Dreamworks CGI Features are Simply Funnier Than Pixar CGI Features

J

Joseph NG

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It's true. Dreamworks movies have a looser and more Warner Bros. zany style with their pop culture references when compared to Pixar's slightly more timeless "Disney" style. And the Warner Bros. style is funnier, just like Bugs Bunny cartoons are still funnier than Mickey Mouse cartoons despite containing dated references to celebrities and movies most of the audience is 50 years too young to get.

The humor in Pixar films is just too gentle. The funniest line, for me, in Toy Story was when the Shark jumped out of the toy box with Woody's hat on and said "Look. I'm Woody. Howdy, Howdy, Howdy." That's great and anyone who is old enough to look at the screen will laugh at it, but I like the more sarcastic and saucier tone of Dreamworks movies.
 
Well, I think the more recent Dreamworks movies have done a good job of balancing that zany humor with better developed characters and a setting that feels livelier than ever. The only Dreamworks films that really pushed too much into pop-culture territory for me were Shark Tale, the Shrek sequels and Madagascar 1.

Still, a lot of Toy Story 3's appeal did come from how much it built on the previous two films, so I think some of the humor would be lost on those who didn't grow up with them or have not seen them before. Especially that opening scene.
 
You're comparing Dreamworks to Looney Tunes...? I sincerely doubt you've actually seen a Looney Tunes short in your life.
Personally, I'm neither a Pixar fan nor a Dreamworks, but give me Incredibles over Shark Tale any day.
 
Disagree with me all you like, but please don't get personally insulting. I grew up on Looney Tunes. I've been enjoying them for more than 30 years now.

As for Shark Tale, yes, Shark Tale sucks. So do Cars and, in my own opinion, Finding Nemo. We're not going to spend the whole thread unequally comparing one company's best effort to the other one's worst, are we? Besides, this isn't about overall quality, it's just about which are funnier.
 
I addressed that in my post. The reference in Looney Tunes are stale on a geologic level, some are barely recognizable as references to today's audiences, and yet the humor still comes through because it has naughty, anarchic energy.
 
Why do people keep making that ridiculous DreamWorks/WB comparison? The Looney Tunes were unparalleled masters of comedic wit and timing. DW... simply isn't. Pop culture and smug cynicism isn't automatic comedy gold in itself. Their newer films have gotten much better at matching Pixar for storytelling and characterizations, but that's not what we're judging in this thread.

Leaving Pixar films out of this (since most of them aren't pure comedy films to begin with), I think Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and Despicable Me are much funnier than any DW film (and much more deserving of being touted as the contemporary equivalents of Looney Tunes).
 
You know, they don't have to be exactly equal to share stylistic similarities. Am I saying Dreamworks films are as good as Looney Tunes? Hell no. I'm saying that they share a similar approach to wacky wit and sharp-tongued wordplay, which is funnier than the warm comfortable bath feeling you get from Pixar.

Back to pop culture references, there aren't many people alive today who would watch, say, Book Revue and go, "Oh yeah, Daffy is imitating Danny Kaye!" But so what, it's still a funny cartoon.
 
If all it took to make a product funny was to throw in a bunch of pop culture references that didn't have any leaning on the plot, then Family Guy would the the ultimate king of comedy (Spoiler: it's not). I can tell you that, when watching Dreamworks movies, there have been very few times when I've ever done more than chuckle. In contrast, I've lost count of how many times Pixar movies have made me laugh out loud, whether with the banter between the Parr family in the Incredibles or with the antics of Dug and his fellow dogs in Up.

I suppose it's a difference of philosophy - I've always thought that humor works better when it revolves around the interaction of characters or hilarious situations, rather than simply reinacting scenes from other movies with a less serious tone. Movies like Madagascar simply failed to make me laugh at all, because the "plot" esentially was a big joke, and when push came to shove the producers decided to focus on squeezing as many pop-culture refferences in as possible over actually giving the cast personalities or the plot a little depth.

That to me is the fundemental reason why Pixar usually beats Dreamworks out in every area, whether it be comedy or story or charaters. The latter company seems to primarily focus on creating simple comedies that are good for a laugh or two but have no real lasting entertainment value. Once you've watched them once, there's no real reason to see them again, as they never rise above being merely "CGI comedies." On the other hand, Pixar sees their filmaking as an art form - something that transcends ages or time periods and often becomes even better with subsequent views. Films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo may not have jokes every minute, but they fill the extra space with charaterizations and plots that stay fresh even after watching it multiple times. And, since their humor is derived from those characters and plots, it ends up also having more longevity than piles of culturally "hip" references.

To prove my point, compare the scene in Madagascar with the Lion and his volley-ball "companion," and the Parr family dinner table scene in the Incredibles. Now, which sequence do you think is going to make the next few generations of kids laugh more: a scene that derives it's humor entirely from a a reference to Cast away (which they probably won't even know about), or a scene that reflects the timeless and often hilarious nature of families?
 
Pixar's humor is more character based, like situations that we may encounter in real life. Dreamworks humor, while they can get sentimental at times, is more of the scathing, "take that" variety. Yes, Looney Tunes was more known for the latter than the former, though they did get sappy at times.
 
I would probably say that DW humor is simply different from Pixar's humor, and it's sort of like the way they cast their movies. Most Pixar movie humor comes from characters, so I don't think it's as funny when taken out of context. You kind of have to be there for "YOU!! ARE!! A!!! TOOOYYYYY!!!!!!!!" to be a funny line. I think it's the same way that Pixar doesn't celebrity stunt-cast as much, and the actors tend to become the characters as opposed to the other way around.

Beyond that...


I think the difference between the Looney Tunes brand of pop culture reference and the DW pop culture reference is that most of the gags in a Looney Tunes cartoon involving a movie star or a celebrity of the period still work if you don't know who it is, while I don't find that's true of DreamWorks.

As an example, there's the Looney Tunes short where Elmer Fudd is a waiter in a Hollywood restaurant and Humphrey Bogart demands a rabbit for dinner, "or else." Then Elmer spends the short trying to snag Bugs for dinner, at one point even belting Bogie in the face with a coconut custard pie with whipped cream. I had no clue who Bogie was when I first saw the short as a wee tot in the 70's, but you don't have to. All you have to know is that Elmer Fudd wants to impress him and is visibly scared of him, and all those gags still work. Bogie (and "baby" ;)) just happens to be more realistically drawn than Bugs and Elmer. Most of the other gags involving celebrity caricatures can also just be appreciated at the level of, "Hey, that's a funny lookin' guy there, innit?"

Besides, I think they pretty much stopped doing most of those serious pop culture references by the late 40's, and most of the best-known Looney Tunes shorts don't rely on pop culture gags at all. There's the celebrity gossip that interviews Bugs for some of the clip show cartoons, but again, you don't have to know who she is for those jokes (or the framing device) to work. The one and only gag that ever just baffled me as a kid was Yosemite Sam stopping dead to ask the audience, "You notice how I didn't say Richard?" and I figured that one out once I started listening to Louis Jordan.

A lot of the gags in, say, the Shrek movies were stale even 2 or 3 years after they came out. They're just not funny once the pop culture moment is passed.
 
The Looney Tunes gag that always baffled me as a boy was the "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" gag in "A Hare Grows in Manhattan," the very cartoon I think you're referencing with the celebrity interviewer. Didn't get that reference at all. I mean, I knew there was a tree and the dogs wanted to pee on it, but I had no idea why Bugs would find a book that says that or that the whole cartoon is a reference to the book and movie.

Still funny, though. You can't go wrong with "Dogpile on the Rabbit."

I think modern audiences simply don't see the the more hot button references in Looney Tunes because they've become so obscure, so that makes it seem like less are there.


Anyway, only time will tell if the references age eventually gets in the way, but right now it's still much funnier. And some of it does come from character, like that line in Monsters Vs. Aliens where they're asking the main character what name people scream when they see her coming and she says "Susan."
 
I don't really care which one is funnier since i find comedy to be fleeting in most cases (some like looney toons being an exception). Comedy will make an entertaining film, but comedy alone usually will not make a truly great and memorable film. I find that the characters, the development and the story is what ends up making the difference; and those are the kinds of films that are truly memorable. In this regard Pixar would be on top. They just do such a brilliant jobs with their characters and direction.

And really i think Toy Story works as a great testament to what they are able to do. Most studios in general struggle with sequels with each film being greatly weaker than the last, but Pixar managed to capture close to the same quality in their sequals as they do in the original.

and really I don't agee with the looney toons comparision at all... I might except that dreamworks is closer than Pixar, but they are still FAR from coming close to classic loony toons. Unless i'm forgetting something, i feel like Animaniacs was the only cartoon to match the old looney toons brilliance in recent years
 
Ironically the most fun Dreamworks movie I've seen, Kung Fu Panda, combines types to an extent since it relies so much on physical humor as well as character personalities. It's still got enough gag humor to fit the Dreamworks-type humor being posited, but that's a movie that doesn't rely on references and has more replay value than one's favorite Shrek movie (me, I'm partial to 2). I think that one will be with us for awhile.

Of course I realize that citing one movie, however good, isn't enough, though I haven't seen How To Drain Your Dragon or Shrek 4 this year. Never seen Madagascar either. Over The Hedge was just.....all right. Megamind tonight!
 
I think with How to Train Your Dragon they've gotten the formula right. Lots of biting wordplay and wild funny gags with only a bit of pop culture.

I don't see the point of picking on the Shrek movies so much for having pop culture references. That's sort of the point, they are parodies that take place in a land of imagination and satirize the sickly sweetness of Disney. It's not just thrown in there. Well, not in the first two, I thought Shrek Three was rather bad.

And in reference to Monte, again, people need to separate style from overall quality. No one is say Dreamworks films are as good as Looney Tunes, I'm just saying they take a similar approach to humor that is funnier.
 
Um, duh. The bulk of Dreamworks CG features have been comedies. Pixar does all kinds of stuff, so while humor plays an important part, it isn't the entire point of the movie.
 
I loved Shrek 1 (though 2 was pretty good) and Kung-Fu Panda but as much as I love a good reference you cannot rely on them for anything other than a few minutes of comedy without them getting stale quickly. Note I've yet to see MegaMind, How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek Forever After.

Pixar doesn't just do comedy, though there are funny moments in each of their movies. I can't think of too many stinkers from Pixar in the comedy department, can't think of any actually. Even the comedies that fall short of other Pixar films are funnier to me than the majority of Dreamworks CGI films.

Madagascar 1 and 2, Monster's vs. Aliens, Over the Hedge, Shrek the 3rd and even Shark Tale had their moments but I don't feel they had the wit and charm of any of Pixar's movies, Kung-Fu Panda and Shrek 1 and 2 are about as good but the number of weaker films drags DW way down. Pixar movies also have pretty darn good comedic timing and I'd only say the same for some DW films. So what if they're more family friendly and Dreamworks is often "more edgy"? While that is what makes Looney Tunes more appealing to me than Disney shorts, you have to be really good with your style to be entertaining and pound for pound Pixar does Pixar comedy better than Dreamworks does Dreamworks comedy in my opinion.

This is more than a lot like Sega vs Nintendo.
 
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