Bambi (1942)
"How many kids first learned about death because of Bambi? Five decades before King Mufasa lectured Simba on the Circle of Life, Disney animators painted this quiet tableaux vivant of birth, life, and death centered on the childhood of a woodland deer, his doting mother, absentee father, and friends Thumper the Rabbit and Flower the Skunk. Bambi also marked the first time Disney employed its famous multi-plane camera, which breaths 3-D depth into hand-drawn images. But, let's face it, this movie will be forever known for the death of Bambi’s mother at the rifle-wielding hands of Man, a moment of primal trauma that began the enduring trend of dead moms in animated movies."—Christian Blauvelt
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
"If The Little Mermaid gave Disney animation a heartbeat again, Beauty and the Beast lent it spirit. A show-stopping tour de force courtesy of musical wunderkinds Alan Menken and Howard Ashman — who provides golden lyrics like 'I use antlers in all of my decorating!' for the oompah barroom carouser ''Gaston''— it's the film's quiet moments of spiritual yearning that may resonate the most: Belle in her village bookstore imagining far-off lands, then finding her own adventure to be unlike she'd ever imagined it when taking her father's place in the Beast's dungeon, and finally seeing humanity in her captor's eyes before a climactic, snatched-from-death transformation that touches upon the divine. Unlike previous Disney heroines who needed to be rescued by a prince themselves, Belle not only saves the Beast's life, she saves his soul. Is that powerful stuff or what?"
The Jungle Book (1967)
"Disney's adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic is a bebop slow jam of a film. The bare necessities of the original plot are there — an orphaned boy in India is raised by a pack of wolves, befriended by the panther Bagheera and bear Baloo, and menaced by the tiger Shere Khan — but veteran director Wolfgang Reitherman turns it into a laidback mood piece with some of the richest character animation Disney ever produced. It doesn't hurt, either, to have a tony cast of voices like Phil Harris (Baloo), Sebastian Cabot (Bagheera), George Sanders (Shere Khan), Sterling Holloway (Kaa), and jazz-man Louis Prima (King Louie) who contributes the movie's grooviest song, ''I Wanna Be Like You.'"
Peter Pan (1953)
J.M. Barrie's immortal tale of the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up wasn't just a perfect fit for Disney. It overlapped with the studio's own Neverland mission statement to appeal to kids and kids at heart. So it's strange that the movie adaptation itself isn’t better. The pastel colors feel wan and under-textured, Peter Pan's Lost Boys are barely characterized, and some motley ''smoke 'um peace-pipe'' Indians are stereotypically cringe-worthy. But Peter Pan's not without some pixie-dust magic, including a hungry crocodile, a minx of a fairy in Tinker Bell, and a diabolical amputee villain in Captain Hook.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The very first feature-length animated film remains one of the best. Despite claims of narrative whitewashing, Disney successfully taps the Brothers Grimm's primordial understanding of the connections among beauty, aging and power in their rendering of a vain, wicked queen who orders her stepdaughter's death. Though a pre-feminist creation to be sure— ''Someday My Prince Will Come'' is her anthem, after all — Snow White herself displays a remarkably vivid subjectivity that we're privy to as well. Never more so than during her nightmarishly surreal flight through the woods after learning the queen has marked her for death.
The rest of the "best" - The Lion King, 101 Dalmatians, Aladdin, The Aristocats, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fantasia, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Alice in Wonderland, Tangled
WORST
The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
The first hand-drawn Disney movie to significantly incorporate computer animation is a slight, stuffy affair. Coming at the end of Disney's two-decade artistic doldrums, this Sherlock Holmes tribute about the investigative rodents leaving beneath 221b Baker Street is marked by bizarre tonal shifts: the terrifying sight of a mouse being fed alive to a cat is followed up shortly by... a mouse striptease. Um, who exactly was the audience for this film?
Tarzan (1999)(*GASP* LIES)
The last of Disney's animated musicals in the '90s is its weakest. And the reason for that is two words: Phil Collins. Actually, that's being a bit harsh. His songs are lackluster, but so is the animation. Instead of visualizing the famous jungle-dweller swinging from vines, Disney's artists imagined him surfing along branches, an effect that's silly and disorienting. Worst of all for the studio, the fact that Tarzan scored $171 million at the U.S. box office may have influenced their decision to adapt another Edgar Rice Burroughs character for the big screen: John Carter.
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
On paper, this should be a Disney Princess movie par excellence: a classic fairytale intended for 70 mm projection with a score that samples Tchaikovsky. But the result is as soporific as the spell cast over the title character.
Hercules (1997) (Oh? I beg to differ)
The fact that this update of the exiled Olympian's life features bloody violence, gross-out humor, and possibly James Woods' most disturbing performance to date — which is really saying something — is bad enough. The fact that this Grecian dud ended the six-film winning streak kicked off by The Little Mermaid eight years earlier is a tragedy worthy of Sophocles. Zero to hero? No. Just zero.
The Black Cauldron (1985)
Disney had long wanted to purchase the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for animated film adaptations. Needless to say, the Tolkien estate refused. So the studio decided instead to adapt another sword-and-sorcery fantasy, Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. Newly-appointed animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg was so horrified by the results that he decided to delay The Black Cauldron's original 1983 release by six months and reedit the film himself. That still didn't help.
The rest of the "worst" - Brother Bear, Chicken Little, Home on The Range, Song of The South, Robin Hood
Q to AD: What is your all-time favorite Disney animated film? Least favorite? My fav: Mulan...& least fav: Snow White!
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