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.

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” →