One Oscar Nominee is a Huge Hit With People’s Pets

The Oscars are almost here, the annual event celebrating some the best movies of the year, plus some of the most mediocre movies of the year and at least one movie that nobody actually seems to like. 

One of the most original films that was singled out by the Academy this year is Flow, which is up for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film. For those who haven’t seen it, the Latvian-French-Belgian co-production is basically a quiet, mysteriously apocalyptic riff on Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. It’s great. 

Unlike most other family-friendly films about animated animals, Flow is entirely dialogue-free. And kudos to the distributor for not dubbing in the voices of, say, James Corden and Kim Kardashian to make Flow more palatable to American audiences. 

Flow has proven to be a massive hit with both audiences and film critics; it currently has a 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, proving that 3 percent of critics are completely dead inside. In addition to its success with human beings, now that it’s available to stream at home on Max, Flow is also a big hit with people’s pets. 

As evidenced by a flurry of social media posts, dogs and cats have been positively enthralled by Flow, which stars, not only cartoon dogs and cats, but also lemurs, and a capybara. 

So basically Max has inadvertently stumbled into the same business strategy that Bill Murray’s boss came up with in Scrooged, when he suggested including mice in their broadcast of A Christmas Carol, and perhaps a police procedural about a “cop that dangles string.”

The Criterion Collection, which will be releasing a physical release of Flow later this year, caught wind of this phenomenon and invited their social media followers to share photos of their pets enjoying the movie. 

This isn’t an entirely new trend, people watch movies with their pets all the time. One 2024 study found that “43 percent of Americans would rather watch a movie with their dog than their partner.” And 93 percent of dog owners claimed that their canine friends can “pay attention to the screen.” (Hopefully these same owners fast forward through the last 15 minutes of Marley and Me.)

Cats are similarly into watching movies. Last year, a rescue cat went viral for its obsession with The Grinch. And a lot of people have shown Cats to their cats — don’t worry, it’s the filmed version of the musical, not the 2019 movie adaptation. That would likely qualify as animal cruelty.

Since pets have collectively embraced Flow, which is arguably a better movie than some of the Best Picture nominees, maybe it’s time to let domesticated animals join the Academy? After all, this is the same group that once tried to give a dog the very first Best Actor Oscar, and came surprisingly close to nominating a brown bear in the ‘90s.