Oscar pick for kids’ favorite category

February 21, 2:27 PMOrlando Parenting ExaminerRobyn Kurth

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WALL-E is favored to win this year's
Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.
(Photo: Moviefone.com)

If your kids are out of diapers but young enough to need a babysitter, you might not be as familiar with of all of the Oscar nominees as you were in your pre-parenting days. For first time, however, our entire family has seen every film in the only category that matters to young kids: The Best Animated Feature Film.

There are three movies in this year's animated feature category:

Bolt: The title character Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) is a dog that is the star of his own TV show--and thinks his on-camera adventures are real. Bolt is totally devoted to his co-star Penny (Miley Cyrus), and when Bolt is accidentally shipped from Hollywood to New York City, he embarks upon a cross-country journey with an abandoned house cat named Mr. Mittens and a television-addicted hamster named Rhino. The concept of this Disney animated feature is original, although the bulk of the movie is a rather traditional road trip flick. In a very unscientific poll of my entire family, it happens to be my son’s Oscar pick.

Kung Fu Panda: Jack Black steals the show as the voice of Po, a plump Panda who works in his family’s noodle shop but yearns for a more adventurous life as a master of Kung Fu working with his idols, the Furious Five-- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey--under the leadership of their guru, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Po has a hard time being accepted by his heroes, but when a vengeful snow leopard named Tai Lung is headed to Po’s village with plans to destroy them all, the Furious Five soon learn that they will have to rely on Po to defend everyone. I doubt this movie will get the Oscar nod, although it is a lot of fun.

WALL-E: My personal pick for Best Animated Feature (as well as my husband and daughter in our very unscientific poll). WALL-E is set 700 years into the future, when the Earth is too polluted to sustain life and humans have grown just a bit too comfortable with a sedentary life on the Axiom spaceship. WALL-E is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class robot who spends his days compacting trash into cubes and endlessly stacking them in piles. WALL-E has no companionship—with the exception of a cockroach—until EVE (an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) is sent to Earth to search for signs of life. This Disney/Pixar film is a magnificent work of animation with a powerful message, which will probably give it the edge with the Academy.

On Sunday night, we’ll all find out which animated film earns this year’s Oscar--plus a lot of "grown-up" films as well--and hopefully the Oscar for our kids' favorite category will be presented before bedtime.