Kitty Galore
The Animal: Flea-bitten, hairless pedigree cat-snake hybrid thing with sharp claws and a serious skin condition. Wants to take over the world.
The Annoying: She looks like a scrotum for a start. A very angry, wrinkly scrotum. Anything with that little hair has to be Satan’s spawn. Add in the fact that this miserable bag of bones is also voiced by Bette Midler, and the Annoy-O-Meter goes through the roof.
Worst Wise-Crack: (seductive whisper) “Meee-owwww!”
Yogi
The Animal: As in ‘Yogi Bear’, resident of Jellystone Park, where he resides alongside wee bear Boo-Boo.
The Annoying: He may be voiced by Dan Aykroyrd, but this big screen version of Yogi is dreadful. From hideous CG water-skiing and pies-in-face gags to never-ending idiot pratfalls, it’s one big glossy embarrassment.
The best part of the entire project was the film's brilliant ‘Good things come in bears’ poster campaign. Sadly that promise is never fulfilled here.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Nice day for a pick-er-nic!”
Garfield
The Animal: Fat ginger town cat in desperate need of a little Prozac.
The Annoying: Even Bill Murray regrets doing this. His Garfield is a sanitised parody of the adorably acerbic moggy we all knew and loved from the comic strips. Also, the bad CGI gives us eye strain.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Once again, my life has been saved by the miracle of lasagne.”
G-Force Team
The Animal: A crackpot crew of guinea pigs who work for Zach Galifianakis as mini spies.
The Annoying: Simply by virtue of being an ‘elite team of spies’, these little pests are as irksome as they come. Sure, seeing a guinea pig use a blow torch is funny for two seconds in a 'YouTube animal hilarity!' sort of way, but the gag quickly becomes very old.
Worst Wise-Crack: “I’m pretty sure this is animal cruelty, but I love it!”
Horton
The Animal: Big, lazy, galumphing elephant with the voice of Jim Carrey and a serious obsession with coconut cocktails. Is that AA calling?
The Annoying: Horton’s all quirky and crazy in that way that animated studios think will appeal to cinemas stuffed full of under tens. Yeah, yeah, we know he’s based on an amazing Dr Seuss book, but still. Annoying.
Worst Wise-Crack: “We’re a club. We’re a group. We can be a secret society and no-one else can join unless they wear funny hats!”
Si and Am
The Animal: Siamese cats who speak in rhyme and revel in being very, very naughty.
The Annoying: They’re just plain mean. Taking a disliking to the lovely Lady, these exotic bullies make it their mission to make her life a living hell.
First they attempt to eat the family’s canary, then they tip water all over the piano before going after the pet fish. They'll even go so far as to steal milk from a baby. Devilish devils.
Worst Wise-Crack: “We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.”
Ham
The Animal: A chimp. Who’s jetting off into space. With two other chimps. It's Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes all over again.
The Annoying: He’s a total and utter dork. Showing absolutely zero capacity for intelligence, Ham lives up to the name of his species by spending all his time monkeying around. His co-astronauts really ought to eject him out of the spaceship and have done.
Worst Wise-Crack: “I know I said I missed your stupid puns but that was unacceptable.”
Stuart Little
The Animal: A little white orphan mouse. Probably crawling with diseases he picked up during his time on the streets.
The Annoying: He wants to be a human. He wears pyjamas . He brushes his teeth . He wears CLOTHES. He drives a really freaky little car. We want Toy Story 's Woody to direct a Buzz-style wake-up call his way: "You - are - a - mouse !"
Worst Wise-Crack: “I’m so happy! I... I feel 10 inches tall!”
E.B.
The Animal: The legendary Easter bunny, as voiced by Russell Brand and caught in the glare of James Marsden’s headlights before taking over his life.
The Annoying: It’s basically Russell Brand being himself again – only in cute, flannel-wearing bunny form. Which does come with moments of filthy fun (attempting to grope Kaley Cucoco being one of them), but when a groping gag and pooing sweets are the only highlights, you know you're onto a bad egg.
Rabbit stew, anyone?
Worst Wise-Crack: “I’ll just sleep down here among my poo and pee like a pig!”
Scooby Doo
The Animal: Scaredy-cat pooch with the ability to talk (just about), who unfortunately is in the business of spook-hunting. He’s too thick to decide it’s time for a change of career.
The Annoying: How can anybody possibly be that clumsy? And stupid? And yes, it’s true we have a soft spot for the original cartoon, but the dreadful CG used to update the beloved hand-drawn original looks cheaper than a pair of Primark boxers.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Ramburgers!”
Sid The Sloth
The Animal: Prehistoric sloth with a funny way of talking and an ability to get himself into (and, bizarrely, out of) any number of perilous situations.
The Annoying: Lazy, dumb, destructive. Sid would probably like to think of himself as some sort of furry Norman Wisdom, but really he’s a Grinch -era Jim Carrey. We’d rather he got replaced with Scrat – at least the squirrelly one has some standards.
Worst Wise-Crack: “From now on, refer to me as Lord of the Flame!”
Chicken Joe
The Animal: A surfer rooster from Wisconsin who ends up in Antarctica, where a rockhopper penguin wants to learn to ride the waves.
The Annoying: While we enjoy the audacity of plonking a total stoner into the middle of a kid’s animated movie, Joe’s just an annoyance. He’s generally so stoned he doesn’t even notice when he’s being cooked by savage natives, and his fratboy drawl quickly gets old. Just say no, kids.
Worst Wise-Crack: “I can feel it in my nuggets.”
Humphrey
The Animal: A wannabe alpha male wolf who has to settle for being omega instead. Except he really fancies that hot wolf Katie.
The Annoying: The name for starters. Who calls a wolf Humphrey? He’s also a complete wimp who soils himself in the face of danger, and relies on a she-wolf to do his fighting for him. Plus, the CG sucks.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Ida-who?”
Marty
The Animal: Stripy black and white zebra with a serious attitude problem.
The Annoying: Marty likes to talk. A lot. Unfortunately, nothing he has to say is of any interest to anybody except himself. Which sort of also applies to Chris Rock, who provides the zebra’s voice. Funny that.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Alex, do not interrupt me when I'm daydreaming. If a zebra's in the zone, leave him alone.”
Alvin, Simon and Theodore
The Animal: Chipmunks who are adopted into the home of a stressed-looking Jason Lee.
The Annoying: Squeaky voiced and ‘down with the kids’, these guys have been updated for modern nippers and are all the worse for it. When they start singing, you’ll want to drill something sharp and pointy into your own temple.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Hey Dave, do all humans have houses that smell like sweatsocks?”
Donkey
The Animal: A donkey. Ah, pure beauty in simplicity.
The Annoying: Irrepressible chatterbox, over-confident numpty and all-round pain in our (ahem) ass, Donkey doesn’t just annoy Shrek – he annoys everybody.
Imagine being stuck on a road trip and having to listen to his bubble-blowing noises every two seconds. Shrek, we feel your pain.
Worst Wise-Crack: “You might have seen a housefly, maybe even a superfly, but I bet you ain't never seen a DONKEY fly! Ha, ha!”
Oscar
The Animal: A bluestreak cleaner wrasse, pretty much bottom of the food chain and responsible for cleaning other, bigger fish.
The Annoying: The gangster gag is a funny one, but Oscar’s limitless sass and swagger is as exhausting to watch as it is annoying to endure. Just what kind of funky seaweed has he been chewing on?
Worst Wise-Crack: “You can’t handle the truth!”
Heather
The Animal: A teenage Possum who just wants to be cool and shit.
The Annoying: Her father’s the awesome William Shatner, a skilled possum who prides himself on playing dead with maximum drama.
But Heather’s just really, kind of, well, boring . Which is mostly owing to that fact that she's all mopy and teenager-like, irritating enough in itself. Your dad’s William Shatner , love, get over yourself!
Worst Wise-Crack: “We, like, worked our tails off, y'know? Like a lot! And the food we gathered was totally... you know! And you're, you're all whatever!”
Marmaduke
The Animal: A Great Dane. Which means he’s great in just about every way – size and smell for starters – but not the kind of 'great' that means he’s cool or anything.
The Annoying: Bred with an anarchist’s spirit, Marmaduke is basically just a really annoying Beethoven knock-off. Except Beethoven had the good sense not to talk, which is what tips the scales in his favour.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Oops.”
Sid
The Animal: A sewer rat with questionable etiquette and a ballooning gut.
The Annoying: Right off the bat Sid makes it difficult to like him, emerging as he does from the sewer with a belch to end all belches. Sure he’s friendly enough, but his mockney accent and dated style both work against him. He’s also just a little too grabby.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Cor, I don’t remember eating that.”
Abby Mallard
The Animal: A buck-toothed duck who may just be an ugly duckling waiting to transform.
The Annoying: The buck teeth we can handle, but Abby is immature, opinionated and just generally in your face. She also likes saying ‘pee’ a little too much.
Worst Wise-Crack: “Hey, remember when that icy blue stuff fell from the sky? Everybody thought it was from space and stuff, and it just turned out to be frozen pee from a jet airplane.”
Barry B. Benson
The Animal: A bee, which technically comes from the monophyletic lineage within the Apoidea family of insects.
The Annoying: There’s being new in town, and there’s just being plain dumb. Which Barry seems to, uh, bee. Playing slapstick to the max (crashing into things, not knowing what a tennis ball is), we swear he’s just doing it all for attention.
Worst Wise-Crack: “We have Hi-Vo, but it’s a horrible, horrible disease.”
Z
The Animal: A teeny, tiny ant who lives in a Central Park ant colony. His full name, technically, is Z-4195.
The Annoying: Z is a neurotic, self-loathing individualist who thinks he’s smarter than everybody else and wants to change the order of things in the ant kingdom.
Which would all be fine if he wasn’t just an ant version of Woody Allen, who provides the titchy fella’s voice.
Worst Wise-Crack: “I've got to believe there's something out there better than this. Otherwise I'll just curl up into a larval position and weep.”
