10. “Mulan” (1998)
“Mulan,” which came at the tail end of the so-called Disney renaissance of the 1990s, is nothing if not ahead of its time. The studio’s movies haven’t always been terribly progressive, but this adaptation of a Chinese legend features a kick-ass women of color in its lead role, and one with a somewhat fluid approach to gender at that. When her father (Soon-Tek Oh) is conscripted into the army to battle Shan Yu (Miguel Ferrer) and his invading Huns, the tomboyish Fa Mulan (Ming-Na Wen) disguises herself as a man in order to take his place, and heads off to war with the help of her dragon guardian Mushu (Eddie Murphy). Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft, the film is legitimately beautiful and truly epic in scale in a way that some of its contemporaries aren’t, with a clear, crisp art style and some stunning battle sequences. The energy drops off every time a song appears —every one should have been rejected— but Murphy’s vocal performance, more than just a warm-up for Donkey a few years later, helps to pick things up, and the heroine is resourceful, brave and far less bland than many Disney characters, even if the film’s feminism isn’t perfect. Given how in vogue it would seem now (not least in its appeal to the Chinese market), it’s no wonder Disney has a live-action remake in development.
9. “Lilo & Stitch” (2002)
An unexpectedly delightful, gently subversive, surprisingly progressive film from directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois ( the ‘How To Train Your Dragon‘ movies) “Lilo & Stitch” passed many of us by back in the day but is now a firm favorite. Even the character design is unusual, with the largely non-white human cast of Hawaiian islander grown-ups beautifully rendered as strong and athletic rather than the more willowy princesse-y silhouettes we’re used to, while the kids, led by Lilo (Daveigh Chase) are pudgily adorable and the aliens, especially cute/ugly Stitch are appropriately weird and diverse. The bonkers story is of Stitch (Sanders is on voice duty too) aka Experiment 626, a ferocious creature genetically engineered for invulnerability and destructive capability whose spaceship crashes in Hawaii. There, he is adopted as a “dog” by a lonely little Elvis fan Lilo, who lives with her loving but overstretched sister Nani (Tia Carrere) since the death of their parents. With an overbearing social worker (Ving Rhames) ready to separate the sisters, Stitch’s anarchic impulses do not help, while half the galaxy is on his tail. The lessons about family may be predictable, but it’s such an atypical family (the relationship between Nani and Lilo is so wittily drawn) that the Pacific quantities of tear water it might provoke are anything but.
8. “Aladdin” (1992)
These days, every A-list star at some point gets the phone call to voice an animated character (or, if you’re Seth Rogen, you get twelve phone calls). It wasn’t entirely new at the time —think of classic Disney’s use of Peggy Lee or Louis Prima, among others— but most of it can be traced back to Robin Williams’ movie-stealing turn in “Aladdin,” which helped to make the movie a far bigger hit than “Beauty And The Beast” and “The Little Mermaid,” the two earlier movies in the Disney renaissance. Reteaming the “Little Mermaid” duo of John Musker and Ron Clements, the film’s based on the classic Arabian Nights tale of the title character (Scott Weinger), a street kid tricked into retrieving a magic lamp and who finds his fortunes transformed as a result of the genie residing therein. The script (co-written by Ted Eliott & Terry Rossio) is one of the tightest the studio had, the songs (featuring the late Howard Ashman’s final contributions) are some of their catchiest, and there’s some absolutely stunning animation throughout. Not everybody loved Williams’ tour-de-force comic turn, but we’d argue that his brilliance comes not just in the impressions and voices, but in the pathos he’s able to give the character. He comes close to unbalancing the film, but given that lead duo Aladdin and Jasmine are such 90210-ish dullards, that unbalance was probably necessary.
7. “Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs” (1937)
The first Walt Disney animation, and the one from which all others spring. ‘Snow White’ isn’t just the first Disney film —it is the first full-length animated feature full stop. The best part of a century, a cottage industry and several dire would-be-gritty remakes later, it remains a towering titan of the form. More faithful than many of the films that would come after to its source material (frankly, the narrative is a little thin for its 83 minute running time), it’s also noticeably darker: what would become the Disney formula is still in flux, and the film goes to some rather terrifying places that the studio would shy away from in later years. Its willingness to go there as such helps to make up for deficiencies in the narrative elsewhere —being the first attempt at feature length animation, it’s simple perhaps to a fault, with the heroine in particular being something of a blank canvas. Yet, probably because it’s been lovingly restored, as a crown jewel in the Disney canon, it still looks stunning. The rotoscoped animation (where live-action footage is painted over) gives proceedings a realism that’s rarely been returned to since, though its finest moments are when it departs from human characters with the utterly charming dwarfs or the woodland creatures. It’s easy to take ‘Snow White’ for granted, but after nearly eighty years, it remains a miracle.
6. “Dumbo” (1941)
Made in only a few months at a minimal budget in order to make a quick buck after the financial disaster of “Fantasia,” “Dumbo” is a modest, sweet little affair that easily outshines some of Disney’s more lavish spectacles. Curiously based on a story for a Roll-A-Book novelty toy written by Helen Aberson, it sees a stork delivering to Mrs. Jumbo a new baby elephant boy, the titular Dumbo, whose long ears see him mocked by his circus colleagues. He’s so badly bullied that his mother steps in, only to be locked away when the authorities believe her crazy. But with the help of Timothy Q. Mouse (Edward Brophy), Dumbo becomes a flying circus clown and a national celebrity. Clocking in at just 65 minutes, the film feels like a product of its times more than some of its contemporaries, sometimes positively (the charming music, the mouse, the design), sometimes not so much (the questionable stereotyped crows). But its problems are wildly overshadowed by the lo-fi inventiveness of the invention, the personality invested in the animation (Dumbo never says a word, yet you feel for him more than any one of the thousands of animals in “Zootopia”), and the soaring, deeply moving finale.
