disney films – 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. Please contribute your scores in the comments!

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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” →

A little more than a year and a half ago, my wife and I took the first tentative steps of what would become a monumental journey. We fired up our DVD player and inserted the disc for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Four months later, as the credits rolled on Monsters University, we had watched every single animated feature film from Walt Disney Studios.

From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to No White and the Six-and-a-Half Dorks — From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to White Background and the Six-and-a-Half Dorks

As a lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool, Disney fan, it had been easy to imagine that I had seen all of the films before. But, as it turns out, I was so, so wrong. Our first watch list had 68 titles: 52 from Walt Disney Animation Studios, 15 from Pixar Animation Studios, and one from DisneyToon Studios.

Because we committed our free time in the evenings and weekends on the films, I decided to use the viewing exercise as an opportunity to wrap my head around the entire Disney movie library. To accomplish this, I created the DONALD* system of movie rankings. This is a set of criteria intended to help a viewer think in critical terms, rather than just falling into the trap of saying: “I love Disney movies, therefore, this movie is wonderful.” Continue reading “It All Started With A Duck, Part One: Introducing the DONALD System for Ranking Disney Movies” →