Best animated movies of all time
Animated films have evolved from simple cartoons into some of the most emotionally powerful and visually stunning stories ever told on screen, captivating both kids and adults alike. From hand-drawn classics to cutting-edge CGI masterpieces, the debate over which animated film reigns supreme is as passionate as ever. Cast your vote and help crown the greatest animated movie of all time!
What counts: Seeded with approximate real-world figures — the crowd's votes decide the order from here.
▲ Rising
Chihiro's sulky whine dissolves into wide-eyed resolve the moment she steps into Yubaba's bathhouse, and Miyazaki never lets go of that spell again. It became the first non-English film to win the Animated Feature Oscar, proving hand-drawn fantasy could out-imagine anything CGI was building in America. No-Face, the stink spirit, the pig-parents — every frame argues that animation's job is to make the impossible feel remembered, not invented.
Release Year: 2001IMDb Rating: 8.6/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97 %Worldwide Box Office: $395,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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57▲ Rising
Mufasa's death under the wildebeest stampede is the moment an entire generation learned animation could gut-punch as hard as any drama, scored by Hans Zimmer and Elton John into pure operatic grief. It became the highest-grossing traditionally animated film ever made, the proof-of-concept that Disney's early-90s Renaissance wasn't a fluke. Its Shakespearean bones and Broadway afterlife earn it a permanent seat at the table, warts-and-hakuna-matata included.
Release Year: 1994IMDb Rating: 8.5/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93 %Worldwide Box Office: $968,000,000Oscar Wins: 2Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: —
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44▲ Rising
Miguel strumming 'Remember Me' to his ancient, fading great-grandmother Coco is the scene that turns a family talent-show detour into a devastating meditation on memory and death. Pixar took Día de los Muertos seriously enough to build an entire afterlife mythology around it, casting a nearly all-Latino voice cast and making generational grief the emotional engine instead of a villain twist. It's the rare film that makes an entire audience cry for a character who has barely spoken a word.
Release Year: 2017IMDb Rating: 8.4/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97 %Worldwide Box Office: $807,000,000Oscar Wins: 2Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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41▲ Rising
A rusted trash-compacting robot falls in love watching a VHS of Hello, Dolly!, and for forty nearly wordless minutes Pixar bets the whole movie on a gaze and a heartbeat sound effect — and wins completely. It's the boldest thing a mainstream animated studio has ever attempted, sneaking an eco-parable and a critique of consumerist stupor into a kids' film without ever feeling like medicine. The romance between two robots ends up more moving than most human ones, which is the whole audacious point.
Release Year: 2008IMDb Rating: 8.4/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95 %Worldwide Box Office: $521,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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31▲ Rising
Miles Morales leaping off that rooftop into free fall, Post Malone's 'Sunflower' swelling as the film finally trusts its own chaos, reset animation's ceiling overnight. Blending comic-panel linework, variable frame rates, and glitch aesthetics across six different animation styles, it made every subsequent superhero movie look visually timid by comparison. It didn't just win the Oscar — it embarrassed the notion that animated spectacle had to look like Pixar or nothing.
Release Year: 2018IMDb Rating: 8.4/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97 %Worldwide Box Office: $384,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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11▼ Falling
Woody and Buzz freefalling out of Andy's window and Buzz suddenly, gloriously flying is the instant computer animation stopped being a novelty and became cinema. The first fully CG feature film didn't just launch Pixar — it rewired what a family movie could look and feel like, proving toys could carry existential dread about obsolescence as easily as jokes about Mr. Potato Head. Every animated franchise after it is living in the house this film built.
Release Year: 1995IMDb Rating: 8.3/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100 %Worldwide Box Office: $373,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: —
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3The wordless four-minute montage of Carl and Ellie's entire marriage, ending with her empty chair, remains the most efficient tear-jerking sequence animation has ever produced — and the movie hasn't even started yet. Pixar then has the nerve to spend the rest of the runtime on floating houses, talking dogs, and a bird named Kevin without ever betraying that opening's emotional weight. It's proof that a kids' adventure movie can also be an unflinching meditation on grief, obsession, and finally letting go of the past.
Release Year: 2009IMDb Rating: 8.3/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98 %Worldwide Box Office: $735,000,000Oscar Wins: 2Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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-3▼ Falling
The incinerator scene — Woody, Buzz, and the gang silently joining hands to face death together — is one of the bleakest moments Pixar ever animated, and then it doesn't cheat the ending. Andy handing his toys to Bonnie and playing with Woody one last time turns a decade-plus saga about plastic action figures into the studio's purest statement on growing up and letting go. It's the rare threequel that earns its tears instead of just cashing in the franchise's goodwill.
Release Year: 2010IMDb Rating: 8.3/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98 %Worldwide Box Office: $1,067,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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-10▼ Falling
Marlin watching his entire family of eggs destroyed in one barracuda strike, leaving him one damaged son to smother with worry, sets up the most anxious parent in animated history — and the ocean-wide odyssey to cure that anxiety. Its photorealistic underwater world was a technical leap that made water itself a character, while Dory's 'just keep swimming' gave the film its emotional shorthand for resilience. It turned overprotective parenting into a genuinely gripping adventure plot, which nobody had really done before.
Release Year: 2003IMDb Rating: 8.2/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99 %Worldwide Box Office: $940,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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-22▼ Falling
Joy finally realizing that Sadness touching a core memory isn't a malfunction but the whole point of growing up is the moment Pixar turned a kids' movie into a functional thesis on emotional maturity. Personifying a preteen's mind as five bickering emotions inside literal headquarters was a structural gamble that could've been a gimmick, but it became a widely used shorthand in actual therapy rooms. Few animated films have done more to make it culturally acceptable, even cool, for kids to say out loud that they're sad.
Release Year: 2015IMDb Rating: 8.1/10Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98 %Worldwide Box Office: $858,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Studio: Won Best Animated Feature Oscar: ✓
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Comments (8)
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The rewatch value of the top pick settles this for me.
The writing in season one alone earns the top three spot.
Recency bias is real — the classics belong higher.
Awards never tell the story; the crowd has this one right.