Clicking through the reviews on Rotten tomatoes and it got quite a lot of hate though ending up with a high score. It was novel which attracts praise, but again people genuinely seem to like the look of CGI.
Anyway as long as we are talking animation. I asked one of the Frozen animators why the faces looked so freaky and they basically said meh, needs to be distinct to sell toys. Serious props to their skills and the massive R&D involved but that right there was the core issue. Moana’s water does a lot of cool animations but looks vastly less “real” than the objectively worse CGI water tentacle in Abyss. Again same deal it’s aiming for a style.
Ok fine you say what about CGI in blockbuster movies, except the article again points out how fake they look for various reasons.
I don't really buy the idea that animators grew up with bad animation and have somehow lower standards... in the case of the handful of pro animators I know, they're absolutely massive animation nerds and their taste extends far beyond what they grew up with.