The 20 best Disney films of all time – ranked
The centennial of Disney’s cinema is now upon us. The official golden era (1937–42) was remarkably brief, but packed in five films that revolutionised screen entertainment. The studio’s subsequent output fits into similarly tidy phases, with the gimmicks of the wartime era (1942–49) largely forced upon them by losing many animators to the draft.
The silver era (1950–67) sprang some mighty comebacks, of which we’ve singled out four in our picks of the best. Following Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the bronze era (1970–77) and so-called Dark Ages (1981–88) saw a reduced focus on animation in favour of live action features, TV production and a concentration on the theme parks. But the renaissance (1989–99) was a lavish shift of fortunes, with Broadway-style scores and celebrity voice talent saving the day.
Most films in the doldrum-y “experimental” era (1999–2008) lost money, until the current revival (2009–) proved that Mouse House animation could still be a commercial force.
This top 20 is meant to be reflective of Disney’s whole output, from classics to recent favourites, with a few forgotten gems; we’ve excluded Pixar, which has enough of a back catalogue by now to be considered separately. A couple of live-action offerings are in the mix for good measure.
20. Frozen (2013)
The princessy megahit that turned every young girl’s bedroom into a karaoke booth, with Oscar-winning power ballad “Let It Go” on repeat. Orphaned sisters Anna and Elsa are driven apart when the latter’s accused of witchcraft – her powers of ice magic, to be fair, are suspiciously witch-like – and plunges their realm into eternal winter. The thawing of a sibling bond is less paramount than the choice, for fangirls, of which outfit to don: am I Anna, or Elsa today? Or go rogue with Olaf, Josh Gad’s snowman? A shout-out to the actual best number: the trolls’ lyrically deft singalong “Fixer Upper”.
19. Zootropolis (US title Zootropia) (2016)
All the mammals in the kingdom are stuffed cheek-by-jowl into a city that can hardly cope with them. Strict policing’s needed, and eager rabbit Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first member of her species to go on patrol; she’s immediately hustled by a con artist fox (Jason Bateman) and must solve the case of a missing otter. The visual jokes here are even more plentiful than the verbal ones – and this script is a corker, juggling a smartly plotted parable of race relations with the kind of cartoon noir homage we hadn’t seen since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
18. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
While other versions of Alice in Wonderland exist, we do not speak of the Tim Burton one, and this is the cheeriest – being a Disney-fied approach, of course, non-sinister and only lightly trippy in relation to what Lewis Carroll cooked up. The signature scene is the Mad Hatter’s tea party, complete with cheeping crockery and all the nonsense verse we need. It’s best appreciated as a showcase for the animation techniques of 750 artists at the beginning of Disney’s silver age, above all leading colour designer Mary Blair. The Red Queen and Cheshire Cat rule the roost.
17. Tangled (2010)
Rapunzel revamped – and rather more controversially, retitled. Disney crawled out of their Noughties doldrums with this freshened take on the Grimm tale about the long-tressed maiden – whisking her out of her ivory tower to have adventures of her own, alongside swashbuckling rogue Flynn Rider, rather than doing her usual woe-is-me routine. The designs popped, Dan Fogelman’s script did heaps of eye-rolling, and Alan Menken’s score particularly lifted things, giving Broadway queen Donna Murphy an aria in the form of the fear-mongering, passive-aggressive “Mother Knows Best”.
16. Big Hero 6 (2014)
The tale of a boy and his robot, with a hefty emotional undertow courtesy of the orphaned Hiro, a half-American, half-Japanese 14-year-old. His relationship with Baymax, the inflatable, healthcare-providing robot invented by his late brother, is Disney’s most touching buddy dynamic of that decade, in part because Baymax himself, who looks like a snowman, is so chubbily adorable. The fusion of San Francisco and Tokyo into the futuristic “San Fransokyo” was dazzling, and the borrowings from anime (especially Miyazaki) generous and gracious.
15. The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
The idea was an epic musical about Inca culture called Kingdom of the Sun, but after years of trouble, they started from scratch. Borderline desperation, in this case, produced a fizzing, wonky delight that might be Disney’s funniest film ever. Spoiled emperor Kusco (David Spade, who sarcastically narrates) is magically transformed into a llama, escaping his murderous chief adviser Yzma (a fabulously catty Eartha Kitt) and her ineffectual lunk of a henchman, Kronk (Patrick Warburton). There’s such spring in the film’s step, it almost catches up with Road Runner.
14. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
Such an instantly catchy concept – a brainiac dad (Rick Moranis) accidentally zaps his children (and their neighbours) down to the size of fleas, then obliviously throws them out with the trash. Having to brave all the perils of their own back lawn – “It’s a jungle out there!” – made the familiar amusingly scary in an ingenious way. The gee-whizzery of Joe Johnston’s direction enshrined this live-action smash as a witty successor to the likes of The Incredible Shrinking Man, while giving Moranis a defining role.
13. Basil the Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Disney’s animation division lost faith after The Black Cauldron (1985), and this minor hit was a morale boost that kept them going. But it’s also a treasurable gem, making the world of Sherlock Holmes immediately accessible to children by reimagining it with a rodent sleuth. Vincent Price gives great villain as the Moriarty-like Professor Ratigan, while the astute story instincts of John Musker and Ron Clements see us through for the first of many times. The art’s superb, and the CGI-assisted climax inside Big Ben wonderfully exciting.
12. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Uncle Walt himself saw this as his magnum opus, expanding on the scope of his previous princess-themed hits, and using a particular widescreen process for the first time. The film took eight years to produce, such were the challenges of the sumptuous backgrounds and character design. Maleficent stands out – so infamous they could give her an origin story 55 years later – and so does the Oscar-nominated score by George Bruns, which uses Tchaikovsky’s ballet to impart a timeless classicism.
11. Moana (2016)
On a Polynesian island in ancient times, Disney made lavish strides in its cultural representation here, and gave us a can-do heroine – the daughter of a village chief – who sets sail to save her clan as a warrior princess chosen by the ocean itself. There’s huge spirit to the enterprise, which does a particularly fine job making Moana a relatable role model. Her signature song “How Far I’ll Go” is the jewel in a generally excellent songbook, gorgeously sung by Auli’i Cravalho. It did so well – deservedly – that the inevitable live-action remake has just been cast.
10. Aladdin (1992)
It’s not perfect – “A Whole New World” fluked an Oscar, with competition from way better songs in the same film. But this was a revitalised Disney letting rip with pure entertainment, flinging a treasure chest wide open for inspiration, and gaining a more streetwise edge. The character designs for Aladdin, Princess Jasmine and Jafar are all classics of their kind, and the comedy comes off swimmingly – above all with Robin Williams doing a hundred bits a minute as the irrepressible genie. “Friend Like Me” and “One Jump Ahead” are marvels.
9. Lilo & Stitch (2002)
If you haven’t had the pleasure, dive in: an inquisitive little girl from Hawaii befriends one heck of a pesky extra-terrestrial. Stitch, an alien experiment, is a ball of pure mischief, “a flawed product of a deranged mind” exiled to a desert asteroid and crashing to Earth, where it’s hard to find any space for him in civilised society. Only the open-minded Lilo takes him in, bewitched by his sheer weirdness – he’s like the misbehaving pet who becomes an integral part of the family. This match of misfits is Disney’s finest achievement this century.
8. The Lion King (1994)
The #1 film of 1994 by a savannah mile, this was the majestic capping-off of Disney’s renaissance, with a story modelled on Hamlet – murderous uncle seizes the throne – and an all-time great score by Hans Zimmer, certainly outclassing the hit-and-miss songs. It manages to usher us from childhood to the verge of adulthood, not at the precise moment of Mufasa’s death, but throughout the various stages of Simba’s grief. For sure, the comic relief is a touch less inspired, but the epic surge of the storytelling is miraculous.
7. 101 Dalmatians (1961)
Deep charm and a jazzy, magpie sensibility make this one a keeper. It holds up beautifully, even once you’ve noticed that the song “Cruella De Vil” is daylight robbery from Thelonious Monk. Dog lovers everywhere are drawn back to it, obviously, but the earth-tone palette for sodden London is gloriously muted – well-worn – and makes the character designs, including all the distinctly identifiable pooches, stand out all the more. Drawn as unimprovably as she’s voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, Cruella is divadom incarnate.
6. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Heigh-ho indeed – it’s off to work all of Disney went, when Walt decided on this as their first ever animated feature. Nothing about it seems primitive or experimental: it has a creamy assurance that has guaranteed immortality over the years, standing tall not only as Disney’s ur-text but a work of enchanting visual polish. Taking inspiration from Hollywood’s live-action musicals of the 1930s, it uses the score and songs to dictate the story’s pace, while fending off any glutinousness with touches of genuine dread: the woods, the witch disguise, the poisoned apple.
5. Bambi (1942)
Infamous for the mid-way shock that has educated generations about death, this has been distressing children profoundly for 80-odd years, and looks unlikely to stop any time soon. It’s the quality of the animation that sets it apart, though: even up against all the delightful critters from Snow White, the many animals here were given astonishingly precise personalities, just as much in the quirks of their gait as the voices they were given. Bambi is so off-the-scale cute that life’s fragility, as sprung on us so upsettingly, carries all the more poignancy.
4. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
A stately ball of a film, and a grand demonstration from Disney’s animators that they were still capable of pulling out all the stops, to produce a work of coffee-table perfection, built to last. The colours are sensational – is there any blue/gold scheme that makes more of an impression, in any film? The handle on all the characters, major and minor, is quite magisterial, and so is the song score, a collaboration between Howard Ashman and Alan Menken that enriches the story immeasurably, hardly striking a false note.
3. Pinocchio (1940)
One of the outright strangest stories in the Disney canon, and an instance of them not commodifying the strangeness or ensuring that it’s palatable at all costs, but risking it, committing to it, and rendering it spectacular. This is the moral fable that cuts most deeply as it considers the pitfalls of growing up, and measuring who you want to be against who you are. The Bildungsroman quality of it never gets stodgy – true of most other attempts at this material – because of the rare inspiration on show.
2. Mary Poppins (1964)
Who wouldn’t want Julie Andrews to come down with an umbrella and fix entire childhoods, and make a father rediscover his joy, and help the medicine go down, and everything else? The film is a Dickensian riposte to a mercenary mindset, full of hallucinatory delights but also aware of the cheerless forces out there, stuffy and stubbornly real, that it wants the Banks children to reject, perhaps simply by laughing at them. The music is wonderful, and even when we’re not watching a dance scene, we’re dancing.
1. The Jungle Book (1967)
It’s so gloriously loose – loosely from Kipling; loosely having a story; one last, frivolous party in the wild before it’s time to put away childish things. There are certainly other Disney films which develop their narrative more carefully, but none that’s more captivating on a scene-to-scene basis. The drawing and voice casting makes every character iconic, friend or foe, and even the foes are great company. It’s perhaps the ultimate hangout movie, with a world-class DJ in the house playing wall-to-wall legendary songs, and everyone getting their perfect turn at the mic.
All our picks are available on Disney+.
