Animal Crackers Review

Animal Crackers originally showcased at a film festival in 2017 but never released until a couple of 

days on Netflix is an animated film featuring an all-star voice cast featuring the likes of John Krasinski, 

Emily Blunt, Danny Devito, Sylvester Stallone, Ian Mckellen, Tara Strong and many more. Although a 

key standout for me was Patrick Warburton, the original voice of Kronk from the Emperor's New 

Groove playing a character that is identical to Kronk's persona. The beginning of this film is quite 

unique but familiar at the same time. It starts with a sequence depicting two brothers running a circus 

who are having a fight over a beautiful girl named Talia. Time skips forward showing life at the circus 

with the one of the brothers, Bob running the circus with Talia who has become his wife but they 

introduce us to our actual character Owen who is the nephew of Bob and his brother Horatio. The 

movie takes a couple of minutes showing how Owen loved the circus and how he met his wife Zoey. 

Time fast forwards and he is married to Zoey but is forced to give up life at the circus to work for her 

dad's dog biscuit factory. This all happens in the first 12 minutes of the film. Initially, when I saw this 

sequence I was really confused about how everything in that opening sequence relevant to the story but 

after watching the entire film I'm glad to report that none of it was irrelevant and that although a 

convoluted setup, it was well used. The second thought that came to my mind watching that sequence 

was that it gave me a lot of Pixar's Up opening sequence vibes especially with the time-lapse of key 

character's lives. This especially hits home at the end of the opening sequence where we pick up with 

our characters in their present time where tragedy strikes at the circus causing Owen to ultimately 

come back to help the circus. You must be wondering how animal crackers fit into this movie, well the 

gist of it is that there is a magical box of animal crackers that turn anyone into a certain animal 

depending on which animal cracker they eat. 

This is the MacGuffin that Owen and Horatio fight over throughout the movie after the opening 

sequence. Honestly, this film surprised me on how well animated it was, I didn't expect such good 

quality from a couple of small animation studios. It wasn't as good as Pixar's films but it was 

comparable to Dreamworks and Universal Studios in terms of animation. The writing was sharp but 

never forgot that it was an animated film about magical crackers. The jokes were good especially the 

gags that involved Patrick's character Brook who essentially was just Cronk in an office setting. I was 

really surprised by how many subversion of common tropes there were in this film and I found it very 

refreshing that characters acted more using their brain than letting emotions deprive them of all their 

common sense. Horatio the main antagonist of the movie is a very competent villain, he has well 

thought out plans and adapts to unexpected situations, unlike most villains. The writing for some 

supporting characters were very compelling but the problem that this movie suffers is that there are too 

many characters and not all them get equal chances to shine, unfortunately. But this movie gives 

enough time for supporting characters while not undercutting the main story and characters for me to 

say that it was good. Overall I thought most of the characters were well written, the writing had more 

plot twists then I anticipated and it all came together to make a very entertaining movie. Going into this 

movie, I knew nothing about it until it showed up on Netflix out of nowhere and I thought it was going 

to be mediocre film for children but I was happily surprised by how good it was. I was even more 

shocked by the all-star voice cast. Ultimately I liked the film and in terms of enjoyment I would give it 

an 8 out of 10. This definitely worth the watch if you are looking for a fun animated family film that 

plays around with familiar writing tropes.