feelings for a reporter named Roxanne, inspires Megamind to go from bad guy to good.
Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas
Forget about whether or not you realized it was a DreamWorks feature; did anyone even remember that Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas even existed in the first place? This underrated movie from DreamWorks wasn’t a success by a long shot. This movie, along with a few other bombs that DreamWorks churned out in the same era, nearly bankrupted the studio.
Luckily, DreamWorks managed to survive, but it’s still strange to consider how many massive hits and animated classics the world would have missed out on if this 2003 film would have meant the end of the studio.
Bee Movie
Everyone knows that when it comes to animated films, it’s extremely hard to compete with the juggernaut that is Disney. Still, DreamWorks certainly give them a run for their money. One of their more interesting offerings is Bee Movie, a movie about a bee named Barry who sues the entire human race to end the exploitation of bees for their honey.
It’s a bit of a kooky premise to be sure, but the movie was actually written by Jerry Seinfeld and some of his old Seinfeld writers, and it unsurprisingly features Jerry and a lot of his old Seinfeld co-stars in the cast as well.
The Prince Of Egypt
When most people think of traditional animated films, they think of children’s films that are mostly light and fluffy, but The Prince of Egypt definitely does not follow the typical format of an animated movie. The film is an animated adaptation of the Book of Exodus in the Bible, and the fact that The Prince of Egypt is a cartoon doesn’t diminish the epic story of Moses versus Rameses.
It’s a pretty heavy subject and story that no-one would usually expect an animation studio to tackle, but DreamWorks did an impressive job of adapting this tale into a visually stunning and compelling film.
Chicken Run
The variety and uniqueness of the animated features that DreamWorks puts out is one of its strongest attributes as a studio, but its most distinctive and unusual features have got to be its stop-motion animation films. One of its most fun entries into its stop-motion catalog is Chicken Run.
The movie is the tale of a squad of chickens who live on a farm that hopes to make them into chicken pies, a plan that said squad wants nothing to do with and which fuels their plan to escape. It’s one of the earlier DreamWorks films, and it’s actually the highest-grossing stop-motion animation movie of all time.
Antz
DreamWorks has fought its way towards the top of the animated film game, but it definitely took a bit of time and effort to get there, which is why so many of the animation studio’s earlier works are overlooked, forgotten, or, at the very least, not associated with the studio all that much.
One of their earliest CGI films is the 1998 movie Antz, a movie that follows a worker ant through the ups and downs of an average ant who becomes a war hero, then a war criminal, and finally a revolutionary leader who transforms his ant colony completely.
