Animated family films have been a staple of entertainment culture for nearly a century and offer a rich catalog of adventures, fables, fairy tales and dramas. The very best, including these eight beloved features, continue to enrich, move and challenge their audiences, both children and adults.
‘Fantasia’ (1940)
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One of the most justifiably beloved animated films ever made, “Fantasia” still mesmerizes audiences today with its unique, plotless combination of music and imagination. It can also be thought of as a kind of early music video, given that it sets eight pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski against the backdrop of Disney’s pioneering animation.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the most famous segment, sees a put-upon Mickey Mouse using a wizard’s magic hat to fill a cauldron with water, with disastrous and hilarious results. A movie that represented Walt Disney’s “desire that animation be taken as seriously as any other art form,” it remains a kind of “demo reel for some of the most inventive animation in the history of the medium,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Endings. (Disney+)
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‘Toy Story’ (1995)
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Audiences may not have known it at the time, but “Toy Story” completely revolutionized the industry as the first fully computer-animated film. The first feature from then-brand-new Pixar Studios, it boasted an irresistible premise and landed Tom Hanks as Woody, a cowboy doll who serves as the ringleader of a band of sentient toys who come to life when humans aren’t in the room.
They fear that they are about to be replaced when Andy (John Morris) turns six and receives an astronaut toy, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), who hilariously does not understand that he is a toy and not a person and quickly becomes the boy’s new favorite. A film that “still remains a genius piece of cinema for its own insight on what it feels like and truly means to be loved in the world,” the film “remains a huge staple for pop culture in the many years that have passed since its release,” said Jaime Rebanal at Cinema From the Spectrum. (Disney+)
‘Spirited Away’ (2001)
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One of the few films by legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki to find a significant audience outside of Japan, “Spirited Away” follows a 10-year-old girl, Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi), who is plunged into an Alice in Wonderland-like underworld when she and her parents take a shortcut on their way to their new home. Her parents are turned into pigs and she must battle the powerful witch Yababa (Mari Natsuki) to get them back.
Unlike most American family movies, the themes aren’t driven home with an unsubtle anvil, making it possible for younger viewers to see and interpret Chihiro’s struggles for themselves. The film features “baroque visuals and freewheeling dream-logic narrative,” creating a “dreamlike fairytale that appears both exotic and yet strangely familiar and whose surface eccentricities can’t conceal its very human soul,” said Jasper Sharp at the British Film Institute. (HBO Max)
‘A Bug’s Life’ (1998)
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Often confused with a conceptually similar animated film released the same year (“Antz”), Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life” has stood the test of time much better. Flik (Dave Foley) is an ant who chafes at his colony’s subservient relationship with the grasshoppers, for whom they must always produce an “Offering” in the form of a food mountain. When Flik accidentally spills the Offering, Hopper (Kevin Spacey) threatens the whole colony, and Flik fights back. A film that uses “animation to visualize a world that could not be seen in live action and could not be created with special effects,” it is “about the fate of the colony and not so much about individuals,” like so many other animated features, said Roger Ebert at the time. (Disney+)
‘Mulan’ (1998)
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Not to be confused with the 2020 live-action remake, the original “Mulan” was a revelation. Fa Mulan (Ming-Na Wen) takes her ailing father’s place as a conscript by disguising herself as a man to help repel the invading Huns.
Eddie Murphy turns in a career-highlight performance as Mushu, a small dragon sidekick who helps Mulan on her quest. This kind of gender reversal was groundbreaking for its time, especially for a Disney empire not exactly known for its strong female heroines. “Mulan” remains a musical touchstone due to its “beautiful animation, strong and determined heroine, and a series of absolute bangers on the soundtrack,” said Kayleigh Donaldson at Den of Geek. (Disney+)
‘Lilo & Stitch’ (2002)
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The more traditional, almost anime-style animation in “Lilo and Stitch” is a sharp contrast with the computer-animated Pixar films that have dominated most of the new century. An alien known only as Experiment 626 (Chris Sanders) flees his home planet and crash-lands in Hawaii, where he is adopted by a grieving young girl named Lilo (Daveigh Chase), who takes him for a dog and dubs him Stitch.
Lilo and Stitch have one main commonality: They are both, in their own ways, on the run — Stitch from interplanetary authorities and Lilo from a social worker who doesn’t believe that her older sister, Nani (Tia Carrere), can handle raising her. A film distinguished by its “sharp wit and its portrayal of how broken families sometimes fit back together,” Disney’s hit film “gets to have its sentiment and keep its teeth,” said Keith Phipps at The AV Club. (Disney+)
‘WALL-E’ (2008)
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On a windswept, ruined future Earth, a solitary Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class (WALL-E) robot (Ben Burtt) builds skyscraper-like towers out of compacted trash and finds a single, fragile plant growing in the wasteland. When a chic reconnaissance robot named EVE (Elissa Knight) arrives to scan the planet for life, she whisks the smitten WALL-E back to her mothership, the Axiom, which contains the obese, helpless people who are the descendants of the humans who evacuated the planet centuries earlier.
“WALL-E” manages to be hilarious and moving without sacrificing its sharp and often bleak critique of contemporary consumerist society and its pathologies. A “resounding work of commercial art,” this dystopian fantasy “contains a raw emotional center atop of several strains of social commentary, each an exacting reflector designed to rouse its audience out of their cultural apathy,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Disney+)
‘Up’ (2009)
In the widely beloved cold open of Pixar’s “Up,” Carl and Ellie are adventure-loving childhood friends who later fall in love and make a life together, the contours of which are conveyed movingly in a five-minute montage that ends with her passing and most of the audience weeping. The despondent Carl (Ed Asner) walls himself in the home they shared until he decides to tie helium balloons to it and float away rather than move into a retirement home.
Unfortunately, he has a stowaway, eight-year-old Russell (Jordan Nagai), who accompanies Carl to Paradise Falls, a destination Carl never got to visit with Ellie. The film’s emotional core is “tender but never mawkish,” which allows it to “take animation to higher (and deeper) places than it’s been before,” said Dana Stevens at Slate. (Disney+)
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