Well, Top Ten Lists are very popular here – but I decided to do it a little bit different, mostly because I don’t think that there is an infinitive list for me. It’s more that I like some movies and characters more and some I like less. So I put the movies in three categories: Top, Middle and Bottom.

My Three Bottom movies:

In general, I hate movies with plot holes – but concerning Disney Princess movies, I’m much more forgiving about logical lapses in the classic ones than in the ones from the Renaissance era onwards. Not because of nostalgia, but because the premise of those movies is much different. The classic ones are more or less build like Fairy Tales – and Fairy Tales don’t have to be logical. They are more about symbolism than about the characters in it. Because of that, I don’t really mind if it makes sense that a good fairy suddenly turns up – it’s more about an emotional experience than anything else. But from Ariel onwards, they are less Fairy Tales and more stories which expect from me to take the characters in them seriously. I don’t mind this, in fact, I’m glad that Disney took that route – but that also means that I expect some sort of inner logic in the story. I think the worst offender in this regard is Aladdin. Seriously, is everyone in Aghraba blind? Let’s take tally: The wardens are unable to recognize Jasmine, Jasmine needs ages to recognize Aladdin, Razul never recognizes him at all (but if he did, I would at least understand why he is ready to kill a foreign prince), Jafar needs to see the lamp to make the right connection, and that nobody ever noticed Jafar hypnotizing the Sultan until Aladdin came around, is beyond me. At this rate, the Sultan is the most intelligent person in the palace – he at least has the excuse that he is under a spell for most of the movie.

The Princess and the Frog is a little bit iffy too, especially concerning the rules of the curse, and how exactly Facilier plans to provide his friends on the other side with souls, but it’s not too bad. My problem with this movie lies more in the characters and their development. Tiana is very admirable, but I don’t relate easy to her. I don’t see what is charming about a lazy womanizer like Naveen. Mama Odie and Louis just puzzle me – I have no idea what to think about them. Ray I might like, if not for his butt jokes, because I really, really dislike this kind of humor, and I’m not sure if his existence really adds anything to the story – in fact a lot of characters in the movie, like Tiana’s mother, Stella, the snake, are just there, there don’t seem to be a real purpose for them. The only character I really like and can easily relate to is Lottie.

Plus, the movie is somewhat imbalanced, though not as imbalanced as Pocahontas. Seriously, the pace of this movie is terrible. It takes ages for Pocahontas and John to meet, ages until they are discovered – it only gets really interesting when Kokoum is killed, and that’s near the end of the movie. Everything before is just build-up, and the pay off for it is terrible. First Pocahontas is moping around, and when she finally decides to act, she only had to throw herself over John and everything is more or less okay. Not even the villain defeat is exiting – he gets taken in custody, that’s it. All the scenes between Meeko and Percy are filler, nothing more.
There is also a problem I have with Pocahontas herself: There is nothing new about her. When Ariel came along with her “I want mooooore” philosophy, it was interesting because it was a new approach for Disney. When Belle followed it was still interesting, because she showed the other side of the spectrum, less flawed, therefore less interesting, but also much more relatable for the general audience. Jasmine brought nothing new in this regard, but she is excused, because not she but Aladdin is the main character of the movie, and his “I want moooooore” dreams were really understandable considering that he had nothing to begin with. But Pocahontas is just the tired old concept they had already used three times in a row.



My three middle movies:

This are the movies I really like, but I think lack the certain something which elevates them from all the other Disney movies. There is Cinderella – a movie I adored during my childhood, but also has the filler problem. Really, most of those scenes with the mice lead nowhere – but they are funny, so I don’t mind them much. I like what’s in the movie (especially the use of space in the animation) – but I’m not so blind that I don’t see what’s missing.

Then The Little Mermaid – don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the movie. It’s a good story, which is told very well, with some really interesting twists , and as I already pointed out, Ariel’s character was a new direction for Disney. I used to be a little bit peeved about the ending, but over the years I learned to love the father/daughter aspect Disney added . But while it is an important part of Disney history, there are a lot Disney movies, which are similar impressive.

And finally Mulan – a movie I like a little bit more each time I watch it, but nevertheless seems to lack the last step to make it one of the unforgettable ones. What is strange about this movie is that it looks like one of those typical Renaissance Era Princess Movies, but when you look closer, it really isn’t. Mulan is the first princess who seeks out adventure for the sake of others. She is the first one, who got a real character development. All the princesses before her didn’t really change at all. They were unhappy with their life, something happened to them (for the Classic Princesses) or they did something (in the Renaissance Era), and in the end they were happy. They didn’t change, the world around them changed. Mulan on the other hand learns more during her training than just fighting. She learns the discipline she was lacking beforehand, she learns how to assert herself better and at the end of the movie, she is a confident woman as opposed to the unsure teenager from the beginning. The society she lives in is mostly still the same, but she has won the strength to face it. Because of that, I tend to see her more in one group with Tiana and Rapunzel, who also discovering themselves during their movie – the first of the modern princesses, whose movie sadly came out at the end of the renaissance era.


My three top movies:

I’m well aware that Tangled gets a lot of criticism – for being 3D and CGI, for not being creative enough, aso. I would like to address two of the issues here: In my opinion, there is no better or worse in traditional animation vs CGI, in 2D vs 3D. They are simply different kind of storytelling. I don’t want the Animation studios giving up traditional animation entirely – that’s what makes them big, and there are story which work better told this way. Rapunzel’s is not one of them. This hair had to be CGI, and the result is stunning.
And concerning how creative Rapunzel’s character is: People concentrate too much on what is similar to Ariel and other Disney Princesses to see what is different. As characters go, Rapunzel is a fairly unique creation. Yes, she talks to animals like all the princesses before her. Yes, she is well liked by everyone she meets – like all the princesses before her, so don’t try to tell me she is too perfect because of that. But she also has a lot of quirks (is sometimes downright bi-polar), and her motivations are vastly different from the ones of the other princesses. Her desire to leave the tower is not the same as Ariel’s desire to leave the sea. Ariel breaks a rule, which is there for a reason, for the safety of her and the whole merfolk, and to which everyone in her society is subjected to, including her father. Rapunzel breaks a rule, she alone is subjected to, and she only does it when she realizes, that she will never get the permission from Mother Gothel to do, what everyone else in the world is allowed to do. She basically stands up and says: I am of age now, and now I want to enter the adult world. Her journey is, similar to Mulan’s, a coming of age – story, with the main difference that she knowingly takes this path. Seeing the lights is just a symbol for experiencing the real world, and what she searches for is not what she finds in the end. Mulan and Tiana go a similar path, but what they get is very close to what they want – Mulan thinks she wants to help her father, perhaps bringing honor to the family and proving her worth, but what she really wants is to be accepted how she is. Tiana wants the restaurant, but for all the talk in her movie about the difference between what one wants and what one needs, in the end she gets both, the restaurant and the love. Rapunzel wants to see the lights, but she doesn’t even know herself why this is so important, and in the end she “sees the light” in seeing the truth. What she gets in the end is far removed from everything she originally wanted, and isn’t that the reality of life? That for all our plans, we never knew were we will end up?
But enough about that – sorry for going so much into detail, but I had the feeling that my fondness for Tangled had to be explained. At this point it’s difficult to say how well it will age, and how it will be regarded in ten to twenty years, but my prediction is that it will be one of those movies which prevail.

With Beauty and the Beast there is no question, this movie is simply unforgettable, and not just because it got an academy award nomination for the best picture. It’s just one of those movies in which everything comes together perfectly – I watched it three times when it came into the theaters. There is not a single thing in it I don’t like.

Sleeping Beauty is less perfect concerning storytelling, but it’s such a work of art, I simply don’t care. There will never ever be another movie like this, because nobody would pay for all the artists necessary to draw a movie masterpiece with the hand. I love the music (yes, even the pieces which are generally perceived as boring), I think that the climax is one of Disney’s best.

Yeah, I’m sure many of you noticed that I skipped a movie: Snow White and the seven dwarves. And truthfully, I don’t really want to put it into this ranking. Being the first one, it is and will always be the most important movie Disney ever did. It has its flaws, in fact, if I really wanted I could rip it to sheets concerning the plot, but the animation is still impressive, even after all this years, and I really don’t want to criticize it – between this movie and Cinderella more than a decade went by, that’s a lot of time to perfect the technique. It wouldn’t be fair to criticize it too hard, because it was the first try. Neither would it be fair to simply ignore the problems this movie has. Because of that, I don’t rank it. It’s simply a very special one.