37 Classic Disney Movies, Ranked From Worst To Best

Maybe I’m missing something, but Dumbo is not a movie I’d recommend showing to children. That poor baby elephant is bullied and traumatized for about 40 minutes, gets drunk (???), realizes he can fly, and then the movie’s over. Dumbo is very cute and so is the song “Baby Mine,” but there is little else to redeem this movie, and to say nothing of the crows.

Dinosaur isn’t bad; it just suffers from comparisons to the best dino movie of all time, which happened to come out seven years prior. Like in Jurassic Park, the animators behind Dinosaur went to great lengths to make prehistoric creatures look as real as possible — and they did really well! The opening sequence of Dinosaur looks pretty awesome even 22 years later. Unfortunately, the plot is kinda boring and predictable. Also the fact that the dinosaurs can talk undermines all the work that went into making them look real. 

Aristocats is a perfectly pleasant movie. Duchess and her three kittens — Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse — are the pampered pets of a retired opera singer named Madame. When their butler realizes that he’s been left out of Madame’s will in favor of the cats, he kidnaps them and abandons them in the countryside. From there, the cats need to make their way home with the help of a street cat named O’Malley. It’s not the most intricate plot, and the movie only has one memorable song, so it’s kind of easy to forget. 

Robin Hood is a respectable adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. What’s not respectable are the thoughts I know some of you out there are having about this cartoon fox. Just kidding, I do not judge! But back to the movie. It’s good! It’s just not the best Robin Hood movie out there. Or the best Disney cartoon. The plot is formulaic, and without any memorable songs there’s not much to remember it by (hot fox excepted, of course). Maybe Disney made it that way by design so that nobody would notice that they reused a lot of Baloo’s animation from The Jungle Book for Little John. We noticed anyway.

My controversial yet brave take is that the 2016 live-action version of The Jungle Book is better than the animated original. And if this list were based on my personal enjoyment, this movie would be in last place. But I will attempt to be objective for journalistic integrity — and because I know that the internet would have my head if I ranked it last. So here are some positives about it: “Bare Necessities” and “I Wan’na Be Like You” are iconic Disney songs, the animation is beautiful, and Shere Khan is quite a scary villain. 

Maybe it’s because it doesn’t follow the typical Disney formula, but Atlantis feels like a pretty overlooked movie. It deals with more complicated subject matter than the usual fairy tale and takes on some pretty adult themes like greed, betrayal, and colonization. The only downside to having a more mature storyline is that it makes it more obvious that the characters who aren’t Milo Thatch aren’t super well developed. Kida is a fan-favorite because she’s a badass, but she’s ultimately a secondary character in the movie.

The Sword in the Stone is nice without being a classic. It’s not without its great moments, particularly the magic fight between Merlin and Mim, but it’s light on plot and memorable characters. The songs also simply refuse to stay in your brain.

If you ever wondered what a Disney-fied version of Lord of the Rings might look like, look no further than The Black Cauldron. Taran, a young pig-keeper, must protect Henwen, a prophetic pig who can track the whereabouts of a powerful weapon known as the Black Cauldron. Taran and his friends face off against the Horned King, who is objectively terrifying. This one scared me as a kid, so maybe my opinion isn’t perfectly unbiased.

Bette Midler and Billy Joel are responsible for two criminally underrated songs in the Disney canon. “Perfect Isn’t Easy” and “Why Should I Worry?” aren’t just catchy as hell, but they also perfectly establish Georgette and Dodger’s characters and fulfill the song requirement of a scene-stealing Disney sidekick. The rest of the movie is a really sweet adaptation of Oliver Twist, but it tends to be forgotten among the flashier movies that came after it.

Pocahontas is hard to rank because as an entirely fabricated work of fiction, it’s good. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and even though “Colors of the Wind” is a beautiful song, the historical inaccuracies are…immense. Any movie that depicts the English colonization of Native American land in this kind of fairy tale light is just irresponsible. It treats the conflict between Pocahontas’s tribe and the English like there were bad people on both sides, which, LOL.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo is an incredibly tragic novel, so I’m not sure who at Disney read it and thought, This will be an excellent cartoon for children. And frankly, as a movie for kids, I can’t say that I’d recommend it. Some scenes are really hard to watch! But slightly older audiences will appreciate it, even if the talking gargoyles seem at odds with the sad moments (aka the rest of the movie). Count Frollo is possibly the cruelest person Disney has ever committed to cartoon, so watching him meet his end is incredibly satisfying.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh really captures the wonderment of being a kid, and it’s easily the most overtly educational of the Disney classics. Pooh, Piglet, and all their friends experience legitimate challenges (as much as clothed animals can experience challenges, anyway), and solve them in a way that embraces the thoughts and struggles that a little kid might have when making decisions. It might not be the first one you revisit as an adult, but it’s got a pretty huge nostalgia factor.

Disney’s take on Sherlock Holmes is The Great Mouse Detective, which sees the famous detective take the form of Basil, a mouse. Basil is investigating the disappearance of a toymaker, which brings him up against his perennial nemesis Professor Ratigan (Moriarty, duh). The movie also has a rodent stand-in for John Watson in Dawson, and a bunch of other small references to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories sprinkled throughout. Oh, and Ratigan is voiced by Vincent Price, which is cool.

Peter Pan is another on the list of Disney movies that has a content warning on Disney+ because it has a racist scene. Obviously the scenes with Tiger Lily and her tribe are super problematic, which comes from the original text by the book’s author, J.M. Barrie, that describes them as “savages.” Moving on from that, Peter Pan has all the best qualities of a Disney classic: at least one great song, a memorable villain in Hook, and a beloved sidekick in Tinkerbell. If it had the unintended consequence of making us all believe we could fly, that’s just a testament to how good it is at getting you to embrace the magic.

The Rescuers is about two mice named Bernard and Bianca who belong to the Rescue Aid Society, a United Nations-like organization that operates out of the basement of the UN building in New York. These two adorable little secret agents go on a mission to rescue a little girl named Penny, who is being held captive by Madame Medusa, one of Disney’s more zany villains (something like Cruella de Vil). It’s touching at times, exciting at others, and I have to reiterate that the mice are just really stinkin’ cute.

If you want to let out some emotions, if you’re in need some catharsis, or if you need that last push to text/call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, watch The Fox and the Hound. It’s a tragic tale about how none of your friendships can last forever and everyone you love will eventually change. That’s not entirely true, but this movie about childhood besties who go their separate ways in adulthood is an absolute tearjerker.

There are moments in Alice in Wonderland that are absolutely dazzling, imaginative, and as artistic as anything the Disney animators were capable of doing. And yet, I wouldn’t call it one of the Disney greats. I think it’s because there’s never a moment to catch your breath in between each section of the story, and all of the zaniness ends up overwhelming you. Seeing Alice arrive in Wonderland and proceed to stumble her way into increasingly scary situations might make you want a nap — which, ironically, is what Alice was actually doing all along since the whole thing is a dream.

There have been many, many Cinderella adaptations over the years — some might even say too many (not me though). But does anything really compare to the 1950 classic? It’s got a whole subplot devoted to the mice’s war against the stepmother’s demonic cat. The animation is really impressive for being almost 75 years old, especially in the motion of Cinderella’s ball gown. Cinderella herself might be a bit of a pushover — at some point she really should’ve told her stepmother to suck it — but haven’t we all found ourselves wishing that our lives could become perfect overnight? Let’s not be bitter that it actually happened for her.

I’m here today to tell you that even though you probably skipped it back in 2002, you should give Treasure Planet a shot because it’s really good. It’s an outer space version of Treasure Island, and the animation is really cool and different from most of the Disney movies of the time. And Jim Hawkins is probably the most accurate depiction of a teenager of all the movies on this list, which, considering that he rides a boat through space, is a pretty big achievement.

Aurora isn’t the most exciting of the Disney Princesses — all she does is fall in love and fall asleep — but Sleeping Beauty is a gorgeous movie. I mean that literally. Every single frame of Sleeping Beauty looks like a painting, which you can see for yourself if you press pause at any point in the movie. It has a great song in “Once Upon a Dream,” but it’s not the hit parade that some of its successors are. The plot is also really similar to Snow White if you think about it.

Phil Collins did not need to go so hard on the Tarzan soundtrack, but he did it for us. As absurd as it is to see Tarzan swinging and leaping throughout the jungle — he wasn’t wearing shoes; his feet should be drenched in blood — there’s no denying that those sequences are thrilling. However, it does lose points because, like the book, the only humans in the movie are white English colonizers even thought it’s set in Africa. 

If this list were based on my personal admiration for the heroines, Hercules would be in first place because Meg is the GOAT. She’s the smartest person in Greece by a mile and needs no weapon other than her withering sarcasm. And she’s balanced perfectly by the sweetest himbo of them all, Hercules, aka Wonder Boy. The movie’s adaptation of the Muses is *chef’s kiss* along with the soundtrack. If it has any flaws, it’s that it’s not as visually stunning as movies that came before and after it.

Technically Fantasia 2000 is a sequel, but since the original movie did not have a plot or characters, I think it’s OK. Like the 1940 version, this movie is just a bunch of animated shorts set to classical music, and it serves its main goal: Let the Disney artists and animators show off. The Pines of Rome segment with its flying whales is my personal favorite. 

I’d love to say that Robin Williams alone makes Aladdin one of the greatest Disney movies ever made. And in a way, he does: The Genie is hands down the best animated Disney sidekick of all time. “A Whole New World” is an all-timer of a karaoke song, and Aladdin and Jasmine are super cute together. Aladdin is great, it really is, but if it has a downside it’s that it perpetuates offensive stereotypes about the Middle East throughout the whole movie. 

The first 20 minutes of 101 Dalmatians are a sweet English rom-com about a dog who just wants his human to find love, no matter how many people he needs to push into a lake. Then Cruella de Vil walks in, and it becomes the story of an unhinged woman’s quest for a dalmatian fur coat. Cruella is among Disney’s absolute worst villains for wanting to kill PUPPIES, but she looks absolutely fierce doing it. Disney went for a grittier animation style inspired by British artist Ronald Searle, and they also used — gasp! — a Xerox machine to help them copy spots onto 101 dogs, a nifty trick that saved a ton of time and money in making the movie. All of this combined with a genuinely witty script makes it worthy of a high ranking.

Where would animation be without the huge success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Bankrupt, because the studio wasn’t doing so well at the time. The point is the film changed the game as the kids say, and it’s the perfect movie to watch if you want to marvel at how far animation has come in 85 years. Every single second of Snow White is hand-drawn, which is just super impressive. It doesn’t have much going on plot-wise, and the Dwarfs themselves have drawn some backlash over the years, but there’s no denying that it’s a hallmark of the art form.

Pinocchio was the first animated movie to win an Academy Award — two, actually — and it’s not hard to see why. Over 80 years after its release, it’s still got it. It’s darker than you might remember — Pinocchio goes through it in this movie — but the darker tone makes it something you can enjoy as a grown-up too. Not that it’s too dark for kids, of course. It achieves the perfect balance.

The Princess and the Frog is yet another Disney adaptation of a classic fairy tale, but the studio gave it a new perspective by changing the setting to 1920s New Orleans. And of course, shoutout to Tiana, Disney’s first Black princess AND the first one (other than Mulan) to have a job and career aspirations. No shade to the other Disney Princesses, but Tiana is easily the best modern-day role model among them. 

Mulan is a badass, and I don’t think there’s a better word in the English language to describe her. She was also the first of the Disney heroines whose story didn’t revolve around a romance. In fact, Mulan is fully an adventure movie, with the only little hint of romance coming at the very end. It’s got great songs, pretty animation, and a touching story about family and bravery. What’s not to love? 

Disney is notorious for killing off parents in their movies, but was there ever a death more devastating than sweet Bambi’s mom? Maybe one, but we’ll get to Mufasa later. That moment of tragedy notwithstanding, Bambi is among the most visually stunning movies in the Dinsey canon. Its focus on nature and animals made it more than just a coming-of-age story, but also a cautionary tale about taking care of the planet.

The Emperor’s New Groove is unjustifiably overlooked as one of the great Disney masterpieces. It might not have an iconic soundtrack, but it’s the funniest movie on this list. You may argue with the wall if you disagree. As for the cast, David Spade and John Goodman were famously funny actors when it came out, so it wasn’t a surprise that they nailed their roles as Kuzco and Pacha. However, the movie’s MVPs are obviously Eartha Kitt as Yzma and Patrick Warburton as Kronk. The evil genius/bumbling henchman dynamic has never looked or sounded better, and the “pull the lever” scene alone deserves awards. 

The Siamese cat song in Lady and the Tramp was so racist that Disney didn’t include it in the recent live-action remake. But the rest of the movie is very nice and somehow included one of the most romantic movie moments of all time: Lady and Tramp sharing a single spaghetti noodle and accidentally kissing. It’s adorable, but also a big fat lie — nobody has ever looked dainty or cute while eating spaghetti. 

Lilo and Stitch is kind of rare among Disney movies because it feels like it could take place in the real world despite having characters that are literally aliens. I realize how absurd that sounds, but it’s true! Lilo and Nani’s relationship is so realistic, and I am SICK and TIRED of Frozen getting all the credit for having Disney’s best sisterhood when these two have existed since 2002. Plus, if you consider that Stitch is basically a dog, this is just a story about how the right pet can help heal a family.

Beauty and the Beast is so good that it became the first animated movie to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. There are no skips on the soundtrack, “Be My Guest” is nothing short of magical, and Belle’s yellow dress changed lives. Belle and Beast might not have been love at first sight, but Belle’s literally life-saving love confession is heart-wrenching.

As a rule, teenagers should not throw their lives away for the uncertainty of a future with a man they’ve laid eyes on twice. But is anybody watching The Little Mermaid for life lessons? No, you watch it because you want to be a mermaid and Ursula has the best Disney Villain song. Like all great Disney movies, The Little Mermaid sweeps you into the fantasy, no matter how much you find yourself agreeing with King Trident as you get older. Its release was considered the start of the “Disney Renaissance,” and it’s hard to argue with that estimation.

In 1940 Disney released Fantasia, the studio’s third feature EVER, and it has certainly stood the test of time. It’s a beautiful combination of classical music and animation that, much like the remake, proves just how talented the artists behind these animations are. 

This movie is, quite possibly, Disney’s Citizen Kane — a beloved classic that is maybe a liiittle overrated, but people come back to it again and again. Sure, they cheated a little by basing the plot on a literal Shakespeare play, but it’s easily the best Disney adaptation of classic literature. No Disney scene has scarred (heh heh) children and adults as much as Mufasa’s death. No villain has ever been as deliciously complicated as Scar. Few songs are as catchy as “Hakuna Matata.” It’s the winner, baby.