So hey, what's with the dancing at the end of recent animated movies?

I see it as lazy writing. I mildly get the appeal of taking these characters the audience will have hopefully bonded with and give them a big celebration at the end of their adventure but alot of the time it seems to come out of nowhere and gets in the way of better closure for the actual story. With Toy Story 3, I see it in a different light because it's a very clear continuation of a gag from earlier and an exploration of two character's relationship with one another. It's not like we see all the toys suddenly grooving to 'Everybody Dance Now' like Dreamworks tend to do.

The biggest statement I see it making is how most studios cranking out CGI are going for the widest audience they can get by completely overdoing the quickly dated pop culture references.
 
A few cynical thoughts

1. Because once they’ve built the complicated computer puppet it’s relatively easy to map it to some mo-cap dancers.

2. Because no matter what the movie was like, if they can end on an up-beat note that’s what people will take away from the movie. If they leave the theaters happy they will want to buy the dvd.
If they were to re-make Grave of the Fireflies they would end it with dancing.
 
In some commentaries I've listened to they say it's a way for them to have fun? In the Madagascar commentary they said they let the animators pick their fave character and just make them dance.
 
Wow, someone not gonna consider watching Megamind just for the simple fact? Talk about a waste.

I thought it was completely ignorable. Sometimes it even fits, like as someone said, in Megamind (it fits the character and the setting), and someone brought up Madagascar... when that didn't happen at all (unless you count 2, where the four buddies plus Alex's parents were simply just strutting towards the background, which really isn't dancing).
 
Oh dear God *cringes at the thought* >.<

But overall it doesn't bother me too much. The only movie where I found it pretty annoying (out of the ones I've seen, anyways) was Chicken Little. It also reminded me of how they ended with the same number in Ella Enchanted.
 
I was one of those people, in the talkback thread. To expound on what I said in this thread, I said that since they've set up MegaMind to be this melodramatic villain who loves to put on a show, it seemed natural that he'd want to celebrate his win with an over-choreographed dance number. He does it earlier in the movie, too, so it really fit. Of course, MegaMind probably has DreamWorks' best non-score soundtrack, and that also helped the movie. To Monterey Jack, I highly suggest seeing MegaMind, as I believe it is on-par with the original Shrek, and is easily in my top three of the studio.
 
Does Toy Story 3 really count? That was during the credits. That actual movie ended with Woody introducing his friends to Bonnie's toys while the camera panned away.
 
If your character is garish and flamboyant, it works. If it's someone that would never do something like that, it looks out of place, period. But many of Dreamworks' heroes do act on the goofy side, so it makes sense.
 
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