The Worst Disney Films

[PridelandsPhantom]

Okay, what are the worst Disney films? Let's leave sequels out of it since most of them tend to be horrible.

1. Home on the Range: I admit I saw this in theaters when it came out and it has to be the worst movie to have Disney's stamp on it. The only two characters I really liked Lucky Jack and Buck the horse played by Cuba Gooding Jr. Buck was the funniest part of the whole movie. The plot was not very good nor the animation. The relationships between the cows are not believable and I find the whole yodeling plot to steal farm animals silly.

2. The Black Cauldron: This movie suffered in a lot of ways from being dragged out for a long time in the studio and not having very effective characterization. The storyline tends to get bogged down sometimes and you don't really feel a lot of sympathy for the characters. Gurgi tends to come off as annoying and a little thief rather than making you feel sorry he sacrificed himself. It's also got the Horned King who is scary, but there was something off about the film itself.

3. Fantasia 2000: I only watched half of this before I called it quits saying I couldn't watch anymore. Fantasia is a masterpiece, this is merely trying to be something epic and it isn't. It doesn't have the same charm as Fantasia.

4. Chicken Little: I haven't watched but bits and pieces but from what I can see it is terrible.

5. The Rescuers: I might get a lot of disagreement, but I really find it hard to watch this film. I do like the characters and their interactions with one another but having Penny go into a mine always made me cringe and cry as a child and Madam Medusa scared the daylights out of me! I just prefer The Rescuers Down Under.

[Elton John]

I haven't seen it but 'Mars needs moms' looks quite awful.

Out of the movies I have seen, The Rescuers was drab, boring, and just...bad. The Lone Ranger from a few years back. Tonally all over the place, boring for the most part... Disney spent 200 million on that?

[Rollo]

.

[TheLionPrince]

I hope everyone remembers that the Disney studios make more than just animated films, but live-action films and the latter has a stronger library of bad films.

In terms of their animated films, Home on the Range and Chicken Little are the bottom feeders of Disney animation. Their live-action division has: The Shaggy Dog (2006), Old Dogs, The Haunted Mansion, My Favorite Martian, and much more.

[quote="PridelandsPhantom"]5. The Rescuers: I might get a lot of disagreement, but I really find it hard to watch this film. I do like the characters and their interactions with one another but having Penny go into a mine always made me cringe and cry as a child and Madam Medusa scared the daylights out of me! I just prefer The Rescuers Down Under.[/quote]

What's so bad about that? The fact that you fear for the character(s) means the filmmakers did their job at making you care about them. In my humblest opinion, The Rescuers is a very good film, but it doesn't get enough credit for temporarily pulling Disney animation out from the creative mire of episodic storytelling and lackluster visuals. Nevertheless, the character animation in 1970s Disney animated films was always exceptional.

It's probably the opinion that it's included as the "dark age" of Disney animation that make people overlook this film even though the films of the 1970s has little artistic difference with The Jungle Book and The Sword in the Stone released during the 1960s. True, it has a rather standard story with not much flair or style to it, but it had heart and charm—and much more so than the sequel.

[zerodix]

my least favorite are the princess ones: snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty.. not that disney didn't do a wonderfull job on these, but it was a bit too girly for me, i preferres animal movies like aristocats, jungle book, even bambi, and tlk offcourse.
2nd i didn't have much with mickey mouse. somehow his voice and appearance turn on a switch in my head that makes me very, very irritated and hatefull.
for the rest, it took me long to appreciate pixar movies.. i don't like modernisation, and i feared it was the end of beautiful 2d animation, which i will always prefer over 3d. but with zootopia they proved masterpieces actually can be made with 3d.

[Squeely]

Not bad per se, but bordering on bad:
I got very bored watching The Sword in the Stone recently. I hadn't realized just how much the first half plods along when I was a kid. Also, Arthur has like three different voices, and I'm not sure why they didn't just have the kid re-record all his lines once he was through with puberty, or else hire a new actor. Also, it's flipping King Arthur, from the company that gave us Sleeping Beauty. I feel like there's so much potential for that same great magic-and-fairytale stuff here, but instead, what we got was pretty meh.

The Black Cauldron came much closer to same great style Sleeping Beauty had, but it faltered in too many regards. Taran was whiny, useless, and generally unlikable. Gurgi is annoying. None of the other characters are likable enough to save the film. And the film is sorta too dark n gritty in regards to the art style; it feels like there's a bit of a depressing atmosphere about it, which there shouldn't be in a Disney film. Something about it just feels sorta off. The Horned King is a pretty terrifying villain and I wish he was in a better movie.

The Rescuers has always bored me. It suffers the same problem that The Sword in the Stone did, in that it starts off too slow. Granted, I have no problem with slow starts to films if done well, but this felt like a drag. Penny felt overly-cutesy and Madame Medusa felt like a poor man's Cruella, so I just found it hard to get invested. The Rescuers Down Under fixed pretty much everything and is what The Rescuers should have been, in my opinion.

While I do like The Aristocats, I can't deny that the criticisms I've heard about it are valid. The stakes are really low here, probably the lowest they've been, in comparison to things like evil queens and Maleficent dragons. Edgar is a forgettable villain. There's not as much connection between characters as there usually is: we don't really get a whole lot building up the bond between Duchess and her kittens, for example, so we're less invested when she loses them. And there's a lot that feels like padding in an already-short film, especially the scenes with geese that add nothing to the plot. Add in the fact that Scat Cat's band being nothing but racial stereotypes has not aged well at all, and it's easy to see why this one doesn't land on most favorites lists.

You know, it's really baffling how meh Pocahontas turned out. With The Lion King having turned out spectacularly despite being a B-team effort, the A-team should have been able to churn out something more or less on par. Instead, we get the blandest characters in the entirety of the 90s renaissance. Even the character designs are kinda off here. While I do like them somewhat, it's quite jarring to go from big-eyed Aladdin and Jasmine to this attempt at a more realistic look. And it doesn't quite pull realism off effectively, perhaps because women are forbidden from having noses here. Pocahontas "listening with her heart" in order to speak fluent English is bs, but if you're going to go that route, why not have the animals talk? I get they were going for something different by not having talking animals, but they had the perfect reason for them to talk.

Hercules is something of a hot mess. When you think Disney and Greek mythology, you probably don't think of something quite so... Vegas-y? I don't hate it's style or tone, but ya kinda expect something more epic from this sorta thing. Also, Hades keeps up his end of every promise he makes, but Hercules doesn't. There isn't much to Herc, either. He's just your screw-up hero good guy. There's just something about Hercules that makes it all feel so meh.

What kills Fantasia 2000 is all the celebrity appearances. The animated parts themselves are really good. Not as great as the original's, but they do at times come close. But by god, the celebrities, so many awful "jokes" and so much congratulatory patting the film on the back before it's even over... Why, just why? Watch Fantasia 2000 with the remote handy, so you can skip the celeb crap.

Actually bad:
The Wild just feels so, so bland, on top of feeling like something of a mish mash between Madagascar and The Lion King, without any of their charm. There are too many stupid or unfunny jokes and too little that stands out about this to even make it halfway decent.

Unlikable characters, low quality of animation by Disney standards, and a by-the-numbers "save the farm" type story plague Home on the Range. I feel like the seeds of a good movie are buried somewhere in here - they could've stepped up the animation and maybe done some unique spins on the old save the farm cliche, and it would have felt a lot more unique. We learn too little about our characters, so it makes it hard to connect with them. Also, the hypnotic yodeling is a bit too out-there. I know it's kind of a play on the Pied Piper, but it's a really strange one that doesn't really work.

Chicken Little is flat-out terrible. Bad animation, bad character designs, and everyone is just so mean-spirited toward the titular character, especially his father. There's not being that good at being a father, and then there's being far too mean.

[Panda-chan]

I'm really glad this topic exists There aren't a lot of Disney movies I dislike that aren't sequels, but here goes.

1) Snow White and Sleeping Beauty: I lump these two together because I dislike them for the same reason: both princesses suffer horribly from Mary Sue Syndrome. It's very hard for anyone to relate to a character that is beautiful, good, and perfect in every way. It doesn't help that Snow White and Aurora are so bland and have barely anything that constitutes a personality. For both movies, I was way more interested in watching the antics of the side characters: the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White, and the three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty. Also I loved Queen Maleficent; her voice and design were perfectly suited for a villain.

2) The Aristocats: Dear god this movie was a cringefest. I remember literally waiting for the movie to end the entire time I was watching; even though it is apparently only 76 minutes long it felt much longer. The writing was dull, the songs were annoying, and there were a ton of filler characters that didn't need to be there. I just couldn't find myself caring if the kittens would return home or not, since the stakes were too low as TPAM mentioned. It's also very telling that I literally can't remember who the villain was or what his motivations were; that's how much of an impression he left on me.

3) Chicken Little: Another cringy movie I can't stand. I couldn't understand why the townsfolk were so mean-spirited and awful to a character that is literally just a kid with an overactive imagination. A lot of the jokes fell flat for me too; I think I only genuinely laughed once or twice the entire film. The premise of a town filled with animals had fun potential (this was done very well in Zootopia), but the writers never went anywhere creative with it. I also had a problem with the voice of the main character... it's jarring to hear an adult voice coming from such a tiny, obviously prepubescent chicken.

4) Bolt: I might be in the minority here, but this movie just didn't do it for me. The entire premise of a dog who thinks he's a superhero doesn't make any sense. I have a hard time believing that an owner who claims to love her pet dog so much would exploit him for money and let him live a lie his entire life. Rhino the hamster was also an incredibly annoying side character that was shoehorned halfway into the film as comic relief. I loved the little plot twist about Mittens being declawed and abandoned... but the movie just never delved into it very far and it felt so disappointing.

5) Brave: Meh. That's the only word I can use to describe this film. It's a shame, because the trailer set in an mystical forest in ancient Scotland seemed to be building up to something exciting, and then the film itself was just...meh. Merida has a horribly generic "I don't want to be a princess because I'm such a special snowflake!!!!!" personality which is honestly starting to get old as Disney tries too hard to reverse the stereotypical image of its female heroines. Also, the story of a family member who is accidentally turned into a bear has been done before.

[MeerkatOnTheMoon]

Found this thread out of the blue. Animation takes a lot of time and effort to make, so I want to acknowledge everybody who has ever worked on Disney animated features. That being said, "The Little Mermaid" takes the cake for being the worst on my list after "Home on the Range" and "Chicken Little". So she gives up everything she has for a man she doesn't even know on the basis of looks - and vice versa. I don't see any positivity in the message it tries to convey, and I generally don't like films where the leads are attracted to each other due to physical appearance alone. Stunning animation and music but that's about it for me.

[Stormy]

Bambi makes me bored to death. Not #1 the worst, but it’s one of the first that comes to mind when people ask about least favorite Disney films.

[Bunga2019]

Fantasia 2000