This week the new animated feature film “Despicable Me” opens in AMC Theatres everywhere. As is the trend in modern animated films, the voice cast is a star studded line up featuring Steve Carrell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand and many others.
Many of today’s animated films become recognizable by the star power lending their voices to the roles. Who can imagine “Shrek” without the voice of Mike Myers behind it? What would “Toy Story” be without Tom Hanks brining Woody to life for us?
Yes, there are a lot of big name folks out there whose work we recognize in their animated films… but there are also a lot of fantastic voice performances in today’s animation that next to no one ever talks about.
So in honor of the opening of “Despicable Me” this week, I’d like to take a moment to highlight what I consider to be 5 highly underrated and under-recognized voice performances from modern animated films:
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#2 – GERARD BUTLER (STOICK IN “HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON”)
Very rarely do animated films pull off any sort of real felling in father/son relationships. Usually the most you can hope for is that it doesn’t come off as cheesy and yet effectively communicates the basic nature of the relationship itself. But in “How To Train Your Dragon”, the very heart of the story is really based on the relationship between Hiccup and his father Stoick, and that relationship came across to me as the most authentic and heart felt one I’ve ever seen in an animated film… mostly due to the incredible voice performance of Gerard Butler.
Despite the fact that Butler is a big Hollywood name, you never hear anyone talking about what he brought to that role, and I think it’s a despicable shame (get it… I said DESPICABLE and “Despicable Me” is opening this week… you may not realize it, but that was very clever of me……. oh shut up).
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Thanks to MJBooklady