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

5. The Little Mermaid (1989)

Sure, if you pick at The Little Mermaid's message, it can be read in pretty problematic terms - a girl gives up everything, defies her father and loses herself in order to be validated by a Prince she doesn't even know - but there's no denying that they cover it up with some lovely distractions.

Ariel might not be the most politically affirmative lead, but she's irresistibly appealing in an idealistic sort of way: she aspires, she dreams and she won't be downtrodden. And along the way she offers up some of the most unavoidably catchy songs (along with the excellent Sebastien the crab) and flees a villain who for once is as appalling to behold as her morality.

The Little Mermaid is a fairly simple world, where right and wrong are black and white terms, but it still has that intrepid, aspirational spirit that would later underpin the likes of Tangled and Frozen, and there's no getting around its part in their genetics.