I recently realised that I have been missing out on many interesting animated movies. I am a true Disney fan at heart and no movies will ever be able to give me the same feelings that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Lady and the Tramp, Hercules, The Little Mermaid and many more can, but I have realised that there are many other good animated movies out there that are not in relation to Disney at all.



In this article I am looking a DreamWorks traditionally animated movies, which only consists of five films: The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Joseph: King of Dreams (2000), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003). All of these films where released theatrically apart from Joseph: King of Dreams which was a direct-to-video release.

I found The Prince of Egypt to be a very interesting film, although I have to admit I think that it was hyped quite a lot for being nothing more than an OK feature, it is not my favourite movie out of the five discussed in this article. It is not a bad film at all, it has fantastic music, a great initial idea and a few 3-dimentional characters but it just seemed to be nothing more than another animated adaptation of a biblical story, but a very good one in comparison to others and I suppose the movie did deserve some of the high critical acclaim that it received.

The Road to El Dorado is a film I would definitely recommend, it is quite diverse from the typical animated movie and is very much driven by its comedy, the plot seems quite rushed as if the writers where trying to think of a way that an antagonist will be created but still a film worth seeing. It includes the heroine of Chel, who is quite a unique animated heroine when compared to the regular cliché even though (like quite a few DreamWorks animated film) the heroine gets little screen time.

I thought that Joseph: King of Dreams is quite a good film, I actually preferred this story than The Prince of Egypt but I appreciate that all together The Prince of Egypt was a better made movie. The animation was good looking and I liked the use of colour and the story was entertaining enough, although I can understand why it was a direct-to-video feature. But all in all, I enjoyed watching this feature and out of the five mentioned films in this article it was definitely one that I enjoyed the most and I think that it was the best adaption of this story that I have seen.

I found Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron to be the most intriguing film out of the five traditionally animated movies by DreamWorks, I liked how the horses didn't directly speak (only through a voice over representing Sprite's thoughts) this gave the movie a very naturalistic edge. The visuals where pretty damn breathtaking and the music throughout this movie was pretty good, not a fantastic soundtrack but it suited the mood and helped the story along the way.

I really enjoyed watching Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, it was quite simply a really cute film with some rough and ready edges. It is definitely one of my favourite of the five movies I have mentioned. The film itself wasn't very successful but don't let that put you off. It has some fairly good characters, an ok plot and pretty good animation. This film's story is a compilation of Arabian Nights and Greek Mythology, being set in Greece rather than an Arabian area, which has brought up alot of discussion. The movie was considered to a commercial disaster and one of the movies that represented the end of a chain of traditionaly animated movies.

Unfortunately some of these features where not successful enough to keep DreamWorks producing traditionally-animated movies and had to move on to the computer-animated craze with Shrek (2001) and its sequels (which by the way they are taking WAY too far now) and Shark Tale (which I actually really like). But to be honest I am bored of computer-animated movies at the moment they all seem so similar with quite boring stories, this is why I have been searching through traditionally-animated movies produced by different companies. Anyway all in all I enjoyed DreamWorks five animated features and recommend them for all, although some to greater and lesser extent.