The 10 Best Cartoon Movies Of All Time (And The 10 Worst)
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Not all cartoon movies are created equal. These are the best and worst of Disney, Dreamworks, and more.
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Cartoon movies first became a reality back in the early 1920s. Since that time, kids and adults have enjoyed countless hours watching classics such as Mickey Mouse to more modern-day films like the upcoming Batman Ninja in 2018.
The first-ever full length animated film belongs to a German film-maker and avante-garde artist named Lotte Reiniger. His movie The Adventures of Prince Achmed premiered in 1926. Prior to that, however, Walt Disney was making shorts while working as an advertising cartoonist for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. His first cartoon movie would be Little Red Riding Hood (1922). After producing over two dozen silent black and white movies, Walt would create the character Mortimer Mouse — better known as Mickey Mouse.
Allowing culture to spill into art, Betty Boop would become the next most famous cartoon character. Created by Max Fleischer, Betty was a tad more provocative than Mickey Mouse. She was known for wearing a strapless, thigh-high gown, a visible garter, and was based on the flapper (bonus points for those who know what flapper means) icon Clara Bow’s ‘It’ Girl and Mae West.
Following Betty Boop came the iconic Popeye, and then Superman. After that, cartoon movies became a normal form of entertainment. As technology improved, animation became more realistic. From 3D to computer-generated characters, the world of cartoon movies continues to bring wonder and fascination to the young, old, and everyone in-between.
While all the above names deserve their spots in history. We’ve narrowed down a vast variety of the best and worst cartoon movies ever made to date.
22 Best: To Infinity And Beyond In Toy Story
Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, Toy Story is one of the best cartoon movies of all time. It was directed by John Lasseter, with a screenplay written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow.
The movie was not only revolutionary for its time but will stand alone as a classic for generations to come. Woody and Buzz Lightyear were instantaneous hits. Working with an all-star cast like Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, John Ratzenberger, and Annie Potts — Toy Story scored a 92 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Critic score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes
Ed Catmull has stated that at the time, nobody knew what they were doing because it was so new. Now, the storytelling and technology used in making Toy Story is the foundation for all projects coming out of Pixar.
21 Worst: Freezing Over With Ice Age 5: Collision Course
Slapped with a 16% critic score rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Ice Age 5: Collision Course is one of the worst cartoon movies of all time. Produced by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Mike Thurmeier, the film failed to dazzle audiences and critics like its predecessors.
Sadly, the name alone allowed the film to gross $408 million worldwide on a $105 million budget. Audiences were kinder, giving the cartoon movie a 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Metascore showed a more realistic average with a score of 34. Overall, the cartoon movie was poorly written and lazily put together.
“The fifth entry in the Ice Age series is a loud, lazy, laugh-starved cash grab,” stated Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. “[It] cynically exploits its target audience (I use the term advisedly) by serving them scraps and calling it yummy.”
20 Best: Bare Necessities In The Jungle Book
If a smile doesn’t come to your face when you hear the song “Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book, you might want to check your pulse. Receiving a critic score of 86% and an audience score of 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, this cartoon movie tugs at the heartstrings.
The Jungle Book was produced by Walt Disney Productions in 1967 and based on Rudyard Kipling’s book. It has stood the test of time while also being made into multiple live-action movies and a theater production. Ironically, the scores of the live-action film co-produced by John Favreau (2016) scored higher than the 1967 original.
What makes The Jungle Book so unique, is that the screenplay was built around the songs and music (much like Mary Poppins). Storyboards were then brought in and finally, a script was written around those two main foundations.
19 Worst: Hood-Flopped With Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil
Directed by Mike Disa and released on April 29, 2011, by The Weinstein Company (oh, that explains a lot) Hoodwinked Too! was a complete disaster. The film received a critics score of 11% and an audience rating of 35% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Shaun Munro from What Culture might have stated it best by saying, “Surely too much money has been spent on the cast and the 3D rather than on fashioning an intelligent, funny script.”
Destroying classic tales through cash-grabs.
Metascore ratings have Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil at a bottom out low of 20, making this very expensive sequel a total bust. When more money goes into marketing than the story itself, it’s no wonder that audiences are fed-up with production companies wasting their time and money. Even a child would demand a refund for this flop.
18 Best: Just Keep Swimming With Finding Nemo
Produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures, Finding Nemo has received universal acclaim. The cartoon movie won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated in three more categories, including Best Original Screenplay. Finding Nemo was the highest-grossing animated film at the time and was the second-highest-grossing film of 2003, earning $871 million worldwide.
Rotten Tomato critic score of 99%
Finding Nemo was directed by Andrew Stanton and starred Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, and Willem Dafoe. Capturing the hearts of adults and kids, the film had the highest DVD sales of the decade until it was pushed out of first place by Frozen (2013). Not that there’s anything wrong with ice princesses, but fish just happen to be cooler.
17 Worst: Never Getting Off The Ground In Planes
Aviation has always captured the imagination of kids and adults, especially when told through a compelling and action-based story. Planes, however, did neither. Created as a spin-off of Pixar’s Cars franchise, it’s not produced by Pixar. Instead, it was produced by DisneyToon Studios.
In what seems like a greedy move by Disney, the cartoon movie Planes tanked in the box office due to the mouse thinking they could do better than Pixar. The film scored a 25 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, giving the Cars franchise a bad name. Although, Cars 3: Driven to Win has still grossed over $383 million worldwide since its release in June 2017. Disney of all companies should know the old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t try to capitalize off it with a crappy spin-off.”
16 Best: Stop-Motion Brilliance With The Nightmare Before Christmas
Created as a stop-motion animated musical, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas altered history in how cartoon movies could be made. Based on a poem written by Tim Burton in 1982, the film would be the first animated movie nominated for an Academy Award in Best Visual Effects. It’s also the first ever stop-motion feature film converted into 3D.
Rotten Tomatoes score of 95%
Disney was unsure about it, claiming it was “too dark and scary for kids,” so it was released through Touchstone Pictures instead. The crew contained over 120 workers, using 20 different sound stages simultaneously for filming.
Director Henry Selick described the production design as
“akin to a pop-up book.” Over 227 puppets were made to represent the characters in the movie, with Jack Skellington having “around four hundred heads.” This allowed him to max out expressions for every possible emotion.
15 Worst: No Yellow Brick Road In Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
It wouldn’t be a proper best and worst ranked list if we didn’t throw in a bit of controversy. Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return was a 3D computer-animated film directed by Will Finn and Dan St. Pierre. It premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France and is loosely based on the book Dorothy of Oz by Roger Stanton Baum.
The cartoon movie contained quite a few noticeable names such as Lea Michele, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Kelsey Grammer, Hugh Dancy, Megan Hilty, Oliver Platt, Patrick Stewart, Bernadette Peters, and Martin Short.
Critics Rotten Tomato score of 16%
Audiences, however, disagreed with the critics, giving Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return a Rotten Tomato score of 68 percent. While some labeled it as a cash-grab, others disputed that the story was strong despite a weak animation. Financially, it only grossed $18.7 million worldwide against a $70 million budget.
14 Best: Chopped Munchies With Ratatouille
Directed and co-written by Brad Bird, Ratatouille is Pixar’s 8th film produced. Grossing $620.7 million at the box office, this cartoon movie won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2007. Ratatouille features the voices of Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, and Peter O’Toole.
Critics raved over the film, giving it a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes while audiences were slightly less impressed with a high 87%. Bird wanted the animation to be spot on, so he consulted with gourmet chefs from the U.S. and France. He also had the animators attended cooking classes at San culinary schools in the Francisco-area.
The result was an amazing love story featuring rats and some good-looking food. Ratatouille gets high praise for pulling off such a risky and unusual concept.
13 Worst: Donkey! In Shrek The Third
Produced by DreamWorks Animation, Shrek the Third was directed by Chris Miller and Raman Hui. While this third installment within the Shrek franchise isn’t the worst entry on this list, it was still downright painful to sit through. Which is a shame considering the first Shrek beat out Monsters, Inc. for an Oscar.
Shrek the Third bombed because of its complete lack of depth. Audiences were familiar with the characters, but nothing new or exciting was added to what already existed. Which meant moviegoers got a bland romantic trope story told through repetitive jokes and predictable actions.
Despite it being the worst in the franchise, audiences still gave Shrek the Third a 52% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while critics put it at 41%. As for DreamWorks, it would be the worst reviewed project ever to have their name on it.
12 Worst: Going Country With Brother Bear
Released in 2003, Brother Bear was Disney’s 44th feature animated film. Like The Last Jedi, this film created a vast split between critics and casual moviegoers. Critics gave Brother Bear a 38% score on Rotten Tomatoes while audiences were higher at 64%.
Directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker, one of the films biggest complaints involved it falling short of what most expected from Disney regarding cartoon movies.
Louise Kennedy from the Boston Globe sums it up nicely by saying, “Give one chef eggs, cream, and sugar, and he’ll produce crème brûlée. In another kitchen, you’ll get plain old vanilla pudding. What we have in Brother Bear, for all the potentially tasty ingredients, is a pudding.” While another critic latently stated, “[It’s a] Lackluster story only for kindergarteners.”
11 Best: I’m Watching You Wazowski In Monsters, Inc.
Playing off the old but solid tales of monsters under the bed, Monsters, Inc. made over $577 million worldwide back in 2001. And for those unfamiliar with prices in 2001, an average movie ticket was $5.65 as opposed to $8.65 set in 2017.
Produced by (you guessed it) Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Pete Docter, Monsters, Inc. scored a 96% from critics and a 90% off audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Docter tapped into the idea of toys coming to life from Toy Story and wanted the same for monsters hiding in a child’s closet.
The original story was vastly different than the finished product.
For 4 years, the story went through some drastic changes and adaptations before settling on the one featured in this classic cartoon movie. To give you an idea as to how much it evolved, the original story featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters he drew in a book as a child, coming back to bother him as an adult.
10 Worst: Biker Cow In Barnyard
Produced by Nickelodeon Movies and directed by Steve Oedekerk, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals has a 22% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The cartoon movie had some big names doing voices such as Kevin James, Courteney Cox, Sam Elliott, Danny Glover, and even Wanda Sykes.
What turned off critics and audiences the most was the depressing overtones followed by standard played out tropes. One critic on Rotten Tomatoes classified the film as a, “Case study in just how quickly and thoroughly computer-animated studio releases have declined to a state of inspiration-depleted, assembly-line anthropomorphism.”
While an audience reviewer stated it was, “Full of depth, emotion, and hilarious jokes, barnyard is like a Disney film except funnier and more moving. Nice little side twists, and good animation as well.”
9 Best: Going Minion With Despicable Me
Produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, Despicable Me grossed over $546 million worldwide, against a budget of $69 million. Its success at the box office spurred on two sequels, along with two Minion movies too. Directed by directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud (first feature film), the movie was animated by a French animation studio called Mac Guff (later acquired by Illumination Entertainment).
Despicable Me had plenty of big-name voices like Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Will Arnett, and Julie Andrews. Yet, despite its enormous success, critics and audiences gave it a 81.5% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Accolades for Despicable Me include dozens of nominations, along with winning the Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globes.
8 Worst: Loose Nuts In The Nut Job
Squirrels are interesting creatures that have won audiences over in the past, but with The Nut Job, things didn’t go as planned. Featuring a purple squirrel named Surly, the movie tanked with critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes score was a measly 11%, although audiences were more apathetic with a score of 43%.
Perhaps it was big name voices like Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Dunham, Liam Neeson, and Katherine Heigl that saved it for audiences.
But overall, the cartoon movie failed to live up to its expectations.
One critic summed up their experience by saying, “This is the cinematic equivalent of a nut with no kernel, a film with no heart.” Another stated, “Small, undemanding children might find this distracting; small, tree-hopping rodents may be mortally offended.”
7 Best Anime Of All Time: Spirited Away
Spirited Away was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki while being produced by Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki based the film off his 10-year-old daughter’s friends while writing a Japanese and mythical spirit world type of story. Spirited Away is the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $289 million worldwide, while also receiving widespread critical acclaim. This was in 2001.
To date, Spirited Away has made over 30.4 billion.
Critics and audiences agreed with the accolades, giving it a score of 96.5% on Rotten Tomatoes. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards while being listed as the highest-ranking animated film of the 21st Century.
If you’re looking for a good cartoon movie to enjoy, Spirited Away won’t leave you disappointed.
6 Worst: George Lucas Flop With Strange Magic
Strange Magic is the first Lucasfilm Animation project to be distributed by Walt Disney Studios. Directed by Gary Rydstrom and inspired by William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the film totally failed to connect with critics and moviegoers. The only other full-length animation movie made by Lucasfilm was the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars film (which did way better than Strange Magic).
Despite having a Shakespeare reference and names like Lucasfilm and Disney attached to it, the cartoon movie only grossed 13 million at the box office worldwide.
Critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is resounding low of 18%
Audiences supported the film slightly better, mostly due to loyalty, rating Strange Magic at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. The most startling part of this whole tale is that Gary Rydstrom had previously won seven Oscars for his work and had been nominated 17 times.
Note to George Lucas, don’t make a film based off a book most were forced to read in middle school.
5 Best: Modernizing Old School With The Incredibles
Featuring another film directed by Brad Bird, The Incredibles grossed over $633 million worldwide during its original theatrical run in 2004. Bird created this cartoon movie as an extension of the comic book and spy films from his childhood and family life (1960s). He even brought most of his staff from Iron Giant (1999) with him, despite it not being a huge success.
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes have The Incredibles scored at a huge 97%, but audiences only slated it at 75%. Given the excitement building around the belated release of its sequel coming in 2018, audiences apparently have had a change of heart. It won two Academy Awards in 2004, along with being given the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
4 Worst: Freezing Cold Scores For Norm Of The North
Directed by Trevor Wall and featuring the voices of Rob Schneider and Heather Graham, Norm of the North was a total flop. Audiences scored the film at a whopping low of 22%, and for good reasons.
Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%
One audience reviewer stated, “Norm of the North consistently underestimates how smart children can be and settles for a lazy, and rather [bigoted] environmental tale that suffers from dull animation and a slapped together plot.”
While Jen Chaney over at the Washington Post said, “Think of every trope associated with animated family movies and you’ll find them all in Norm of the North, a thoroughly uninspired story of a polar bear attempting to save his habitat from a hypocritical hippie seeking to develop condos in the Arctic.”
3 Best: Getting Trippy With Alice In Wonderland
Based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland was Disney’s 13th official cartoon movie produced. Walt Disney (the man himself) first attempted to adapt Alice into an animated feature film during the 1930s. The idea was scrapped but brought back to life in the 1940s. Alice in Wonderland was originally intended to be a live-action/animated film, but Disney decided to make it a full cartoon movie in 1946. It wouldn’t make it to the big screen, however, until 1951.
While not every generation may agree with Alice in Wonderland being the best cartoon movie of all time, you can’t argue the impact it had on audiences over the last 65-plus years. It was way ahead of its time and has since been regarded as one of Disney’s greatest animated classics. As of 2016, it was one of only 6 movies which broke the one billion all-time mark.
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