Disney Movie Rankings

I was researching Disney animated movies and thought it would be good to see how the movies ranked. Disney has released a lot of animated movies, but the lists I was looking at were limited to the canon of Disney Animation Studios, not Pixar, not Disney Toons (mostly straight to video), etc. These are fully animated (unlike Mary Poppins) and released in theaters, though some are compilations of shorts, particularly during the 1940’s when labor was short. The compilations were kind of a low point, as was a period in the 60’s to 80’s, and then another in the 2000’s.

At least in a few of these rankings, the writer actually sat down and watched all 55 movies before making the list, which is an impressive commitment. There are so many of these that I just don’t feel like I need to watch, though I guess if I had a lot of time I wouldn’t mind coming up with a list of my own. But instead I figured I would take an average of a number of lists on the internet to smooth out some of the personal opinions. There are some movies that tend to be polarizing. One is Fantasia, which some consider an early animation masterpiece and some will admit was kind of boring. In fact, all of the early movies tend to be polarizing with movies like Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and Dumbo appearing at opposite ends of different reviewers’ scales. The exception is Pinocchio which was in every single Top 10 (Snow White had one outlier at #25, otherwise all Top 10). Another is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which some throw in the bottom half and some include around number 5, feeling it is part of the 1990’s renaissance. Beauty and the Beast was also pretty consistent, though while a couple of reviewers insist it is the best Disney movie ever, nobody has it outside their Top 10.
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Disney Movie Club

Recently I got some junk mail inviting me to join the Disney Movie Club, which has about the same business model as Columbia Record Club had for LP records. You get some free movies up front, have “opportunities” to buy movies every month (they ship and bill you for them unless you say no), and have to buy a few movies at full price later. The deal I got in the mail had you getting 5 movies up front and you had to buy 4 more, but if you bought one at half price now, you only had to buy 3 more at full price. I researched it and found a deal where I only had to buy 3 more, or 2 if you bought one now (the default deal if you visit the website is the worst: Get 4 now, buy 5 at full price later). For the most part the selections included whatever movies Disney currently has on disk (they intentionally take older classic titles out of production, putting them back “in the vault” so that people will snap them up when they re-release them later; also some titles are for members only and not available in the initial enrollment), plus Disney properties like Pixar, and including some live action movies like Marvel and some other ones. I have a lot of Disney and Pixar movies already, but it seemed like I could come up with 9 movies total that would cost $90 grand total. $10 each for Bluray movies is pretty good, and they often include a DVD copy and a digital download so you can add it to iTunes and play on your computer or other devices. So I decided to do that. And once you buy your movies at full price, you can cancel your membership and do it all over again if you want even more movies. If you are careful and buy two $25 commitments instead of $30 commitments it is only $80.

Note: In 2023, they stopped the “Get 5 Free, Buy 3” promo codes that made this such a good deal. I don’t recommend the club right now and am no longer a member.

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