All 56 Walt Disney Animated Classics: Ranked From Worst To Best

35. Fantasia (1940)

Fantasia is definitely a landmark achievement in animation, and there's no denying its impact on modern music video making, but it is a far more technically astounding than it is traditionally entertaining. Yes, there are sequences - like The Sorceror's Apprentice - that are more narratively typical, but it's not the sort of thing that children would sit and watch endless - which is sort of the barometer for quality in Disney films.

Perhaps that's because it's a film designed more for adults (its very idea of painting a narrative for music is particularly grown up as an idea), but it isn't to say that there isn't charm or a level of more disposable entertainment that younger audiences would still appreciate.

The film regularly appears on Top 100 of all time film lists, and that's hard to argue with in a vacuum, at least - but taking into account what makes great Disney film great, it falters somewhat in direct competition.

34. Alice In Wonderland (1951)

Alice In Wonderland is a curious affair: it is at once charming and peculiar, but it is neither as glossy nor as spell-binding as some of the classics released around it, and it actually misses the outright strangeness of the book. That much is a shame, but there is a lot of pleasure to be had in Disney's psychedelic interpretation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale.

Alice... was actually a commercial flop for Disney, perhaps because of the creative liberties taken that excised key scenes and Americanized the story for broad family audiences. Inevitably, literary brains balked at the very idea and warned fans away. But that wasn't the only reason for the lack of success...

For all of the whimsy and the impressive character chapters, Alice is not a very good lead. She lacks the warmth of other Disney heroines and is a little stuffy, in all honesty.