There’s no use dragging this one out, not least of which because this category contains, by most accounts, the worst film nominated for an Oscar this year: The Boss Baby. That film, which will be lucky to engender goodwill even from fans of Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of Donald Trump, did well at the box office, but we dare you to find someone who’s actually not embarrassed to have contributed to that gross. Last year, Eric Henderson took Ferdinand to the library for not offering tomorrow’s virtue signalers a better hero. That’s something that can’t be said about either Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner or Lee Unkrich’s Coco, two films entirely populated by individuals who our boss baby in chief is committed to keeping out of the United States. The Breadwinner focuses on an 11-year-old girl who lives under Taliban rule in Afghanistan and experiences an unusual sense of freedom by dressing as a boy in order to support her family, while Coco concerns a 12-year-old Mexican boy who mysteriously enters the realm of the dead and discovers his family’s history. These good-hearted, if programmatic, cartoons are kindred spirits, but even if Coco wasn’t the product of a studio whose mojo is far from tapped out, you would have to agree that in a year where Americans are especially obsessed with the problems in their own backyard, Unkrich’s film enjoys the so-called home-field advantage.
Will Win: Coco
Could Win: The Breadwinner
Should Win: Coco
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