140 Essential Animated Movies To Watch Now

The origins of the whiz-bang animated wonders we see today in the likes of Toy Story, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and How to Train Your Dragon date back more than a hundred years. Flip books and zoetropes revealed the mesmerizing power of animation to humans before movies were even invented in the late 19th century. And if you really wanted to journey back in time, look to prehistoric cave art where animals drawn with excessive pairs of legs created the illusion of motion when illuminated by fire – it might be considered the first animation.

So it was inevitable, practically human nature, that animation grew in tandem with cinema from the beginning. And it was only inevitable in the Internet age that someone, somewhere would pile up all the best feature-length animated films from the 20th century and beyond, rank them, and call the guide something like the 140 Essential Animated Movies Ever to Watch Right Now! Which is what you’ll find below.

All forms of the medium are featured here, from cel (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Land Before Time) to 3-D (Toy Story, Shrek), rotoscoped (Tower, A Scanner Darkly) to stop-motion (Chicken Run, Fantastic Mr. Fox), and oil canvas (Loving Vincent) to mixed media (Waltz With Bashir). Animation is frequently associated with specific studios, and to that end we have represented Disney (Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty), Pixar (WALL-E, Finding Dory), DreamWorks (How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda), Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service), and more.

How did we decide on the “Essential” 140? We looked at reviews, other “best of” lists, cultural impact, and applied some editorial discretion. They didn’t have to just be good – in fact, some are not so Fresh at all! – but they had to play a part in the history of the medium. These are the movies that have been passed on for generations, no matter how much style and artistic tastes change year-to-year. They’re the ones that parents and kids watch together, frequently becoming part of the family tradition. They’re the movies that pushed animation forward, and that inspire people to pick up the pen, pencil, or stylus and try to make their own mark in history with their own colorful stories.

Tomatometer scores were not a factor in ranking (besides the fact that it needed to have one), only feature films were considered, and movies with some live-action thrown in (The LEGO Movie, James and the Giant Peach) were fine, as long as the majority of their runtime was animated.

Whatever tickles your ‘toon, you’ll find it’s type here. Get drawn to the 140 essential animated movies ever! —Alex Vo

• Check out the 140 Essential Animated TV Shows