It’s an impressive feat, yes, and at many points it looks really beautiful. But there are other points where the oil paintings are (understandably!) rushed, and the story is very thin.
Overall, I was far more impressed by “Across the Spider-Verse”. I’d be amazed if any animator can watch that and not think “Yes!! That’s it! This is the future of my profession!”
Instead of animation, it felt to me like just a live action film with a fiter. Sure, the filter in this case took many man-hours to produce, and as stills felt pretty, but there was something vital missing.
I found this hard to put into words, but here goes:
Actual animation thinks about how to present perspective, movement, character, etc. This film chose to paint over moving pictures, and in that way literally took over all the 'real' visual elements without making any choices in them. Compared to almost any anime, it feels lifeless and an under-use of the medium, IMO.
But in this case I totally agree, they didn't add anything beyond the one big gimmick.
It would be much simpler to experiment with such a film about Van Gogh today with the help of machine learning. But the story has to live up to the visuals. Art and story must complement each other in a way that makes the style use undeniable, not just a gimmick.
The creators and producers didn’t have anything specific to say about Van Gogh nor had any reason to. It was a straightforward gamble that this would sell, and it worked. They rode on low-cost high-skill technical talent to pull it off.
It’s the artistic equivalent of a really cool tech demo without any useful product behind it.
I'm sure that Hayao Miyazaki is utterly unimpressed by across the spider-verse.
Budget, most likely.