Some big boots are attempting to be filled this week. Recent years have seen Disney finding increasing success with live-action reboots of their animated classics, from the billion-dollar, virtually unwatchable “Alice In Wonderland” to last year’s surprisingly strong “The Jungle Book,” with what seems like dozens of new ones in the works, including Guy Ritchie’s “Aladdin” and Jon Favreau’s Donald Glover-starring “The Lion King.”
READ MORE: 10 Films To See In March
But this week sees the release of “Beauty And The Beast,” Bill Condon’s live-action redo of the 1991 Oscar-nominated classic, and it might be the most beloved of these films yet to be attempted. Whether it works or not seems to be in the eye of the beholder (read our review here), but to mark the occasion, we’ve expanded an old post and ranked every one of the 56 films in the official Disney Animated canon from Worst to Best. Take a look below, and tell us how wrong we are in the comments.
56. “Dinosaur” (2000)
A mold-breaker — it was the first computer-animated Walt Disney Feature Animation movie, melding the CGI characters with live-action backgrounds, in the style of BBC series “Walking With Dinosaurs” — this mostly forgotten 2000 picture is also, for all its technological innovations, a total bore. Dull, uninventively designed characters, an uncertain tone and a familiar story all add up to a sense that it’s just a bad “Land Before Time” reboot that the world didn’t need. Even Pixar’s later, similar misfire “The Good Dinosaur” is way better.
55. “Home On The Range” (2004)
The early ’00s might have been the worst period in Disney history, with a string of poorly received box-office flops hitting just as Pixar really hit their stride with films like “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles.” The nadir of that time was probably “Home On The Range,” which would prove to be the company’s last 2D movie in five years — a pseudo-Western about a trio of cows (Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly) trying to catch an outlaw (Randy Quaid). Crude, unsophisticated and visually unspectacular, it’s a film you’ll likely have forgotten by the time it wraps up.
54. “Chicken Little” (2005)
The first entirely CGI-animated Disney film, and the first pic after a regime change that looked to move away from traditional 2D movies, “Chicken Little” turns the classic fable of the chicken who believes the sky is falling into, bafflingly, an alien-invasion movie. With all the aesthetic appeal of a late-’90s Playstation cutscene, and attempting to substitute frantic energy for actual jokes, it’s a headache of a movie, and rightly caused a general rethink of the studio’s approach (though it would take a few years for it to take effect).
53. “Fun & Fancy Free” (1947)
The fourth and final of the so-called “package” films — collections of shorts made on the cheap in order to save costs during and after World War II — this combines two films originally planned as features: “Bongo,” about an escaped circus bear romancing a wild lady bear; and “Mickey And The Beanstalk,” a fairy-tale redo with Mickey as the bean-loving, giant-slaying Jack. They’re fine enough, but pretty rote — “Bongo” is the exact midpoint of “Bambi” and “Dumbo” but without the joy of either, ‘Mickey’ is just too familiar a story to have much fun to it — and the strange live-action segment with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen stops the film dead now.
52. “Brother Bear” (2003)
An attempt to return Disney to the vibe of classic animation tales like “Bambi” or even “The Lion King,” “Brother Bear” is the story of a young Inuit hunter (Joaquin Phoenix, slightly miscast in a role it’s hard to imagine him taking now) who’s transformed into a bear and goes on a journey with a younger cub. There’s some nifty animation going on, and its heart is in the right place, but it feels mostly by-the-numbers and even a little dated (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas doing Bob & Doug McKenzie as moose for the comic relief is just one example of that).
51. “Make Mine Music” (1946)
The third of the package movies of the 1940s, “Make Mine Music” stuffs in the most storylines, with 10 separate segments, including an adaptation of Prokofiev’s “Peter And The Wolf,” and an odd Hatfield & McCoy-type feud storyline (that’s mostly been removed on subsequent releases due to the gunfighting). Like all anthologies with this many storylines, it’s very hit-or-miss, but there are a couple of good segments — the beautiful “Blue Bayou” (a “Fantasia” outtake, essentially), and oddball closer “The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At The Met.”
Articles should be a one page thing.
Someone needs to explain to me why The Lion King is considered to have such a great message.. Most of the movie is spent on Simba’s lazy bum period. The only “work” to rebuild all that his uncle destroyed is the fight between Simba and Scar. Then after the villain is dispatched, boom, everything is wonderful. I mean, come on! This movie teaches kids that you can be a lazy bum for most of your life, engage in violence, and then with no work visible, everything that was messed up is now better. Yup, The Lion King teaches that laziness and violence solve all of your problems!
Another rather pointless and spuriously (or deliberately obtuse) ordered chart from the otherwise sophisticated Playlist. You can do far better film journalism than this, folks. You’re better than Buzzfeed. And really? The Lion King? For all its charms, the third act falls to bits.
I think Treasure Planet should be higher. I’d put Beauty and the Beast at #1
1. Pinocchio
That is all.
WALLE-E????
Pixar, not Disney
So you’ve appointed a film plagiarized almost completely from a revered anime classic as #1? Bah. It looks great, the music is great, it made boatloads of money (and still is), but it’s still basically “Kimba The White Lion” from top to bottom. And “Lilo and Stitch”, one of the most irritating, grating, can’t-wait-till-it-ends films of all time, featuring the most annying lead character (Stitch) in Disney’s entire collection of them, in the top 10? Arrgh! And if there’s a truly underrated and underappreciated film that Disney made, it’s “The Black Cauldron”, a film that continues to be unfairly maligned by most people, which is a shame – it’s better than most of the films ranked above it, especially swill like “Atlantis” and “Treasure Planet”, and deserves to be considered a classic fantasy film. I also think the beauty of many of the classic compilation films of the 40’s and 50s, like “Fun and Fancy Free” and “Make Mine Music” are lost on today’s audiences, who aren’t used to such things; they’re not home runs, but they’re not as bad as you make them out to be either.
Personally:
1) Beauty and the Beast
2) The Lion King
3) Aladdin
4) Mulan
5) Wreck It Ralph
6) Tangled
7) The Little Mermaid
8) Cinderella
9) Lady and the Tramp
10) The Great Mouse Detective (the most overlooked & underrated)
11) Moana
12) Bambi
13) Peter Pan
14) Zootopia
15) Frozen (or The Jungle Book)
Just a point,I think the removal of Pua (and his subsequent replacement with the brainless, hilarious chicken, a brother to Becky from Finding Dory) is a comedic subversion of the classic animal sidekick. Thanks for this guys, always enjoy the time spent reading these.
What the actual fuck is this list…??
Peter Pan is hands down top 5, unfortunately its “problematic” so gets bumped thirty spots. Sad and sick.
CAUTION: LIST IS NONSENSE. DO NOT REFERENCE.
Okay, what the hell is that bullshit about Hunchback’s soundtrack!? It easily puts up some huge competition for the best soundtrack Disney has ever composed, only rivaled by Beauty and the Beast and Frozen. With the exception of Guy Like You, every single number is a musical masterpiece that I have no idea HOW one can associate the word “forgettable” with. The stage musical makes it even better with some incredible new songs written for it.
While I have many disagreements with some orderings as expected, it’s clear from the amount of detail you put in, how passionate you are about Disney’s animation lineup, as all of who came here are. If I were to do a detailed ranking like this, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Here is my order of All 56 Animated Disney Films Ranked From Worst To Best.
56. Chicken Little (2005) – F
55. Brother Bear (2003) – D-
54. Dinosaur (2000) – D-
53. Home On The Range (2004) – D-
52. The Aristocats (1970) – D+
51. The Rescuers (1977) – D+
50. The Black Cauldron (1985) – C-
49. Pocahontas (1995) – C-
48. Saludos Amigos (1942) – C
47. Oliver And Company (1988) – C
46. The Sword In The Stone (1963) – C+
45. The Three Caballeros (1944) – C+
44. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) – C+
43. Hercules (1997) – B-
42. Peter Pan (1953) – B-
41. Fun And Fancy Free (1947) – B-
40. Fantasia 2000 (1999) – B-
39. The Fox And The Hound (1981) – B
38. Tarzan (1999) – B
37. Make Mine Music (1946) – B
36. Tangled (2010) – B
35. Melody Time (1948) – B
34. The Lion King (1994) – B+
33. The Jungle Book (1967) – B+
32. Robin Hood (1973) – A-
31. The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – A-
30. Bolt (2008) – A-
29. Big Hero 6 (2014) – A-
28. Aladdin (1992) – A-
27. The Princess And The Frog (2009) – B+
26. The Little Mermaid (1989) – A-
25. Meet The Robinsons (2007) – B+
24. Dumbo (1941) – A
23. Sleeping Beauty (1959) – A
22. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) – A
21. Winnie The Pooh (2011) – A
20. Wreck-It Ralph (2012) – A-
19. Mulan (1998) – A-
18. Lady And The Tramp (1955) – A
17. Moana (2016) – A
16. Bambi (1942) – A
15. The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad (1949) – A
14. Treasure Planet (2002) – A-
13. The Great Mouse Detective (1986) – A
12. The Rescuers Down Under (1990) – A
11. Cinderella (1950) – A+
10. Pinocchio (1940) – A
9. Lilo And Stitch (2002) – A
8. 101 Dalmatians (1961) – A+
7. Frozen (2013) – A
6. Alice In Wonderland (1951) – A+
5. Zootopia (2016) – A+
4. Fantasia (1940) – A+
3. The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh (1977) – A+
2. Beauty And The Beast (1991) – A+
1. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996) – A-