Disney animated movies – Deep Forest Outpost

The DONALD Scores are rankings for Disney animated films that combine personal opinion with a pseudo-scientific veneer of hard data. For a full introduction to the DONALD system, please go here. Contribute your scores in the comments!

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Welcome to the best of the best: the top twenty of the Deep Forest Outpost DONALD Rankings. I have been excited about these posts for several years, ever since we finished watching all of the Disney animated movies in a four-month span (and inventing a quackery-filled method of ranking them). Although there is something to love in all the Disney films — even the oddballs — the list from 1-20 is filled with treasures.

cars-image-disney — Lightning McQueen never settles for anything less than first place. Tow Mater is probably fine with twentieth. Image by Disney.

Released in 2006, Cars was the seventh full-length feature film from Pixar, and a passion project of their chief John Lasseter. It was also Pixar’s first movie that was not met with universal acclaim.

Which presents a problem for this list: a couple of the more critically heralded releases are ranked lower than Cars in the DONALD matrix. But, as will be made clear below, the movie scores high in some key points to give it a well-deserved spot in our top quarter of Disney films. Continue reading “The DONALD Rankings Top 20: #20 Cars” →

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For the very first review under my new system, I decided start with an overlooked gem. It goes without saying that I will post reviews of all of the highest and lowest ranked movies. But with 70+ films on our list, and more coming every year, it may take a while to get to the titles in the middle.

Released in 2003, Brother Bear was squished between the surprise popularity of Lilo and Stitch and the ascendancy of Pixar and Finding Nemo. But Brother Bear was a decent entry in its own right, with good music, solid voice acting, and an interesting twist. In case it is not obvious, there are some plot spoilers below. Let’s jump to the numbers…

"Hooray, we're first!!" — “Hooray, we’re first!!”

Continue reading “It All Started With A Duck, Part Two: Now Starting With A Bear” →