This is a complete ranking instead of a selection. That’s why it ends at a 3. The selected 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: 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.
Animation makes me angrier than any other corner of the movie business, and this list shows why.
The top of it is people taking absurd risks with hand-drawn shadows and a mother who dies off screen. The bottom is accountants. When a studio makes something because it had an idea, kids get a film they carry for the rest of their lives. When it makes something because the toy aisle needs restocking, they get Cars 2, and they deserve better than that.
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’s 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. That gives every scene a constraint to obey and generates plot in any room you place them in. That’s the difference between a premise and a setting.
The escalation across the three is emotional and not 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.
I’d rank it first even without the history. The incinerator scene is the moment I’d point to if anybody told me animation is kid stuff. When the toys stop fighting and take each other’s hands, the studio holds the shot long enough to hurt. A company that nearly went broke twice made that, and every studio sitting on a fat budget ought to feel embarrassed by it.
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. That’s 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 program and an energy crisis, and Pete Docter’s feature debut builds all of it before anything happens.
The door chase through the vault is among 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’s 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)
► Read the full review of The Shrek Franchise (2001-2022)
"The film that ended the Disney monopoly on the form, and then ran four films too long."
The 2001 original is a subversive piece of work and the entry rates the whole run. That’s 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 sanitized theme-park kingdom run by a small tyrant wasn’t 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 sanitized theme-park kingdom run by a small tyrant wasn’t subtle to anybody in the industry.
Chris Farley had recorded most of Shrek’s dialogue before his death, and Mike Myers, who replaced him, 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’s 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.
I get furious in a quiet way about the 2019 version. Somebody looked at a sixty-four-minute film about a mother and her baby and decided it needed a corporate villain and a rescue plot. That’s a studio telling you it doesn’t trust its own best work. The boxcar scene needs nothing added, and I’d take those sixty-four minutes over a remake nearly twice as long any day of the week.
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.
2019’s version adds a human family, a corporate antagonist and a rescue plot, running almost twice as long to say less.
5. Bambi (1942)
► Read the full review of Bambi (1942)
"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’s keeping the mother’s death entirely off screen. There’s 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, hunting organizations condemned it, and the animators studied live deer in a studio enclosure for years to get the movement right.
It lost money on release, hunting organizations condemned it, 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)
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"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’s 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. That 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. That 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’s the first feature to use xerography to transfer animators’ drawings directly to cels, eliminating the inking stage. That’s why the line is visible and scratchy and not 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’s no curse, no throne and no magic. That makes her somebody you could meet.
It’s 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. That requires no explanation and is why she’s 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 instead of the broadcast slot. That’s 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 doesn’t sing; Thurl Ravenscroft, who was left off the credits entirely and whom Geisel wrote to newspapers to acknowledge, performs You’re a Mean One. The design keeps Seuss’s line instead of smoothing it into house style. That’s why it looks like the book and why the later feature versions don’t. 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 doesn’t sing. Thurl Ravenscroft, who was left off the credits entirely and whom Geisel wrote to newspapers to acknowledge, performs You’re a Mean One.
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 depends on voice casting and not on plot. That’s why it unfolds as a series of encounters. Phil Harris as Baloo and George Sanders as Shere Khan are performances first and characters second, and the film’s structure accommodates 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.
Technically, the 2016 version is a real 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 characterizing 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)
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"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. Animators drew every shadow a toon casts by hand.
Underneath the technique, the film is a functioning Chinatown-shaped noir about a conspiracy to dismantle public transport in Los Angeles. That’s why it survived the novelty wearing off. Strip the animation and there’s still a detective film.
People praise Roger Rabbit for the effects, and the effects deserve it, but I’d argue the noir is why it holds. A conspiracy to dismantle public transport in Los Angeles is a real grown-up grievance, and it gives the toons something worth running from. Take away every hand-drawn shadow and I’d still happily sit through that detective film.
Spielberg negotiated the cross-studio licensing personally. That’s 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.
Animators drew every shadow a toon casts by hand, before digital compositing existed, and matched it to moving cameras and physical contact.
Spielberg negotiated the cross-studio licensing personally. That’s 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 real 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. That forces the animation to carry meaning and not 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. That’s 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 shouldn’t 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.
Hellfire still stuns me. A family studio put a judge on screen asking God whether his lust is somebody else’s fault, and released it in summer. I wish I knew who signed off on it, because that person had more nerve than anybody who insisted on the gargoyles. The gargoyles are the price of that song, and I’d pay it again.
The gargoyles are the compromise the studio required and they’re 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 theater, with real 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.
Roughly five years went into it 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.
Production ran 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. That isn’t 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. That’s 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 isn’t, that the average piece of junk is more meaningful than a critique of it, and then insists the job still matters.
Ego’s speech affects me more than anything else on this page, because it tells the truth about critics without letting them off the hook. I write reviews too, so I feel the sting in that line about the average piece of junk. I also agree with him that the job matters, and I’d hand that monologue to anybody who thinks criticism is sneering from a comfortable chair.
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 isn’t, 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)
► Read the full review of Alice in Wonderland (1951)
"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 hadn’t intended, and Disney briefly embraced it before withdrawing entirely.
Commercially it disappointed, 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 hadn’t intended and briefly embraced 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’s funny and not merely threatening. That’s a harder thing to animate than menace.
The depiction of the Native American characters is indefensible and there’s no reading that rescues it. Disney now attaches a content advisory and doesn’t edit the sequence. That’s the correct handling and doesn’t resolve anything.
Bobby Driscoll voiced and modeled Peter, and the studio dropped him shortly afterward. He died at thirty-one and was buried in a pauper’s grave before being identified.
The studio never produced better flight animation, and it has a Captain Hook who’s funny instead of 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 modeled Peter, the studio dropped him afterward, and he died at thirty-one and was buried in a pauper’s grave before being identified.
17. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
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"Stop motion, Burl Ives, and an unresolved cruelty at the center of it."
Rudolph is the longest-running Christmas special in American television history and the Rankin/Bass Animagic process gives it a look 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.
I’m fond of Rudolph, puppets and all, and the look of that Animagic still charms me. Santa is the sour note.
He spends the whole special treating a kid like a defect and only changes his mind when the weather makes the kid useful. The misfit toys got their happier ending because viewers wrote in and demanded one, and that tells you the audience had better instincts than the North Pole.
Its original broadcast didn’t 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. When it first aired, the broadcast didn’t include the misfit toys being collected, and the network added it after viewers wrote in.
18. The Land Before Time (1988)
► Read the full review of The Land Before Time (1988)
"The children’s film about grief that traumatized 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 instead of a marital one, and the film is structured around competence and not around recognition.
The training sequence is the center of it. She’s bad at this, is sent home, and returns because she works out how to solve the pole problem with the weights and not against them. That’s the whole argument of the film in one image.
She then wins by tactics and not 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 center, and she returns because she works out how to solve the pole problem with the weights.
She wins by tactics and not by strength, using a rocket to cause an avalanche. That required custom crowd software.
No other Renaissance entry has a heroine with a military objective instead of a marital one.
20. Tangled (2010)
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"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 and not like Pixar, and the lantern sequence is the demonstration piece.
Mother Gothel is why it works dramatically. The villain is an emotionally abusive parent instead of a sorcerer, and every scene between them is recognizable 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 and not like Pixar.
Six years and around two hundred and sixty million dollars went into working out how. That makes it among the most expensive animated films ever made. Gothel never casts a spell; she withdraws approval. That’s 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."
2012’s original has a real idea: 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 and not social. She’s a glitch, the game can’t accommodate her, and the fix is that the game was altered and not 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.
For something rated this high, the sequel is a bigger letdown than it should be. The first film had a real idea about a man stuck in a role, and the second turns the internet into a shopping trip with a princess commercial in the middle. The original carries the 9 almost entirely, and Vanellope deserved a better second outing than a corridor of logos.
Vanellope’s exclusion is structural and not social, since she’s a glitch and the game can’t accommodate her, and the fix is that the game is altered.
The first film’s ideas live in its arcade, treated as a workplace with a shift pattern and a support group.
A 2018 sequel turns the internet into a corridor of logos and retrofits an argument about possessive friendship late.
22. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
► Read the full review of Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
"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 thing to notice is that the absence never tones. It’s the purest demonstration of animation as a visual language on this list. The film communicates every plot point through action, and it constructs the hospital sequence 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’s 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. That means it’s 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 malevolent and not comic, the film includes the hanging sequence, and it plays the donkey transformation as body horror with practical prosthetics and not 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.
As in Collodi, the film kills the cricket in the first act with a hammer and includes the hanging sequence.
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. That’s 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’s 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. That’s 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. That’s 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 couldn’t afford to animate. That’s 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 couldn’t 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 beautiful, and Den is the one that works as comedy. Harry Canyon has a real noir structure and the rest is variable to poor.
I enjoy Heavy Metal, and Taarna is worth the whole package on her own.
My reservation is everything around the good segments. An anthology is only as strong as its weaker pieces let it be, and this one makes you sit through a lot of variable material to reach the parts worth having. Fifteen years of scarcity let people remember it as better than it plays.
Music rights kept it unavailable for fifteen years. That built a reputation on scarcity that the film itself only partly supports.
Taarna is the segment everybody remembers, wordless and beautiful, and Den is the one that works as comedy. For fifteen years it was unavailable because of music rights. That 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 memorable nowhere, and its historical importance is considerably larger than its quality. It established that the studio had a method instead of 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 good scene. Its release came within weeks of Antz amid an acrimonious dispute between Lasseter and Katzenberg. It’s 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 good scene. Within weeks of Antz, it was released 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 instead of a hit.
28. Flatland: The Movie (2007)
► Read the full review of Flatland: The Movie (2007)
"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 instead of illustrating a narration.
That’s the correct approach to teaching material. A viewer understands what a sphere looks like to a square because they watch it happen.
It also keeps the satire. Abbott’s novella is about a rigid social hierarchy organized by number of sides, and the film retains that instead of 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 instead of hearing it described. It retains the satire about a rigid social hierarchy organized by number of sides instead of 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. That’s a real structural problem for a character instead of 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.
A structurally similar film with a more marketable design came out months before it and overshadowed it commercially, and it 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. That’s a real structural problem for a character.
The third act, in which he creates a replacement hero and it goes wrong, is the part that works.
Months after a structurally similar film with a more marketable design, it came out and has been steadily reassessed upward.
30. Arthur Christmas (2011)
► Read the full review of Arthur Christmas (2011)
"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. There’s a Santa dynasty, a retiring incumbent, a competent elder son who wants the job, and a younger one in the letters department who cares about the children. Its premise resolves on one missed present out of two billion, which the operation regards as acceptable margin and Arthur doesn’t, and that’s 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, not from gags, with a retiring incumbent, a competent elder son and a younger one in the letters department.
In the end the premise resolves on one missed present out of two billion, which the operation regards as acceptable margin and Arthur doesn’t.
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 and not as a running joke. That’s 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’re teaching her to survive being lost because they know she’ll be.
Whenever it leaves that subject, the film is weaker than the original, 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’ll be, which the film states without underlining.
It’s weaker whenever it leaves that subject, and the third act involving a truck is the price of being a Pixar film.
32. Coyote vs. Acme (2026)
► Read the full review of Coyote vs. Acme (2026)
"The studio wrote it off. The audience bought a ticket anyway."
This entry carries IMDb’s audience score instead of mine, because I haven’t seen the film yet. Everything else on this page is my rating from a viewing. When I’ve watched this one, the number changes to mine.
Wile E. Coyote hires a billboard lawyer to sue the company whose products have been blowing him up for seventy years. Dave Green directed it, Samy Burch wrote it from a James Gunn and Jeremy Slater story, and the source is Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker piece. That’s a legal brief written in deadpan. Will Forte plays the lawyer and John Cena plays Acme’s corporate counsel, who used to be his boss.
The making of it is its own story. Warner Bros.
Discovery finished the film in 2023 and shelved it for a $30 million tax write-off, then spent eighteen months refusing to sell it at a price anybody would pay. Ketchup Entertainment finally bought it for about $50 million and put it in cinemas in August 2026. A courtroom comedy about a corporation treating a living creature as a line item, buried by a corporation treating it as a line item.
It opened to $15.9 million, the biggest opening Ketchup has had, and held its second weekend with a drop of only 28.8 percent. Critics have it at 96 percent. Audiences are recommending it to each other, and that second-weekend hold is the number that proves it.
33. 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’s sharper and more adult than A Bug’s Life, with a 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 completely, in a way nobody involved could have anticipated in 1998.
It’s sharper and more adult than A Bug’s Life, with a dark sequence in which an entire regiment is sent to die. The Woody Allen casting is the defining choice and dates the film completely 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 at the same time.
34. 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 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’re the reason the film is remembered uncomfortably. The eyes don’t track correctly and the expressions lag fractionally behind the voices. That produces exactly the effect a Christmas film doesn’t want. It effectively introduced the term uncanny valley to general use. That’s a significant cultural contribution and not one Zemeckis was aiming at.
I like a lot of The Polar Express.
The train and the ticket on the ice are gorgeous. The faces spoil it for me, and they keep it at a 7. Eyes that don’t track are the last thing a Christmas story should put in front of a child, and all the beautiful scenery in the world can’t make up for a hero who looks slightly dead.
The landscapes, the train and the movement are beautiful, and the ticket on the ice sequence is as good as anything in the form. The eyes don’t track correctly and the expressions lag fractionally behind the voices. That’s exactly what a Christmas film doesn’t want.
It effectively introduced the term uncanny valley to general use. That’s a significant cultural contribution Zemeckis wasn’t aiming at.
35. Cars (2006)
► Read the full review of Cars (2006)
"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’s 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’s 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 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.
36. 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 real 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 instead of apologizing 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 instead of apologizing. 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.
37. 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. That’s the worst thing about it. Cool World disappoints me more than anything else down here. Bakshi was making something strange and adult, and a producer swapped the script out from under him. The film that reached cinemas is a mess nobody chose, and I put that squarely on the producer, since Bakshi never got to finish the picture he started.
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.
38. Cars 2 (2011)
► Read the full review of Cars 2 (2011)
"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. That’s 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’s nobody to be irritating at, and the film has to make him competent. That removes the only thing the character was for.
The Cars franchise was generating merchandise sales in the billions. That’s 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’s nobody to be irritating at.
Cars 2 is where this ranking proves its point, and the proof is ugly. The studio that made Toy Story and Ratatouille turned around and made this because the merchandise was selling.
Mater as a spy is a joke with nobody to land on, and the studio threw out the small-town heart of the first film for a franchise plan. Kids will buy the lunchboxes regardless, and that’s exactly why a studio that good had no excuse for handing them this.
