Oscars: Ranking Every Best Animated Feature Film

Though it may be hard to believe now, but the Academy Awards only introduced the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2001, after years of stating that there weren't enough animated movies being made to justify its inclusion in the ceremony.

Since its inception, the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature has become one of the most popular and highly contested categories of the annual celebration. That being said - as is the case with every category - the Academy has been known to get things wrong when it comes to handing the award out.

For instance, considering how many innovative animated movies we're treated to these days, eleven of the twenty winners have been from Pixar. Although none of these films are duds, it still speaks volumes about the voting process if only one studio is winning all the accolades, despite the variety of movies on the market.

With that in mind, in an attempt to separate the wheat and chaff and pinpoint where the Academy has struck gold and wildly misjudged their decisions, here are all 20 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film winners ranked worst to best.

In a year where the genuinely frightening Monster House shook audiences with its scary thrills and gloomy aesthetic, the Academy opted to vote Happy Feet the best animated film, despite its messy story and heavy-handed messages.

Though not by any stretch a bad movie, Happy Feet's desire to be at once a fluffy, talking-animal adventure and an environmental fable about global warming leave it wildly unfocussed and even a bit confusing for the younger audiences it's clearly aiming for.

Worse still, some of the animation - which strangely incorporates motion capture - feels a touch too uncanny in parts. There's some great laughs here and there, and the voice work of Robin Williams in particular shines through, but Oscar worthy? Not quite, especially given the competition.