Warning: Some of the following rankings may prove controversial.

17. Frozen (2013)

Disney’s box-office juggernaut is far from a terrible film. It has an interesting central female figure in Elsa, a likable comic sidekick in Olaf the snowman, and a good score with some powerful songs (although I wish “Fixer-Upper” had been eliminated). But much like Brave, this film lost some of its magic for me on re-watch. While I found Elsa’s struggle with her powers compelling, her sister Anna struck me as a throwback to those old-school Disney princesses who had no observable hobbies or interests beyond falling in love. While she does prove resourceful on her journey to save her sister and bring summer back to Arendelle, she remains, even at the end, too defined by her relationship to others (first Elsa, then Hans, then Kristoff) to really inspire me as a viewer.

16. Ratatouille (2007)

This film has one big point in its favor: an enormously sympathetic protagonist in gifted aspiring chef Remy the rat. It’s impossible not to root for him as he seeks to master the culinary arts and, in doing so, broaden the perceptions of what it means to be a rat beyond the limits set by humankind on the one hand and his narrow-minded father on the other. Anyone who has ever felt as if the world were trying to squeeze them down to fit into a small box can identify with him. Yet even though this movie has not suffered on re-watch, it ranks as low as #16 thanks to two words: Smurfette Principle. Aside from the tough-but-tender cook Colette, the love interest of human protagonist Linguini, every single character, both human and rat, is male. The lack of other human women makes some sense, as it’s established that Colette has to battle the sexism of the restaurant industry. But why not one single female rat? Remy’s father, his brother, or heck, even Remy himself could have been female without any impact on the plot. What’s at work here is the concept of “Male as Default,” in which characters are only female when the narrative requires them to fill some female-coded role (i.e. Love Interest). If a character could be either male or female with little or no difference to the plot, that character defaults to Male, the “normal,” unmarked gender. This concept has kept the number of female characters in all forms of fiction and media small for centuries, and only very slowly are we managing to move beyond it.

(Those animation fans looking for a counterbalance to Ratatouille‘s male-heavy narrative should check out fellow nominee Persepolis, a film just as good if not better, with a very unique look and a strong story of a girl’s coming of age in Islamic Revolution-era Iran, based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic-novel autobiography.)

15. Up (2009)

This film and Ratatouille are actually neck-and-neck in my ranking, as what I like about them and what I find disappointing are very much the same. Like Ratatouille, Up features a very strong protagonist, although while Remy’s chief asset is his likability, Up‘s Carl Frederickson (masterfully voiced by Ed Asner) is memorable largely for his flaws; a grieving widower, he must learn to open his heart again as well as face down his childhood “hero” on his visit to Paradise Falls. Our rooting interest in Carl is solidified early on by a justly celebrated montage sequence in which we witness his marriage to his childhood friend Ellie, through years of hopes, disappointments, and supportive camaraderie. Ellie is shown to us in such a way that when she dies, we feel Carl’s loss along with him. Unfortunately, once Ellie disappears from the film after the first twenty minutes, no significant female character steps up to fill her vacant place. In Paradise Falls we meet Kevin the bird, but this silent creature has little to do beyond serving as a MacGuffin, a feathered damsel in distress. Also, as a mother bird with chicks, Kevin is female because she has to be. All the characters whose gender is incidental or irrelevant are male. “Male as Default” strikes again.

(The movie did give us the phrase “cone of shame.” That counts for quite a bit.)

14. Big Hero 6 (2014)

I don’t have much to complain about with this one. This superhero comedy-drama is fun. The world of San Fransokyo is endlessly creative, and while lead character Hiro’s personality isn’t as strong as Remy’s or Carl’s, he’s still easy to connect with. He’s surrounded by engaging supporting characters, including a pair of awesome heroines. And of course there’s Baymax. The bromance between Hiro and the lovable inflatable health-monitoring AI is the movie’s core. Yet for all its charms, it ranks at #14 because, for me anyway, it never quite rises to the heights of two extraordinary films it defeated in that year’s Animated Feature race: The Tale of Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea. Big Hero 6‘s win feels too much like a triumph of corporation over quality, a victory that happened because of those Academy voters who didn’t bother to watch all the nominees and just marked their ballots for the best-known film. (The “expected Stan Lee cameo,” however, actually means something in the movie. Alas, it will forever be a “one-shot.”)

13. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

This was a deserving win. The animation itself is gorgeous and innovative. Miles Morales is a solid protagonist with a more distinct personality than Hiro of Big Hero 6, and his story is compelling. The movie also gives us Spider-Gwen, the most active and interesting heroine to appear in Spider-cinema up to that point. It’s just not quite one of my personal favorites. (Its sequel, however, is.)

12. Toy Story 4 (2019)

I quite like this film in and of itself. The return of Bo Peep is a blast; finally the Toy Story franchise utilizes Annie Potts as she deserves. Several fun new characters are introduced, my favorite being Duke Kaboom (“Yes, we Canada!”). Plus, this is the first Pixar movie to give its villain a redemption arc, which I found refreshing. Yet while I enjoy the movie, did it need to exist? Sequels are tricky when the previous film ends with its characters in an almost perfect place; inevitably, the sequel will disturb that near-perfection, stirring up conflict where none needs to be. This is just what happens here, and it’s the main reason this movie has so many detractors. Toy Story 3 gave Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, and the gang the peaceful finale they deserved. Sadly, the sequel seems like a cash grab that turned out almost by accident to be a good movie.

“Animation is cinema.” — Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro

Over the past three decades of cinema, few films have captured my imagination as much, or as consistently, as each year’s most notable animated features. Those who make no distinction between animated movies and “kids’ movies” might call it a symptom of my unwillingness to leave my childhood behind, and I can’t say they’re altogether wrong. (Except when it comes to their belief that animation is “just for kids.” In that regard they are 100% wrong.) But I claim it has more to do with the quality of the films themselves. These works combine innovation, intelligence, and empathy, three characteristics I appreciate in any form of cinema but which aren’t frequently found together in live-action films, especially the so-called “Oscar bait” released each last quarter of the year.

It’s no accident that the same people who dismiss all animation as entertainment for children — a way of thinking tragically on display at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, when the presenters of the Best Animated Feature Oscar joked about kids forcing their parents to watch animated movies “over and over and over” when the parents would rather be watching something else — also tend to sneer at film genres like science fiction, fantasy, and musicals; afflicted with what C. S. Lewis referred to as a “childish” desire to appear very grown up, they feel that the colder and edgier a film is, the more insightful, and therefore valuable, it must be. I would respectfully refer them to the recent release Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which has been doing some strong box office. (I love when movies are popular because they deserve to be.) This movie, a visually striking masterpiece, tells a story more complex and thought-provoking than many live-action action-adventure films, placing its likable protagonists in situations where it’s next to impossible to do the right thing or even to figure out what that “right thing” is. And in this movie, the “right thing” could be so many things. In fact, it ends on a cliffhanger, so we don’t really know what that “right thing” is! But I digress.

Although mature tweens and teens would find much to enjoy — the characters are easy to relate to, and the action sequences are spectacular — Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not a “movie for children.” It’s also the likely front-runner in next year’s race for Best Animated Feature, unless Ruby Gilman: Teenage Kraken and Wish manage to surprise us. But will it garner the adapted screenplay nomination it deserves?

With this movie fresh in my mind, I’ve chosen to start a series ranking twenty-one of the twenty-two Best Animated Feature winners, from Least Favorite to Most. (I will not be ranking 2017’s Coco, as I have yet to see it.)

21. Happy Feet (2006)

This was a weak year for animated features, with three rather weak, mid-tier nominees, none of which might have managed to snag a nomination in a stronger year like 2009 or 2022. I do find certain aspects of Pixar’s Cars to be charming, particularly Paul Newman’s wise, warm turn as retired race car Doc Hudson, but I agree with the general consensus that it’s not among the studio’s top-notch efforts. Still, even Cars would have been a more deserving winner than the overlong and convoluted mess that is Happy Feet. I barely recall a thing about it, except the trouble I had staying interested in it past the halfway point and its adherence to the “Smurfette Principle” by having only one female character of any significance, whom it keeps on the sidelines for most of the run time. None of the characters made the slightest mark.

20. Rango (2011)

Like Happy Feet, this movie suffers from a meandering plot, and again, I found myself getting restless around the middle of its run time. I will acknowledge some of the character work is impressive, and some of its characters, namely Rango himself and his antagonist Rattlesnake Jake, made sort of an impact, certainly more than anyone in Happy Feet. But how a movie this flawed somehow managed to triumph over Dreamworks’ gorgeous, funny, fast-paced, moving, and always engaging Kung Fu Panda 2 is beyond my power to understand.

19. Soul (2020)

Maybe I haven’t been completely fair to this one, since I saw it after I had already fallen head over heels in love with the exquisite feminist animated fantasy Wolfwalkers, and nothing was going to change my mind that Cartoon Saloon’s film deserved Best Animated Feature. I nonetheless did my best to judge Pixar’s Soul on its own merits, and I found it wanting. While I do appreciate its creative depiction of the Afterlife, and I empathize with the movie’s flawed protagonist, a musician who dies in a pointless accident but who refuses to really, you know, die until he has played one magical gig, I took a hearty dislike to the secondary lead, an unborn soul dubbed “22” who refuses to be born because “Earth is boring.” Even after she underwent some character growth, I could not shake my dislike. This may have as much to do with me as with the character, since in real life I have next to no patience with blase’, unimaginative types whose favorite word is “meh” and who flatly refuse to be inspired by anything. Teachers’ Occupational Hazard, I suppose. Soul has its virtues, but it was not for me. (Also, would somebody please inform Disney/Pixar that calico cats are female? More on this when the time comes to talk about Big Hero 6.)

18. Brave (2012)

Pixar, who had previously invited us into the lives of toys, bugs, monsters, fish, and superheroes, finally gives us a movie with a female protagonist, and what do we get? A human princess. (Yawn!) One could, if one wished, read this as a commentary on how limited screenwriters’ imaginations still tend to be where female characters are concerned; while males can be absolutely anything, be it animal or inanimate, if a female is to lead the narrative she must be either human or, like Joy, Sadness, and Disgust in 2015’s Inside Out, humanoid. Still, this wouldn’t matter if the movie were stronger. When I first saw Brave, I found it charming, pleased with the grandeur of its medieval Scotland setting and its focus on a mother/daughter relationship, something we simply hadn’t seen in animated cinema before this movie happened. But it failed to hold up on re-watch. It disappoints me to see the heroine Merida being groomed for marriage rather than for rule, a mistake that 2016’s superior Moana would correct; I would find it much easier to see mother Elinor’s side of things if she were urging Merida toward the responsibility of government than toward a loveless political union. Plus, it chooses to inflict on us Merida’s monstrous triplet brothers, the three most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in a Pixar film (and remember, Pixar also gave us Tow Mater in the Cars franchise). While the characters in Happy Feet just bored me, these three I actively dislike. The bit where they, transformed into bear cubs, try to retrieve a key that a waiting woman has dropped down her bodice? Wrong on every level.

To Be Continued