Everything you hate about modern animation falls on Dreamworks.
*"Oh geez, why is this movie so full of fart jokes, celebrity voice actors, rude humor, pop music needle drops, and it looks so ugly for?!"*
Well, you can blame it all on the studio known as Dreamworks for why animation is in the current state it is in. Everything that annoys you or makes you wonder why some things get greenlit falls back this studio's breakout hit, Shrek.
Now back in the early 2000s, it was kind of reasonable for a movie like Shrek to be successful. Everyone was getting sick of the Disney Renaissance formula and Disney themselves were fumbling everywhere they went (Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet were made at this time frame and generally were complete nothing burgers) and Pixar didn't really have much to compete against and was still in their awkward early stages, which made for a ripe environment for something "different" to enter the scene.
Cue the grumpy ogre movie with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow, very loosely based on a book by William Steg, all done in an a semi-realistic and kind of crude 3d art style with original music by Harry Gregson Williams and John Powell. Originally a second-rate project at the studio (Dreamworks at the time was really hoping for the Prince of Egypt to be their big success) and more of a jab at Disney, the overall gist of the story follows the big ugly grumpy Shrek on his quest to reclaim his swamp from being overridden by fairytale creatures that the prince Farquad (gee that name sounds funny, doesn't it) dumped there by rescuing the princess Fiona from a dragon guarded tower. The movie features all sorts of jabs and fractured takes on fairy tale tropes and has jumps between pop music and the orchestral score. From what I described to you, it sounds like a complete mess, doesn't it? But here's the catch; it was a big hit for the people tired of singing princesses and cutesy animals in flat, 2d cartoons that wanted something that could "resonate with them" and the ogre delivered... And they'd do it again in the sequel and even be a bigger hit.
But that's when it became too much. Madagascar came right after that and that's when it started to get annoying. The concept seemed interesting sure, but we had to look at some of the worst cartoon animals animated on a screen and listen to actors who had zero chemistry with each other provide voices to these ugly animals. We also got more pop culture jokes and more pop music than with Shrek, which for me made the whole thing just feel cheap, rushed, and not really funny. Then came Shark Tale, and then Over The Hedge, and of course the one to top it all off, the Bee Movie. At this point, I was convinced that Dreamworks had lost the plot and just couldn't make a good animated movie.
But the damage was done; Disney released Chicken Little at the time as their attempt at a Dreamworks style movie and it was a catastrophe. We had several rip offs from small studios pop up and forever taint the 2000s, and of everyone's favorite Illumination got started in this time and carries the torch that Dreamworks lit up. And Sony doesn't look much better although at least they get their just desserts with GOAT flopping as it should and Netflix laughing to the bank with their silly Kpop cartoon that Sony was convinced "wouldn't do well because 'eww girl cartoon'." About the only studio who didn't have their pants on their head in this time was Pixar, who made some great movies in the 2000s and 2010s that could make you really wonder if "animation is cinema" after all, although current Pixar is kind of in a rut as it tries to find it's place in a world of crass and generally ugly animated movies.
But yeah, if you:
* Hate how everything is just ugly looking. * Hate how they use celebrities for characters over professional voice actors. * Hate how original music gets pushed aside for a popular song of the time. * Hate how generally mean-spirited the movie feels. * Hate how everything feels and looks cheap.
Blame Dreamworks for that; they were around for far longer than that Illumination was. Of course you could also blame all the people in the early 2000s for having bad tastes too, I suppose.