Computer Animated Movies

Want to know the best Computer Animated movies?  How about the worst Computer Animated movies?  Curious about Computer Animated box office grosses or which Computer Animated movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Computer Animated movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place …. because we have all of that information.

Pixar started the whole computer animated movie business with their ground breaking movie…1995’s Toy Story.  DreamWorks entered the computer animated movie business with 1998’s Antz. Although Pixar and DreamWorks seem to be the leaders in the computer animated business, the other movie companies realize there was gold in computer animation.  Fox, Universal, Warner Brothers, Weinstein Company, MGM, Sony/Columbia and many others now release computer animated movies on a regular basis.  

Between 9 and 11 computer animated movies get released every year.  So about once a month the latest and greatest computer animated movie hits your local theaters.  This page will rank most (currently 121 movies) of the Computer Animated movies from Best to Worst by 6 different columns of sortable information.  A few of the CGI Star movies were not included…movies like Garfield, Scooby-Doo and Casper did not make the cut.

The Toy Story gang is what got the Computer Animated craze going.
The Toy Story gang is what got the Computer Animated craze going.

Computer Animated Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In The Table Below

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Computer Animated movies by the voice talent
  • Sort Computer Animated movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Computer Animated movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Computer Animated movies by critic reviews and audiences voting.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Computer Animated movie received.
  • Sort Computer Animated movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.  The ceiling to earn points for box office is $200 million…once a movie passes that mark it stops earning points in that category.
  • You can use the search button to sort by year or star….it is a pretty cool search and sort button.
Gotta have a picture of Frozen on this page.
Gotta have a picture of Frozen on this page.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Table

1. 82 Computer Animated movies crossed the magical $100 million mark.  That is a percentage of 62.59% of the  movies listed. Shrek 2 (2004) is the all-time leader when looking at domestic box office grosses…while Frozen (2013) is the all-time leader when looking at worldwide box office grosses,

2. An average Computer Animated movie grosses $160.10 million in adjusted box office gross.

3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  78 Computer Animated movies are rated as good movies…or 59.54% of movies listed.  Toy Story 3 (2010) is the highest rated movie while Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011) is the lowest rated movie.

4. 39 Computer Animated movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 29.77% of her movies.

5. 14 Computer Animated movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.68% of her movies.

6.  An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.  87 Computer Animated movies scored higher that average….or 50.00% movies listed.  Toy Story 3 (2010) got the the highest UMR Score while Norm Of The North (2016) got the lowest UMR Score.

Check out Steve’s Highest Grossing Animated Movies You Tube Video

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. 

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32 thoughts on “Computer Animated Movies

  1. This Tuesday on television’s SONY Movies channel over here 2013’s Homefront is being screened and the hype proclaims “Starring Statham and written by Stallone!” Can an action hero fan take all that potential excitement in the one package?

    I think I’ll watch it out of homage to Steve, and curiosity. Sometimes W o B and I watch a novie over a meal; so I’ll ask her to place some of her nice boilded ham on the menue for that occasion and serve it up thick!

    1. Bob, Homefront might be worth your time, just turn off your brain and enjoy. It’s the sort of thing Liam Neeson was doing at the time, come to think of it Liam is still beating up the baddies at age 67! The most recent Liam actioner I’ve seen ‘Cold Pursuit’ is worth a look too, when it pops up on TV.

      Look I’m only trying to beef (and spice) up your ‘modern movie’ tally count Bob. 😉

      1. HI STEVE:

        I’ll take your advice. Thanks for offering it.

        Liam of course has the saving grace that he comes from Ballymena Northern Ireland. All the tough guys today can’t be Yanks or Limeys !!!

  2. HI STEVE: Animated films or their subject matters are not really my thing; but I have taken my grandchildren to see many of them and as the kids enjoyed them, I found the cinema visits rewarding as OCCASIONS. After much thought these are-

    TOP 21 POSTER ENTRIES IN VIDEO IN MY OPINION
    1/Hotel Transylvania
    2/Lego Batman Movie
    3/Rescuers
    4/Spidey 2018
    5/two for The Hunchback
    6/Tangled
    7Dinosaeur
    8/Ice Age 3
    9/two for The Grinch
    10/Moana
    11/Polar Express
    12/two for Wall E
    13/Cars 06
    14/Up
    15/foreign language for Despicable Me 2
    16/Frozen 2
    17/second one for Cinders
    18/two for Fantasia
    19/1st one for Snow White and the Seven Lads.
    20/two for Megamind 3D
    21/Robots

    While all that was going on my grandchildren were growing up from roughly 5-year olds to teenagers! [“Upon this bank and shoal of time.” – William Shakespeare].

    1. From what I have said in Part One you will appreciate that parts of your video have given me another trip down Memory Lane and the satisfaction rating is 98%.

      Especially nostalgic for me was the material for Megamind, the Ice Age movies, The Croods and most particularly Monsters v Aliens and Monster University. You’ve done an excellent job of bringing it all together.

      MY PERSONAL PICK OF THE TOP 21 ENTRIES FOR STILLS
      1/Incredibles 04
      2/Shrek the 3rd
      3/Toy Story 2
      4/Aladdin
      5/Lion King
      6/Bambi
      7/Incredibles 2
      8/Jungle Book
      9/Antz
      10/Spidey 2018
      11/How to Train your Dragon 2
      12/Cars 2
      13/Kung Fu Panda 08
      14/Polar Express
      15/Happy Feet
      16/Madagascar 05
      17/Ice Age 02
      18/Pocahontas
      19/Sword & the Stone
      20/Born Leader
      21/Over the Hedge – but what a waste of Mr Gimme More as he wasn’t allowed to use profanities!

      Boy those animated features sure generate some grosses even though the figures you quote are just US ones.

      1. Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my latest extra-long video, the comment and generous rating is much appreciated.

        I was almost sure Bruce had an animated movie page listing all of them, turned out there were separate pages on CG animation and Disney animation. The stats on these pages came in very useful when putting the video together.

        I toyed with making it a worldwide grosses top 100 but it would have meant leaving out a dozen Disney classics so I went with domestic grosses. Yeah the worldwide grosses on some of these films is really impressive. Frozen II is already at $1.4bn, I don’t think the new Star Wars film will get that far, wow!

        I like CG animation but I do miss the artistry of hand drawn animation. The Japanese are nuts on animation and have kept the old tradition going, enhanced with CG effects of course.

        Bob, my next video is even longer than this one and it won’t be to your liking, or Flora’s. But I hope the poster art makes it worthwhile (you could always skip to the end). I’ll be using adjusted worldwide grosses, mostly my own.

        1. HI STEVE

          Thanks for the feedback and additional comments.

          I look forward to your even extra longer video – and just when I thought that nothing could be longer than Abel Gance’s 1927 silent Napoleon – 6 hrs long [though Brando’s self-directed One Eyed Jacks was supposed to be around that length until the studio executives ordered it butchered in the cutting room!]

  3. Just added Steve’s latest epic video to this page. Our thoughts on Top Grossing Animated Movies can be found below.

    I have seen 97 of these movies….only missing #73 Lilo and Stitch….no kids when it came out that were interested in seeing that one. #69 Mulan….and that is one of WoC’s favorites, #19 Frozen II…will see it when it reaches home entertainment. Heck not only have I seen 97% of these movies…probably saw 70% in theaters. Tons of favorites…though I really liked Over The Hedge, Toy Story 1, Tarzan and Wreck-It-Ralph. Epic video….great photos. Fun to watch. Voted up and shared

    1. Hi Bruce, thanks for sitting thru another extra large video, things will get back to normal eventually. 🙂

      I nicked most of these stats from your website, much appreciated. I own all of these films except Frozen II which isn’t available yet. But I’ve only seen a handful at the cinema, I don’t have children and that makes a huge difference.

      I went with domestic grosses so I could squeeze in as many golden oldies as I could otherwise this would mostly be CG animation. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, glad you liked the picture gallery.

    2. Wow! – 97 “have-seens” on ANY list of top 100 movies is some going for even you who must have broken numerous statistical records of all kinds on this site.

      However “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” and as I mentioned to Steve, whilst I enjoyed taking my grandchildren to many of the movies on the list because THEY enjoyed the films, computer animated flicks and the sort of themes usually in them are not my own preference: talking donkeys and singing mermaids, and indeed cartoon-type productions generally, are not my thing. Gritty adult stuff like The Duke and Laddie tearing down the Berlin Wall with their bare hands suits me just fine.

      Accordingly the only scenario in which I could see myself watching anywhere near 97 computer animated films is: I commit a felon; the courts don’t want to jail me for a first offence; but decide that I must have a punishment more severe than community service.

      However as I have also remarked to Steve, the films do clearly make bucketloads of dollars, so the producers won’t care about what I think of them; Fred C Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre didn’t worry about what other people thought as long as he could get his hands on the loot! And I wish you good health in continuing to enjoy the genre.

      1. HI GUYS Both of you have done sterling work in giving us visual and statistical rundowns of the Greatest computer-animated films. I enjoyed comparing your grosses for many of the movies; and never being the proverbial “dog in the manger” I would not deny others the straw simply because I don’t want it. So I hope you continue to enjoy those films.

        However are you not concerned that with viewers increasingly hearing just voices and not actually seeing performers, it will become more and more the case that audiences will identify with characters and not stars?

        For example last night I was at a kids birthday party at my daughter’s home and we all played a game whereby each in the gathering chose celebrities/entertainment characters to become in the rounds-I was The Meg in one round; the names were cast secretly into a hat; a ‘compere’ who did not participate read out the names; and the gathering would try to guess who among them was each celebrity in a given round.

        Imagine, say, it transpiring that Jason Statham was Steve Lensman and Myrna Loy turned out to be Bruce Cogerson. Most of the kids knew Depp because the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow still get endless TV re-runs over here; but whilst everybody knew who Shrek was, only a few grown-ups were familiar with the name Mike Myers.

        In one round mischievous Bob became Archibald Alexander Leach, which nobody got of course. There were howls of protest when I revealed that Al Leach was Cary Grant, many of the gathering proclaiming it was trick question as I had not used Archie’s professional name.

        However the game wound down in good spirits [though I later heard my 13-year old grandson asking his father in a whisper so as to not potentially offend me “Who is Cary Grant dad?”]

        1. Hey Bob…..very cool game you played at your daughter’s house. Good to see Cary Grant being mention in a game. Funny about me and Loy. Sounds like a fun evening. Thanks for sharing that evening with us.

          1. HI BRUCE

            A kind response indeed, Though I think next time I’ll stick with Al Leach as more people are sure to at least rememeber THAT name. By the way my grandson didn’t know who Gable was either.

          2. Kids today think Chris Pratt, Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson are the old actors while Cole Sprouse and Cara Delevingne are the current hot actors.

  4. Okay I’ve now seen 94 of the 121 animated films you’ve listed, including the highest grossing one – Frozen – and the lowest grossing one – Battle for Terra. I like the sortable tables, any which way you want (wasn’t that a Clint Eastwood film?) Shrek 2 no,1 grosser domestic? tsk tsk my least favorite of the 4 Shrek films. I wasn’t that keen on Frozen either. Pixar had a good 15 year run. I did enjoy Big Hero 6, glad it was a big hit and won a few awards.

    1. Wow we are close I am at 95 of these movies seen. You did not like Shrek 2? I thought the worst Shrek was part 3. Not keen on Frozen….my little girls want to fly across the Atlantic and straighten you out! Big Hero 6 final resting spot is 14th…..that is much higher than I thought it would be. As always thanks for checking out my latest updated page.

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