Disney Movies

 

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

When Walt Disney decided to produce a full length animated movie in the mid-1930s … almost everybody thought it was a disaster waiting to happen.  It even earned the nickname …. Disney’s Folly.  While it turns out the man knew what he was doing…..as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs become one of the biggest box office hits of all time.  Since then the Disney company has been producing one hit movie after another for almost the last 80 years.  So far there have been 54 Disney Animated Movies.

This page will rank those 54 Disney movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Movies that were only distributed by Disney did not make the list…..so you will not find any Pixar or Disney Toons movies…in other words if the animation was done outside of Disney it does not make the list. If you are interested in Pixar movies you can check out my Pixar page here.  Another page you might be interested in checking out is Walt Disney Live Action Movies 1937 – 1967.

Mickey Mouse in 1941's Fantasia ....Fantasia is the highest rated Disney movie according to critics and audiences.
Mickey Mouse in 1941’s Fantasia ….Fantasia is the highest rated Disney movie according to critics and audiences.

Disney Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Disney Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

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

  • Sort Disney movies by the voice stars
  • Sort Disney movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Disney movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Disney movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Disney movie received.
  • Sort Disney movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Disney Movies World Wide Box Office Grosses

Gotta have a picture of Frozen on this page.
Gotta have a picture of Frozen on this page.


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

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111 thoughts on “Disney Movies”

  1. Cogerson…..I really love “animated films,” and it’s good thing I do! Like Sunshine & most Grandma’s will tell you…we watch them over and over, so we might as well enjoy them!! (As a Dad of 2 little ones, this is no secret to you.)

    1937??!! Really?? I never would have thought a Disney film was made that long ago.

    Reply

    1. Hey fpherj48….yep having watch 6 kids grow up, each of them has been a Disney kid….lately my 3 three old is very interesting in The Little Mermaid….not much of a Lion King fan though…..so for the 4th or 5th time in my life I having been loading up the Little Mermaid in the VCR/DVD player almost everyday for the last month. And the beauty of Blu-ray….it almost makes these movies seem like brand new movies….especially some of the ones from the late 1930s and early 1940s…..yep Snow White is now 74 years old….she might be able to retire if the stock market continues to grow….lol…thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  2. Fantastic movie page on Disney animation, excellent work Bruce!

    I’m glad you left out Pixar, you can always do a seperate hub for those films.

    One of my earliest memories is watching Disney animation at the cinema, my parents took me to see The Jungle Book when I very young, I also remember going to re-releases of Cinderella and Peter Pan, many others. I would get excited whenever I saw a poster of cartoon characters as a child and my poor parents would take me to see each one. My mum wasn’t a fan but my dad enjoyed them.

    I had a feeling Beauty and the Beast would top your moviescore list, because of its Best Picture nomination. I would rather see Pinocchio or Fantasia at the top but there you go. 🙂

    Of the 52 films you’ve listed I’ve seen… 51. I have not seen the new Winnie the Pooh movie.

    According to my movie database I have bought 47 of them on DVD, the five I don’t own are Make Mine Music, Princess and the Frog, The Goofy Movie, Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Winnie the Pooh (2011).

    I have seen all 12 from the box office list and all 10 from the critics.

    My favourite classic Disney is Fantasia followed by Pinocchio and Snow White. My favourite modern Disney is Mulan and The Little Mermaid. I didn’t much like Princess and the Frog but I will buy it eventually just to have it in the collection. I enjoyed Tangled.

    I might do a hub on a Disney classic one of these days, thanks for posting this useful and interesting page Bruce.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….I actually have a Dreamworks vs Pixar page already done….but it has been ignored for the last year…with no updates but, it is out there.

      Thanks for sharing your childhood memories…I remember seeing Robin Hood(1973) with my neighbor’s mom who took about 4 of us to that movie…I thought I was such a big kid because I went somewhere without my mom. I also remember when I realized that some of these Disney movies were actually “old movies” and not “new movies”…the movie for me that triggered that realization was Dick Van Dyke’s Never A Dull Moment….I saw the trailer for it and wanted to see it….I told my older brother about this great new movie that was coming out in a month or two…and my brother said…”I saw it already….it is stupid”….I called him a liar, but turns out he saw the movie in 1968 when it first got released…and we were in the year 1977. When I finally saw the movie….I started calling it “A Dull Moment Everywhere”.

      Yep the fact that Beauty and the Beast got the one and only Oscar nomination for Best Picture…put it on top of the charts. I imagine it took the Academy voters 50 years before they would even consider an animated movie as Best Picture of the year.

      Wow 51 out of 52…pretty impressive…..so why have you not seen the latest Winnie the Pooh?…lol. I just did a quick check on my DVD walls…and we have purchased 26 of the movies on DVD/Blu-ray….I am sure if you added up all the VHS purchases and laserdisc purchases…the number would be in triple figures.

      Fantasia is my wife’s favorite Disney movie….and our 5 year old refers to it as “I wanna watch mommy’s movie”…..look forward to your future Disney Illustrated References.

      Reply

  3. Coming back after 8pm Pacific, I see the table comparing the Walt and post-Walt eras. I’m glad to see that the Disney film had higher scores during his lifetime and overall than the era after his death. There really was something special about him specifically, not just the company he created. With just under twice the number of films since he died than his lifetime, the post-Walt era has made only 33% of the Walt era in money and 87% of the critics rating of the Walt era.

    Reply

    1. Going by percentages in groups until I go below 50%:

      I have seen 11 of the top 15…73%

      I have seen 13 of the top 20 for 65%

      I have seen 15 of the top 30 for 50%

      After that I drop below 50% so I will go straight to my overall total: I have seen 19 out of 51 which is 37%.

      The earliest film I’ve seen is the very first. The most recent one is Aladdin in 1992. Although I have seen some of the Disney-Pixar combined films, prior to that Disney went through a straight to home video/DVD era that I ignored.

      Disney and holiday movies wre all I watched before I got into university. Since I got there, I haven’t had any reason to watch animated films but for the sake of nostalgia. Hence I rewatch films I’ve seen and watch the Disney-Pixar films because they have the introductory short cartoon films that were mainstays during the studio system era. Otherwise, I have no reason to see new Disney movies on the big screen.

      Reply

      1. Hey Flora…thanks for the tally count….you let my 17 year old daughter beat you out…lol….but she beat me out as well, as she has seen 41 of them….which I thought would be the highest…but looking at Steve’s comment….her total of 41 will only get her second place.

        I have the benefit of having kids that range from 24 to 3….so I have spent the last 20 years watching all the recent ones….there always seems to be a Disney animated movie in rotation at my house….just the other day Atlantis was playing in the car…I can not see the movie…but I can hear the movie….so my game is trying to figure out who the voice belongs to…in that case I could easily identify Michael J. Fox, Jim Varney and James Garner….though I could never identify Leonard Nimoy or John Mahoney.

        Reply

    2. Hey Flora….I think that last table really shows how much better Disney was under Walt’s guidance…if not for the huge success of Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King and Beauty and the Beast..all done in a 5 year span(1989-1994) under Jeffrey Katzenberg’s guidance(before he went to Dreamworks) the numbers would be even more noticeable.

      Granted the box office numbers are with the benefit of many re-releases…. but they are still doing that today as well….with Lion King and Beauty and the Beast re-opening in 2011….and the Little Mermaid coming soon.

      Finally I think when you look at the numbers….they are still impressive in the Post Walt era…but they were unbelievable under the Walt era.

      Reply

  4. I have watched most of these Disney movies, some more then I wanted…over and over and over and I know the songs also! Yep. I can sing them for you if you like!

    I’m thankful for Walt. If it wasn’t for him Orlando wouldn’t be as awesome as it is! The man was a genius and will always be appreciated. As will you with your fabulous movie score page! Another success!:)

    Reply

    1. Hey Sunshine….thanks for stopping by…I am sure that since you live in Orlando that you must know and hear the name Walt Disney all the time. I know all the songs myself but have been warned about singing them, as my singing voice is not the most pleasant….lol. Thanks for such a nice compliment….it is greatly appreciated.

      Reply

    1. Hey AudreyH…I know what you mean about your kids enjoying this movies so much….my kids are spread out from 24 to 3…..so I have been hearing(I never seem to be in the room) these same movies for almost 20 years now….and most are all-time classics….thanks for checking out my Disney page.

      Reply

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