This is a complete ranking rather than a selection, which is why it ends at a 3. The curated twenty is a separate page and covers the art end of the form, the Ghibli run, Akira, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. What follows is the studio canon.
Read top to bottom it makes an argument nobody at a studio wants to hear, which is that the quality tracks whether the film was made because somebody had an idea or because a previous film made money. Every entry in the bottom five is a sequel or a property acquisition.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year.
1. Toy Story 1-3 (1995, 1999, 2010)
► Read the full review of Toy Story 1-3 (1995, 1999, 2010)
"The foundational achievement in computer animation, and the only trilogy that improves twice."
Toy Story is first because it is both the origin of the form and the only animated trilogy that gets better twice. The 1995 original is the first feature-length computer-animated film, made by a company that had been selling hardware and nearly went under twice during production.
It works because the premise has a rule in it. The toys must be inanimate when observed, which gives every scene a constraint to obey and generates plot in any room you place them in. That is the difference between a premise and a setting.
The escalation across the three is emotional rather than technical. The first is about replacement, the second about being outgrown, and the third about what happens when it finally occurs. The incinerator sequence, where the toys stop struggling and take each other’s hands, is the most frightening thing the studio has produced.
It was the first feature-length computer-animated film, made by a company that had been selling hardware and nearly went under twice during production.
The incinerator sequence, where the toys stop struggling and take each other’s hands, is the most frightening thing the studio has produced.
Disney originally wanted Woody considerably nastier and an early screening was so bad the production was almost shut down.
2. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
► Read the full review of Monsters, Inc. (2001)
"An entire economy built out of a childhood fear, and it holds up to inspection."
Monsters, Inc. takes a universal childhood fear and works out its industrial consequences, which is a level of premise development almost nothing in the form attempts.
If screams are power, then the city needs a scare floor, a shift pattern, a door vault, a safety regime, a union, a training programme and an energy crisis, and Pete Docter’s feature debut builds all of it before anything happens.
The door chase through the vault is one of the best action sequences in any animated film, and it works entirely because the rules of the doors were established carefully an hour earlier. The audience knows exactly what is possible, so the sequence can be pure geography.
Pete Docter’s feature debut builds the scare floor, the shift pattern, the door vault, the safety regime and the energy crisis before anything happens.
The door chase works because the rules were established an hour earlier, so the sequence can be pure geography.
Boo’s design was deliberately kept simple because the animators found that a more detailed child read as uncanny.
3. The Shrek Franchise (2001-2022)
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"The film that ended the Disney monopoly on the form, and then ran four films too long."
The 2001 original is a genuinely subversive piece of work and the entry rates the whole run, which is why the position is arguable. Shrek attacks the fairy tale structure from inside and makes the romance conditional on the heroine not being transformed into what the genre expects.
The context matters. Katzenberg had left Disney acrimoniously and the film’s satire of a sanitised theme-park kingdom run by a small tyrant was not subtle to anybody in the industry.
Six productions across roughly twenty-one years, with the second holding up well and everything afterward diluting the original argument into a reference delivery system. The first film ends with a princess choosing to stay an ogre, and by the fourth the franchise is doing celebrity cameos.
Katzenberg had left Disney acrimoniously and the satire of a sanitised theme-park kingdom run by a small tyrant was not subtle to anybody in the industry.
Chris Farley had recorded most of Shrek’s dialogue before his death and was replaced by Mike Myers, who re-recorded it with a Scottish accent.
The first film ends with a princess choosing to stay an ogre, and by the fourth the franchise is doing celebrity cameos.
4. Dumbo (1941 / 2019), Contrast Review
► Read the full review of Dumbo (1941 / 2019), Contrast Review
"Sixty-four minutes in 1941, and the remake explains why that was the right length."
Dumbo runs sixty-four minutes because the studio needed a cheap film to recover the losses from Pinocchio and Fantasia, and the constraint produced the most emotionally direct thing the studio made.
There is no villain with a scheme and almost no plot. The Pink Elephants sequence has nothing to do with the story and is four minutes of pure abstraction in a children’s film, and the visit to the mother in the boxcar is the whole picture.
The 2019 version adds a human family, a corporate antagonist and a rescue plot, running almost twice as long, and every addition drains what the original had. The contrast is the argument.
The 1941 film runs sixty-four minutes because the studio needed a cheap picture to recover the losses from Pinocchio and Fantasia.
The Pink Elephants sequence has nothing to do with the story and is four minutes of pure abstraction in a children’s film.
The 2019 version adds a human family, a corporate antagonist and a rescue plot, running almost twice as long to say less.
5. Bambi (1942)
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"Disney’s most personal film and the one that trusted children with death."
Bambi is the most stylistically austere of the classical features and the most confident. Released in August 1942 after more than five years in production, with backgrounds closer to Chinese landscape painting than to the dense detail of Pinocchio.
The decision that defines it is keeping the mother’s death entirely off screen. There is a gunshot, a line of dialogue, and then the film simply continues without her, and generations have reported it as their first encounter with permanence.
It lost money on release, was condemned by hunting organisations, and the animators studied live deer in a studio enclosure for years to get the movement right.
It lost money on release, was condemned by hunting organisations, and the animators studied live deer in a studio enclosure for years.
The backgrounds are closer to Chinese landscape painting than to the dense detail of Pinocchio.
The mother’s death is entirely off screen, with a gunshot, a line of dialogue and then the film simply continuing.
6. Cinderella (1950)
► Read the full review of Cinderella (1950)
"The film that saved the company, made by a studio that could not afford to fail again."
Cinderella is the most efficiently constructed of the classical features because the studio had no margin for anything else. Disney had spent the 1940s in financial difficulty, with wartime constraints and a run of package features, and this was the return to a single narrative.
The pressure is visible in the craft. There is almost no wasted sequence, the mice carry the entire comic load so the central story can stay simple, and the transformation is one shot held longer than any other effect in the film because they knew it was the sale.
Much of it was shot in live action first and traced, which was cheaper than animating from scratch and is why the human movement is more naturalistic than in Snow White.
Disney had spent the 1940s in financial difficulty and this was the return to a single narrative after a run of package features.
Much of it was shot in live action first and traced, which was cheaper than animating from scratch and is why the human movement is naturalistic.
The transformation is one shot held longer than any other effect in the film because they knew it was the sale.
7. 101 Dalmatians (1961)
► Read the full review of 101 Dalmatians (1961)
"Xerography changed how Disney films look, and Cruella is still the best villain they wrote."
101 Dalmatians is the film where the studio’s look changed permanently. It is the first feature to use xerography to transfer animators’ drawings directly to cels, eliminating the inking stage, which is why the line is visible and scratchy rather than smooth.
Walt reportedly disliked the result. The technique made ninety-nine spotted dogs affordable and made everything look sketched, and the studio spent the next decade with that aesthetic whether it wanted it or not.
Cruella de Vil is the strongest antagonist in the classical run because her motive is ordinary. She wants a coat. There is no curse, no throne and no magic, which makes her somebody you could meet.
It is the first feature to use xerography to transfer animators’ drawings directly to cels, eliminating the inking stage.
Walt reportedly disliked the result, and the studio spent the next decade with that scratchy aesthetic whether it wanted it or not.
Cruella wants a coat, which requires no explanation and is why she has outlasted every sorcerer in the catalogue.
8. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
► Read the full review of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
"Twenty-six minutes, Chuck Jones, Boris Karloff, and nothing wasted."
The Grinch is here because the runtime matches the material rather than the broadcast slot, which is the rarest thing in adaptation. Jones took a 1957 picture book and produced twenty-six minutes without padding a frame.
Karloff narrates and voices the Grinch and won a Grammy for it at seventy-eight. He does not sing; You’re a Mean One is performed by Thurl Ravenscroft, who was left off the credits entirely and whom Geisel wrote to newspapers to acknowledge.
The design keeps Seuss’s line rather than smoothing it into house style, which is why it looks like the book and why the later feature versions do not.
Chuck Jones took a 1957 picture book and produced twenty-six minutes without padding a frame.
Karloff narrates and voices the Grinch and won a Grammy for it at seventy-eight, and does not sing.
You’re a Mean One is performed by Thurl Ravenscroft, who was left off the credits entirely and whom Geisel wrote to newspapers to acknowledge.
9. The Jungle Book (1967 / 2016), Contrast Review
► Read the full review of The Jungle Book (1967 / 2016), Contrast Review
"The last film Walt worked on, and the remake that had nothing to add."
The 1967 Jungle Book is built on voice casting rather than on plot, which is why it is structured as a series of encounters. Phil Harris as Baloo and George Sanders as Shere Khan are performances first and characters second, and the film is arranged to accommodate them.
Walt died during production and had rejected the first, darker treatment entirely, instructing the team not to read Kipling. The result is the loosest and warmest of the classical features.
The 2016 version is a genuine technical achievement with a photoreal jungle built in a Los Angeles warehouse, and it reproduces the plot without being able to reproduce the reason anybody liked it.
The 1967 film is arranged around its voices, with Phil Harris and George Sanders performing first and characterising second.
Walt died during production and had rejected the first, darker treatment, instructing the team not to read Kipling.
Favreau’s 2016 jungle was built in a Los Angeles warehouse and reproduces the plot without the reason anybody liked it.
10. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
► Read the full review of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
"Two animation studios’ characters in the same frame, and a noir underneath it that works."
Who Framed Roger Rabbit required animators to match hand-drawn characters to live action with moving cameras, interactive lighting and physical contact, before digital compositing existed. Every shadow a toon casts was drawn by hand.
The film underneath the technique is a functioning Chinatown-shaped noir about a conspiracy to dismantle public transport in Los Angeles, which is why it survived the novelty wearing off. Strip the animation and there is still a detective film.
Spielberg negotiated the cross-studio licensing personally, which is why Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny appear together in one film and have never done so again. It took around three hundred and twenty-eight million against a fifty-eight million budget and won three Academy Awards.
Every shadow a toon casts was drawn by hand, before digital compositing existed, matched to moving cameras and physical contact.
Spielberg negotiated the cross-studio licensing personally, which is why Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny appear together in one film and never again.
It took around three hundred and twenty-eight million against a fifty-eight million budget and won three Academy Awards.
11. Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave (1995)
► Read the full review of Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave (1995)
"Thirty minutes of stop motion with better plotting than most features."
A Close Shave fits a wool rustling conspiracy, a robot dog, a porridge gun and a genuine suspense sequence on a conveyor belt into roughly half an hour, at a density no feature on this list matches.
Gromit never speaks, has no mouth and no eyebrows as such, and is the best-written character in the form. Every reaction is communicated through the position of his brow ridge and his posture, which forces the animation to carry meaning rather than to decorate dialogue.
Nick Park’s team shot it at roughly two seconds of usable film per animator per day. It won the Academy Award, as did the two shorts before it.
Nick Park’s team shot at roughly two seconds of usable film per animator per day.
Gromit has no mouth and no eyebrows as such, and every reaction is communicated through the position of his brow ridge and his posture.
It won the Academy Award, as did the two shorts before it, which is three consecutive wins for the same character.
12. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
► Read the full review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
"The darkest film Disney has released, and they marketed it with a singing gargoyle."
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the most thematically ambitious thing the studio has released and it should not exist. The villain is a judge whose motivation is religious lust, he sings about damnation over hellfire imagery, and the film engages seriously with institutional hypocrisy.
Hellfire is the boldest number in the catalogue by a distance. Frollo asks God whether the woman burning in the fireplace is his fault and concludes that she must be destroyed, and it was released as a summer family film.
The gargoyles are the compromise the studio required and they are the only weak material in it. Everything around them is the strongest work of the Renaissance period.
Hellfire has Frollo asking God whether the woman burning in the fireplace is his fault and concluding she must be destroyed, in a summer family film.
The gargoyles are the compromise the studio required and are the only weak material in it.
Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz wrote a score closer to opera than to musical theatre, with genuine Latin liturgy underneath it.
13. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
► Read the full review of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
"The rare stop-motion feature that earns its length."
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit expands the shorts to feature length without diluting the density, which almost never survives the transition. The plot is a vegetable competition, a humane pest control business and a monster of the week, and every scene has three jokes in the background.
It took roughly five years and the plasticine is visibly handled throughout, thumbprints included, which Aardman insisted on keeping. Around thirty animators produced a few seconds each per day.
A fire destroyed the studio’s warehouse of sets and props weeks after release, which Park described as insignificant beside the Katrina coverage running at the same time.
It took roughly five years with around thirty animators producing a few seconds each per day.
The plasticine is visibly handled throughout, thumbprints included, which Aardman insisted on keeping.
A fire destroyed the studio’s warehouse of sets and props weeks after release, which Park described as insignificant beside the Katrina coverage.
14. Ratatouille (2007)
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"A film about criticism, made by people who had clearly read some."
Ratatouille is the best-argued film Pixar has made and Brad Bird took it over from Jan Pinkava midway through production with roughly eighteen months to deliver, which is not visible anywhere in it.
The premise is a rat who can cook and the subject is whether talent can arrive from anywhere. The film’s answer is careful: not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere, which is a more honest position than the genre usually permits.
Anton Ego’s final review is the most serious thing about art in any animated feature. He concedes that criticism is easy and creation is not, that the average piece of junk is more meaningful than a critique of it, and then insists the job still matters.
Brad Bird took it over from Jan Pinkava midway through production with roughly eighteen months to deliver.
Ego’s final review concedes that criticism is easy and creation is not, and then insists the job still matters.
The film’s answer is careful: not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
15. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
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"A film with no plot, which is faithful, and it cost them at the box office."
Alice in Wonderland was a commercial disappointment on release and Walt considered it a failure, largely because the source has no narrative structure and the film refused to invent one.
That refusal is why it holds up. The Cheshire Cat, the caucus race, the tea party and the Walrus and the Carpenter are self-contained set pieces with no causal connection, and forcing them into an arc would have produced something worse.
It found its audience on university campuses in the 1960s for reasons the studio had not intended, and Disney briefly leaned into it before withdrawing entirely.
It was a commercial disappointment and Walt considered it a failure, largely because the source has no narrative structure.
The Cheshire Cat, the caucus race, the tea party and the Walrus and the Carpenter are self-contained with no causal connection.
It found its audience on university campuses in the 1960s for reasons the studio had not intended and briefly leaned into before withdrawing.
16. Peter Pan (1953)
► Read the full review of Peter Pan (1953)
"Technically superb, and one sequence has aged into something indefensible."
Peter Pan has the best flight animation the studio produced and a Captain Hook who is genuinely funny rather than merely threatening, which is a harder thing to animate than menace.
The depiction of the Native American characters is indefensible and there is no reading that rescues it. Disney now attaches a content advisory and does not edit the sequence, which is the correct handling and does not resolve anything.
Bobby Driscoll voiced and modelled Peter and was dropped by the studio shortly afterward. He died at thirty-one and was buried in a pauper’s grave before being identified.
It has the best flight animation the studio produced and a Captain Hook who is genuinely funny rather than merely threatening.
The depiction of the Native American characters is indefensible, and Disney now attaches a content advisory without editing the sequence.
Bobby Driscoll voiced and modelled Peter, was dropped by the studio afterward, and died at thirty-one and was buried in a pauper’s grave before being identified.
17. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
► Read the full review of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
"Stop motion, Burl Ives, and an unresolved cruelty at the centre of it."
Rudolph is the longest-running Christmas special in American television history and the Rankin/Bass Animagic process gives it a texture nothing else has. The puppets were made in Japan and almost all of them were destroyed or lost.
The strange part is that it never repairs its own premise. Rudolph is accepted because he turns out to be useful in fog, not because the rejection was wrong, and Santa is complicit in the exclusion throughout and is never called on it.
The original broadcast did not include the misfit toys being collected, and the network added it after viewers wrote in asking what had happened to them.
The Rankin/Bass Animagic puppets were made in Japan and almost all of them were destroyed or lost.
Rudolph is accepted because he turns out to be useful in fog, not because the rejection was wrong, and Santa is complicit throughout.
The original broadcast did not include the misfit toys being collected, and the network added it after viewers wrote in.
18. The Land Before Time (1988)
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"The children’s film about grief that traumatised a generation, deliberately."
The Land Before Time is seventy minutes long, has very little dialogue, and is built around a child watching a parent die and then having to continue without her.
Bluth animated Littlefoot returning to his mother’s body with total restraint and no music cue, and Spielberg and Lucas as executive producers reportedly required around ten minutes of cuts because test audiences found it unbearable.
The removed footage is lost. What remains is still the most direct treatment of bereavement in any children’s film, and it spawned thirteen direct-to-video sequels that have nothing to do with it.
Bluth animated Littlefoot returning to his mother’s body with total restraint and no music cue.
Spielberg and Lucas as executive producers reportedly required around ten minutes of cuts because test audiences found it unbearable, and the footage is lost.
It spawned thirteen direct-to-video sequels that have nothing to do with it.
19. Mulan (1998)
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"The one Renaissance film where the protagonist’s problem is not romantic."
Mulan is the only Renaissance entry whose heroine has a military objective rather than a marital one, and the film is structured around competence rather than around recognition.
The training sequence is the centre of it. She is bad at this, is sent home, and returns because she works out how to solve the pole problem with the weights rather than against them, which is the whole argument of the film in one image.
She then wins by tactics rather than by strength, using a rocket to cause an avalanche, and the avalanche sequence required custom crowd software the studio built for it.
The training sequence is the centre, and she returns because she works out how to solve the pole problem with the weights rather than against them.
She wins by tactics rather than by strength, using a rocket to cause an avalanche, which required custom crowd software.
It is the only Renaissance entry whose heroine has a military objective rather than a marital one.
20. Tangled (2010)
► Read the full review of Tangled (2010)
"The film where Disney worked out how to do CGI and stay Disney."
Tangled is the film that solved the studio’s transition to computer animation without abandoning the musical structure, and it took six years and around two hundred and sixty million dollars to work out how.
The technical achievement is the painterly rendering. The studio developed a system to make CGI look like the 1950s features rather than like Pixar, and the lantern sequence is the demonstration piece.
Mother Gothel is why it works dramatically. The villain is an emotionally abusive parent rather than a sorcerer, and every scene between them is recognisable to anybody who has experienced it. She never casts a spell; she withdraws approval.
The studio developed a rendering system to make computer animation look like the 1950s features rather than like Pixar.
It took six years and around two hundred and sixty million dollars to work out how, which makes it one of the most expensive animated films ever made.
Gothel never casts a spell; she withdraws approval, which is a technique available to anybody who has encountered it.
21. Wreck-It Ralph (2012) / Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
► Read the full review of Wreck-It Ralph (2012) / Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
"A first film about wanting to be seen, and a sequel about brand partnerships."
The 2012 original has a genuine idea, which is that a character defined entirely by a role might want out of it, and it takes the arcade seriously as a workplace with a shift pattern and a support group.
The Sugar Rush material is the strongest part, because Vanellope’s exclusion is structural rather than social. She is a glitch, the game cannot accommodate her, and the fix is that the game was altered rather than that she was.
The 2018 sequel is the clearest example on this page of decline between an original and its extension. The internet setting becomes a corridor of logos, the emotional argument about possessive friendship is retrofitted late, and the Disney princess sequence is an advertisement.
Vanellope’s exclusion is structural rather than social, since she is a glitch and the game cannot accommodate her, and the fix is that the game is altered.
The arcade is treated as a workplace with a shift pattern and a support group, which is where the first film’s ideas live.
The 2018 sequel turns the internet into a corridor of logos and retrofits an argument about possessive friendship late.
22. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
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"A feature with no dialogue at all, and you never notice."
Shaun the Sheep Movie is an eighty-minute feature with no spoken dialogue, relying entirely on staging, sound design and physical comedy, and the remarkable thing is that the absence never registers.
It is the purest demonstration of animation as a visual language on this list. Every plot point is communicated through action, and the hospital sequence is constructed with the precision of silent-era slapstick.
Burton and Starzak built it from the television shorts and the film’s emotional argument, about a farmer who no longer notices his own life, is delivered entirely through a photograph and a haircut.
It is an eighty-minute feature with no spoken dialogue at all, relying entirely on staging, sound design and physical comedy.
The hospital sequence is constructed with the precision of silent-era slapstick and is the best set piece Aardman has built.
The emotional argument, about a farmer who no longer notices his own life, is delivered entirely through a photograph and a haircut.
23. Pinocchio (Garrone, 2019)
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"The faithful Pinocchio, and faithful turns out to mean frightening."
Garrone’s version is the most faithful screen adaptation of Collodi’s 1883 novel, which means it is closer to a folk tale than to a children’s film. The cricket is killed in the first act with a hammer, as in the book.
The fox and the cat are genuinely malevolent rather than comic, the hanging sequence is included, and the donkey transformation is played as body horror with practical prosthetics rather than as a moral lesson.
The creature and makeup work is extraordinary and mostly practical, and Roberto Benigni plays Geppetto twenty-seven years after playing Pinocchio himself in a version nobody liked.
The cricket is killed in the first act with a hammer, as in Collodi, and the hanging sequence is included.
The creature and makeup work is extraordinary and mostly practical, with the donkey transformation played as body horror.
Roberto Benigni plays Geppetto twenty-seven years after playing Pinocchio himself in a version nobody liked.
24. The Aristocats (1970)
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"The first post-Walt feature, and it is coasting on charm."
The Aristocats is the first feature made entirely without Walt Disney and the loss of direction is visible. The xerographic line and the jazz sequences are carrying a film with very little plot and no real jeopardy.
Everybody Wants to Be a Cat is the best musical number of the period and the film stops dead for it, which is the correct decision.
The Siamese cat sequence is the material Disney now flags, and the film was the last project Walt personally approved before his death.
It is the first feature made entirely without Walt Disney and the loss of direction is visible throughout.
Everybody Wants to Be a Cat is the best musical number of the period and the film stops dead for it, which is correct.
The Siamese cat sequence is the material Disney now flags, and the film was the last project Walt personally approved.
25. Wizards (1977)
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"Bakshi’s post-apocalyptic fantasy, made cheap and aimed at nobody in particular."
Wizards is the most ideologically peculiar entry on this page. Bakshi wrote and directed it on a small budget after Fox cut his funding, and the premise is that magic and technology are competing after a nuclear collapse two million years hence.
The villain’s weapon is recovered Nazi propaganda film, projected to inspire his mutant army, which is an idea nobody else has had and which Bakshi executes by cutting actual archive footage into the animation.
He used rotoscoped battle footage lifted from other films to fill sequences he could not afford to animate, which is visible and works better than it should.
The villain’s weapon is recovered Nazi propaganda film, projected to inspire his mutant army, which Bakshi executes by cutting actual archive footage in.
He used rotoscoped battle footage lifted from other films to fill sequences he could not afford to animate.
Fox cut his funding and he made it on a small budget after being told the studio wanted something else entirely.
26. Heavy Metal (1981)
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"An anthology with no quality control, and two segments that justify the whole thing."
Heavy Metal adapts the magazine’s aesthetic into eight segments of wildly differing quality, produced by Ivan Reitman with a soundtrack that dates it to the month.
Taarna is the segment everybody remembers, wordless and genuinely beautiful, and Den is the one that works as comedy. Harry Canyon has a real noir structure and the rest is variable to poor.
It was unavailable for fifteen years because of music rights, which built a reputation on scarcity that the film itself only partly supports.
Taarna is the segment everybody remembers, wordless and genuinely beautiful, and Den is the one that works as comedy.
It was unavailable for fifteen years because of music rights, which built a reputation on scarcity.
Ivan Reitman produced it and the soundtrack dates the film to the month it was released.
27. A Bug’s Life (1998)
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"Pixar’s second film, and the one that proved the first was not luck."
A Bug’s Life is competent throughout and remarkable nowhere, and its historical importance is considerably larger than its quality. It established that the studio had a method rather than a hit.
The structure is Seven Samurai with insects, which Pixar acknowledged, and the grasshoppers are the best-designed antagonists of the early period. Hopper’s speech about the ants outnumbering them is the film’s one genuinely good scene.
It was released within weeks of Antz amid an acrimonious dispute between Lasseter and Katzenberg, which is the most interesting thing about its release.
The structure is Seven Samurai with insects, which Pixar acknowledged, and Hopper’s speech about the ants outnumbering them is the one genuinely good scene.
It was released within weeks of Antz amid an acrimonious dispute between Lasseter and Katzenberg.
Its historical importance is larger than its quality, since it established that the studio had a method rather than a hit.
28. Flatland: The Movie (2007)
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"A thirty-minute geometry lesson that is better cinema than it needs to be."
Flatland adapts Edwin Abbott Abbott’s 1884 novella and uses the two-dimensional setting literally, so the animation does the explanatory work rather than illustrating a narration.
That is the correct approach to teaching material. A viewer understands what a sphere looks like to a square because they watch it happen, not because somebody describes it.
It also keeps the satire. Abbott’s novella is about a rigid social hierarchy organised by number of sides, and the film retains that rather than reducing itself to mathematics.
It adapts Abbott’s 1884 novella and uses the two-dimensional setting literally, so the animation does the explanatory work.
A viewer understands what a sphere looks like to a square because they watch it happen rather than hearing it described.
It retains the satire about a rigid social hierarchy organised by number of sides rather than reducing itself to geometry.
29. Megamind (2010)
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"The superhero deconstruction that came out the same year as Despicable Me and lost."
Megamind has a better premise than its reputation suggests. A supervillain wins in the first act, kills the hero, and then has no idea what to do with himself, which is a genuine structural problem for a character rather than a joke.
The third act, in which he has to create a replacement hero and it goes wrong, is the part that works, and Will Ferrell is better cast than in anything else animated.
It was released months after a structurally similar film with a more marketable design and was commercially overshadowed, and has been steadily reassessed upward since.
A supervillain wins in the first act, kills the hero, and has no idea what to do with himself, which is a genuine structural problem for a character.
The third act, in which he creates a replacement hero and it goes wrong, is the part that works.
It was released months after a structurally similar film with a more marketable design and has been steadily reassessed upward.
30. Arthur Christmas (2011)
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"Aardman in CGI, and the logistics premise is genuinely funny."
Arthur Christmas is the best Christmas animation of the last twenty years and almost nobody names it. Sarah Smith imagines Santa’s operation as a military-grade global delivery system with a mission control, a stealth vehicle and a succession dispute.
The comedy comes from the org chart rather than from gags. There is a Santa dynasty, a retiring incumbent, a competent elder son who wants the job, and a younger one in the letters department who actually cares about the children.
The premise resolves on one missed present out of two billion, which the operation regards as acceptable margin and Arthur does not, and that is the entire film.
Sarah Smith imagines Santa’s operation as a military-grade global delivery system with a mission control and a succession dispute.
The comedy comes from the org chart rather than from gags, with a retiring incumbent, a competent elder son and a younger one in the letters department.
The premise resolves on one missed present out of two billion, which the operation regards as acceptable margin and Arthur does not.
31. Finding Dory (2016)
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"A Pixar sequel with a reason to exist, which is rarer than it should be."
Finding Dory takes the comic relief from the original and treats her condition as a disability with real consequences rather than as a running joke, which is a legitimate reason to make a sequel.
The flashbacks to Dory as a child being taught coping strategies by her parents are the most serious material about cognitive disability in mainstream animation. They are teaching her to survive being lost because they know she will be.
The film is weaker than the original whenever it leaves that subject, and the third act involving a truck is the price of it being a Pixar film.
The flashbacks to Dory as a child being taught coping strategies are the most serious material about cognitive disability in mainstream animation.
Her parents are teaching her to survive being lost because they know she will be, which the film states without underlining.
The film is weaker whenever it leaves that subject, and the third act involving a truck is the price of being a Pixar film.
32. Antz (1998)
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"DreamWorks’ first feature, released weeks before A Bug’s Life, with an identical premise."
Antz is the opening move in the DreamWorks and Pixar rivalry and the circumstances of its release are more interesting than the film. Katzenberg had left Disney, both studios were developing insect films, and the dispute over who knew what has never been fully settled.
It is sharper and more adult than A Bug’s Life, with a genuinely dark sequence in which an entire regiment is sent to die, and less well made throughout.
The Woody Allen casting is the defining choice and it dates the film comprehensively, in a way nobody involved could have anticipated in 1998.
It is sharper and more adult than A Bug’s Life, with a genuinely dark sequence in which an entire regiment is sent to die.
The Woody Allen casting is the defining choice and dates the film comprehensively in a way nobody could have anticipated in 1998.
The circumstances of its release are more interesting than the film, since both studios were developing insect pictures simultaneously.
33. The Polar Express (2004)
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"A technical experiment whose central problem is faces."
The Polar Express was an early full performance-capture feature and the landscapes, the train and the movement are genuinely beautiful. The sequence with the ticket on the ice is as good as anything in the form.
The human faces are the failure and they are the reason the film is remembered uncomfortably. The eyes do not track correctly and the expressions lag fractionally behind the voices, which produces exactly the effect a Christmas film does not want.
It effectively introduced the term uncanny valley to general use, which is a significant cultural contribution and not one Zemeckis was aiming at.
The landscapes, the train and the movement are genuinely beautiful, and the ticket on the ice sequence is as good as anything in the form.
The eyes do not track correctly and the expressions lag fractionally behind the voices, which is exactly what a Christmas film does not want.
It effectively introduced the term uncanny valley to general use, which is a significant cultural contribution Zemeckis was not aiming at.
34. Cars (2006)
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"Pixar’s weakest original premise, rescued by a genuinely good second act."
Cars has a worldbuilding problem it never addresses and which becomes more distracting the longer you look. A planet of sentient cars implies an absent humanity, buildings scaled for hands, and roads built by somebody.
The Radiator Springs material is the good part and it is genuinely good. A town bypassed by an interstate, its businesses dying, and a former racer who stayed, is a real subject and Paul Newman’s Doc is the best thing in it.
That film is buried inside a racing plot that is not, and the franchise afterward built entirely on the wrong half.
A planet of sentient cars implies an absent humanity, buildings scaled for hands, and roads built by somebody, none of which the film addresses.
The Radiator Springs material is genuinely good, with a town bypassed by an interstate and a former racer who stayed.
Paul Newman’s Doc is the best thing in it and the franchise afterward built entirely on the wrong half.
35. Bee Movie (2007)
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"A film whose plot requires a bee to sue humanity, and it is the least strange thing in it."
Bee Movie is a mediocre film with a genuine internet afterlife and the two facts are unrelated. Jerry Seinfeld voices a bee who develops an unmistakably romantic relationship with a human florist, and the film treats it as unremarkable throughout.
The courtroom sequence, in which he sues the human race for stealing honey, is the one part that works, largely because it commits to the absurdity rather than apologising for it.
The ending, in which winning the case stops all pollination and collapses the ecosystem, is a better idea than anything else in the film and arrives with fifteen minutes remaining.
Jerry Seinfeld voices a bee who develops an unmistakably romantic relationship with a human florist, which the film treats as unremarkable.
The courtroom sequence, suing the human race for stealing honey, works because it commits to the absurdity rather than apologising.
The ending, where winning the case stops all pollination and collapses the ecosystem, is a better idea than anything else and arrives with fifteen minutes left.
36. Cool World (1992)
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"A Bakshi film taken away from Bakshi mid-production, and it shows in every scene."
Cool World is structurally incoherent because two different films were made inside it. Bakshi wrote and began shooting an adult horror premise about a cartoon and a human producing a monstrous child, and the producer replaced the script during production without telling him.
What reached release is a PG-13 comedy built from footage shot for something else. Bakshi has described discovering the change and the relationship with the production collapsed entirely.
It came out four years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit and invites the comparison in every frame, which is the worst thing about it.
Bakshi wrote and began shooting an adult horror premise and the producer replaced the script during production without telling him.
What reached release is a PG-13 comedy built from footage shot for something else.
It came out four years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit and invites the comparison in every frame.
37. Cars 2 (2011)
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"A spy film starring the comic relief, made because the merchandise sold."
Cars 2 is the bottom of Pixar’s output and the clearest case on this page of a film existing because of licensing revenue. The Cars franchise was generating merchandise sales in the billions, which is a fact that explains the entire production.
It promotes Mater to protagonist and rebuilds the property as an international espionage story, abandoning the small-town material that was the first film’s only strength.
Mater worked as an irritant beside a straight man. Given the lead, he has nobody to be irritating at, and the film has to make him competent, which removes the only thing the character was for.
The Cars franchise was generating merchandise sales in the billions, which is a fact that explains the entire production.
It promotes Mater to protagonist and rebuilds the property as an international espionage story.
Mater worked as an irritant beside a straight man, and given the lead he has nobody to be irritating at.