I'm not sure which animation you're talking about, but you can turn off a lot of superfluous animation by going into Settings / Ease of Access / Other options /

I'm not sure which animation you're talking about, but you can turn off a lot of superfluous animation by going into Settings / Ease of Access / Other options / turn off the "Play animations in Windows". This also turns off the Start menu animation and the wacky cursor animation in Word and Excel. Set my other (lengthy) comment for related tips.