The Disney company has released countless animated movies since 1937, from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to “Strange Magic” to the upcoming “Ice Age: Boiling Point.” However, not all are part of the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon, which is currently comprised of 64 movies hailing from Disney’s first in-house animation studio. Titles from Lucasfilm, Pixar Animation Studios, DisneyToon Studios, 20th Century Studios Animation, and other labels are kept firmly separate from this catalogue that began with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” But just because Walt Disney Animation Studios didn’t make Valiant,” though, doesn’t mean it’s devoid of films that didn’t win over audiences.
This reality is exemplified by the five lowest rated Walt Disney Animation Studios canon titles on Letterboxd (ranked below from “highest” Letterboxd user rating to lowest). These five films are a far cry from the Disney Animation Studios releases that kids beg to rewatch endlessly or adults talk about in a nostalgia-induced haze. Instead, these projects often left audiences frustrated due to flaws like annoyingly pervasive narration, subpar musical numbers, or creepy political overtones. Anything is possible with pixie dust, but anything is also ominously possible when Disney animated films go awry.
The Walt Disney Animation Studios canon is home to countless revered projects that are permanently seared into the cultural consciousness. On the opposite end of the spectrum from “The Jungle Book” and “Frozen,” though, are these five titles that left Letterboxd users cold.
5. Fun and Fancy Free
When World War II made producing and distributing a costly animated feature film like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” or “Pinocchio” unfeasible in the 1940s, Disney turned to a different form of filmmaking. This is where the “package features” came into play. These titles were “packaged” of short subjects and wraparound segments rather than telling one extended narrative for 80-90 minutes. While a handful like “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad” have garnered positive reputations, most haven’t aged spectacularly well, hence why they dominate this list.
One package feature largely greeted with a shrug by Letterboxd users is “Fun and Fancy Free,” which has a 2.7 rating on the site. The two stories here include the saga of the circus bear Bongo and a retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk” starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. While “Fun and Fancy Free” is held in far higher esteem than every Mickey Mouse horror movie, this was far from the rodent’s finest hour. “Fun and Fancy Free” lacked especially memorable gags and featured too much gratuitous narration. Letterboxd reviewers especially lambasted the intrusive antics of Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummy persistently cropping up in the “Beanstalk” story.
With the limp antics of “Fun and Fancy Free” characters like Bongo, Disney Animation was clearly in a grizzly, er, grisly artistic period. A return to more ambitious movies like “Sleeping Beauty” couldn’t come soon enough.
4. Make Mine Music
Multiple entries in Disney’s package feature era seem to exist solely to embody the phrase “we have ‘Fantasia’ at home.” These are the package features comprised of music-driven segments that lack the bombastic artistry and grandiose audacity of “Fantasia.” One of these was 1946’s “Make Mine Music,” which Letterboxd users bestowed with a 2.7 average rating. Needless to say, “Make Mine Music” is far from one of the best movies of the 1940s, and a severe step down from the Walt Disney Animation Studios entries it evoked.
Most of the Letterboxd reviews for “Make Mine Music” largely focus on its bizarre lack of home video and streaming releases (it’s the only Disney Animation Studios feature not on Disney+, chiefly). While it is fascinating to consider that Disney inexplicably kept “Make Mine Music” off of the Blu-Ray format until 2021, lingering on such facts speaks to how little “Make Mine Music” offers as a movie. Save for the “Peter and the Wolf” segment and another involving a singing whale, Letterboxd reviewers greeted the various “Make Mine Music” stories with a shrug.
There wasn’t enough here, especially in the animation or music, to lend the proceedings a distinctive identity. Mostly, Letterboxd loggers just registered boredom. No wonder “Make Mine Music” couldn’t escape the shadow of “Fantasia.”
3. Saludos Amigos
Part of the untold truth of Donald Duck is that this feathered cartoon star actually has more experience anchoring feature length theatrical movies than Mickey Mouse. The “Steamboat Willie” star may be on the Walt Disney Animation Studios logo, but Donald headlined multiple 1940s package features put out by the label. Among these was “Saludos Amigos,” one of two films centered on South American culture that came about after Walt Disney, at the urging of the U.S. government, visited countries like Brazil and Argentina on a Goodwill tour. There’s a fascinating history behind “Saludos Amigos,” but it isn’t enough to make the project compelling as a standalone entity.
With a 2.7 average Letterboxd rating, the general Letterboxd reviews for “Saludos Amigos” aren’t bad. Many even praise some of its most creative animation touches and laud its truncated runtime. However, users like Sally Jane Black also observe that the film is “Literally imperialist propaganda,” casting a dark shadow over the proceedings. Plus, while the brief runtime means “Saludos Amigos” isn’t torturously long, it also ensures the film never finds time to justify its existence.
This thinly sketched exercise doesn’t even offer oodles of misguided material for viewers to wade through after watching, like other Disney Animation Studios misfires like “Chicken Little.” These flaws and “meh” Letterboxd responses reflect how “Saludos Amigos” is one of the more disposable corners of Donald Duck’s cinematic exploits.
2. Melody Time
Not only is it time for another package feature, but it’s also time for another that’s clearly aping “Fantasia.” This anthology film gave audiences seven short stories driven by distinctive harmonies, with yarns including new renditions of the Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill legends, as well as a segment where Donald Duck has a tenuous encounter with the Aracuan Bird. This 1948 production only scored a 2.6 average rating from Letterboxd users, putting it far behind the reputation of the best Disney movies of all time. Heck, even several of the best Disney Channel original movies likely have better reputations than “Melody Time.”
Like “Make Mine Music,” “Melody Time” was deemed by Letterboxd users as a snore. Refrains referring to the project’s immense tedium are common amongst Letterboxd reviews. The dearth of compelling material at least led to some amusing opinions, like user JaFritt declaring, “I can’t really articulate what I mean but this is the most incel coded Disney film.” Across these takedowns, though, are pervasive sentiments that “Melody Time’ left an immense amount of potential on the table, especially with its disposable characters.
“Melody Time” was the penultimate entry in Disney’s package feature era, one of the bleakest stretches in the studio’s history. At least middling titles like this make it easier to appreciate the artistry behind “Fantasia.”
1. Wish
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
It’s no secret that Disney’s “Wish” bombed at the box office when it hit theaters in late 2023. It’s also no secret that this “celebration” of Disney’s 100th anniversary was a creative misfire, as seen by its 2.3 average rating on Letterboxd. The artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios had proven quite adept at delivering fun-filled classical musicals that had their own distinct identities with 2010s projects like “Tangled” and “Moana.” On “Wish,” though, those talents went out the window. This production was a formulaic speed-run through Disney Animation tropes delivered with no flair or idiosyncrasies. The result was something that felt infinitely creakier and dustier than “Tangled” from 13 years earlier.
A key problem here were the abysmal musical numbers. Modern Disney musicals utilized the incredible lyrical sensibilities of artists like Randy Newman, Alan Menken & Glenn Slater, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. “Wish,” meanwhile, had Julia Michaels and JP Saxe conjure up forgettable tunes like “I’m a Star.” Additionally, the “Wish” animation scheme evoking hand-drawn animation sensibilities just didn’t work and looked cheap more than anything else. An excessively crowded cast further hampered the already glaring storytelling problems.
Ariana DeBose giving the lead role of Asha everything she’s got in her voice-over performance wasn’t enough to salvage something as miscalculated as “Wish.” How fitting that the lowest-rated Walt Disney Animation Studios release on Letterboxd is something so beholden to Disney’s history.
