The 31 Best Animated Movies Ever Made
Focus Features
It’s strange to think it wasn’t too long ago that animated movies were pigeonholed as being something strictly for kids. In reality, they’re the most versatile form of filmmaking, allowing for a practically limitless expression of imagery, themes, ideas, and artistry. With that in mind, it’s unsurprising that the conversation about the best releases each year tends to include at least a few non-live-action films. From family-friendly films to true tear-jerkers, these are the best animated movies ever made.
RELATED: The 25 Best Animated TV Shows Ever Made .
The Cat in the Hat Productions / MGM Animation/Visual Arts / MGM Television
Is it possible to make it through the holidays without a rewatch of this perennial classic? Sure. But this iconic Dr. Seuss adaptation has arguably become one of the most comforting Christmas mainstays out there—thanks in no small part to its catchy songs.
And while there’s nothing wrong with the Jim Carrey version that came out decades later, the shorter runtime makes this animated TV special a tough tradition to skip.
20th Century Fox
If you ever needed proof that animation allows great directors to explore new artistic territory, look no further than The Fantastic Mr. Fox .
This Roald Dahl adaption—which covers the antics of a wily fox attempting to get the best of his farmer neighbors—stands out as one of the best Wes Anderson films, carrying over his quirky pastiche, witty dialogue, and affinity for ensemble casts. Since its release, Anderson has embraced the medium with other feature-length animated films like Isle of Dogs and by incorporating animated sequences into live-action movies like The French Dispatch and Asteroid City .
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Yes, it’s true that this Robert Zemeckis film isn’t entirely animated. But when many of your main characters are cartoons, it’s hard not to include this groundbreaking movie as one of the most memorable in the genre. With a combination of comedy, film noir, and even cameos from some of the most recognizable characters ever to grace the screen, it’s a true rarity that holds up remarkably well in the years since its release.
Warner Bros. Pictures
As far as toy adaptations go, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that something as versatile and inclusive as Lego is the subject of one of the best movies in the genre.
Just like the plastic blocks themselves, the hilarious and inventive storyline stands as a perfect example of something that audiences of all ages can enjoy. And if you’ve ever caught yourself walking down the street while humming “Everything Is Awesome,” you probably understand why.
TVC London
In this made-for-TV adaptation of the Raymond Briggs classic children’s picture book, a young boy lives out a Frosty experience when he builds a snowman that eventually comes to life and takes him on a wintery adventure through the woods.
But even with its short runtime, this wordless film packs in more child-like wonder, joy, and ultimately grief and heartbreak than most full-length movies. Its simple yet dazzling visuals and beautiful score help solidify it as a reminder of how impactful the animated medium can be.
RELATED: Every Disney Animated Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best .
Fox Searchlight Pictures
It’s safe to say that audiences were blown away by this Richard Linklater film when it was released. At first blush, the stunning and ethereal visuals that help to capture the sensation of moving through a dream are enough to consider it a groundbreaking piece of cinema. However, the film’s deeply philosophical plot points make it much more than just a moving piece of visual art, ending as a deeply moving and touching story.
Comenius-Film GmbH/Milestone Films
The oldest surviving animated film, this 65-minute curio is both historically significant and beautiful to look at. Filmmaker Lotte Reiniger pioneered a handcrafted animated style involving paper silhouettes to tell a story pulled from the pages of One Thousand and One Nights .
Streamline Pictures
Japanese filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo managed to cram his own sprawling manga series into this dense, confusing, visionary sci-fi epic, set in a futuristic version of Tokyo inhabited by roving motorcycle gangs and super-powered teenagers.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
This was the first animated film to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture , and it’s easy to see why: It’s the perfect embodiment of the classic Disney formula. Beauty and the Beast brings a classic fairytale to vivid life (thankfully giving the titular Beauty a lot more substance than poor Snow White), helped along by one of the greatest song scores of all time.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Where earlier Disney movies created memorably cartoonish characters, this heartwarming and harrowing adaptation of the Felix Salten’s 1923 novel strives for natural realism in all things. Today’s CGI animation may be able to create blades of grass that look picture-perfect, but the flora and fauna of Bambi will forever be iconic.
RELATED: 13 Sad Anime Movies That Will Break Your Heart .
Focus Features
Based on a novella by Neil Gaiman and brought to the screen by the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas , Coraline follows a young girl who discovers a hidden door in her new home that leads to a parallel world. It initially seems superior in every way but soon reveals sinister secrets—though they should have been obvious, given her “Other Mother’s” creepy button eyes. Coraline is the rare children’s film that isn’t afraid to scare its young audience silly.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Disney reinvigorated the princess feature with this tale of two sisters, Elsa and Anna, whose close childhood relationship is torn apart when Elsa’s special powers (shooting blasts of ice from her hands when she’s upset) put Anna in danger. Years later, when a shady prince swoops in to scam the lonely Anna into engagement, Elsa accidentally plunges her kingdom into eternal winter, and the adventure leading to their reconciliation begins.
Toho
Hailed by the late Roger Ebert as “an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation ,” this gut-wrenching wartime tale follows orphaned siblings Seita and Setsuko as they struggle to survive amid devastation and loss following the bombing of Japan during World War II. While director Isao Takahata refused to call the film “anti-war,” its humanist message is undeniable.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Director Brad Bird made one of the highest-grossing animated films ever with his superhero epic The Incredibles 2 , but his best film is this beloved-but-underseen gem. Set amid the paranoia of the Cold War-era space race, The Iron Giant follows a young boy who happens upon a crashed meteor that turns out to be a giant robot from space. What begins as a rollicking E.T. -esque adventure matures into a thoughtful examination of how our choices shape who we are.
Jensen Farley Pictures
Hand-drawn by many of the same animators who would go on to work for Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli, this adaptation of Peter S. Beagle’s beloved fantasy novel about a lonely unicorn who sets off on a quest to find more of her kind is strange, surreal, and unforgettable. (But your mileage may vary on the folksy song score, from ’70s rockers America.)
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Any success of Disney’s recent “live-action” remake of The Lion King happened because the original is already a perfect film—so good even lifelike-to-a-fault CGI animal effects couldn’t screw it up. The 1994 version, a loose update of Hamlet set on the African savannah and starring an all-animal cast, is iconic on every level, from the detailed hand-drawn animation to the indelible Elton John , Tim Rice , and Hans Zimmer soundtrack.
RELATED: Every Pixar Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best .
KlockWorx
Japanese director Satoshi Kon died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at just 46 years old, cutting short a brilliant career encompassing four films, including a tense Hitchcockian thriller ( Perfect Blue ) and a mind-bending sci-fi thriller ( Paprika ). But his masterpiece is 2001’s Millennium Actress . The mature drama follows a reporter who interviews a world-famous actress in the twilight of her career, her life story playing out in flashbacks that slip and twist into scenes from her film—suggesting that reality exists between actual lived experience and the memories we make of it.
Toho
The beloved coming-of-age story from Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki excels both as a gentle tale of two sisters struggling to come to terms with their mother’s hospitalization and a fantastical fable stuffed with imaginative creatures, from the fearsome but cuddly Totoro to the galloping Cat Bus (which is exactly what it sounds like).
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Tim Burton’s stop-motion musical melds the dark and the heartwarming as Jack Skellington ( Chris Sarandon / Danny Elfman ), the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, discovers the magic of Christmas…and gets it horribly wrong. Though initially ignored at the box office, it has since become an indelible seasonal classic, whether you watch it in October or December.
Sony Pictures Classics
Based on Marjane Sartrapi’s autobiographical novel of the same name and directed by the author, Persepolis charts her coming of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. Through black-and-white illustrations, Sartrapi brings to life both history and personal conflict as the adolescent main character struggles to stay true to herself in different political landscapes.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Guided by the Blue Fairy and his loyal conscience, Jiminy Cricket, the wooden puppet Pinocchio journeys through vice and the literal belly of a whale to become a real boy. The second feature from Disney has haunted childhoods for years, featuring kidnapping, enslavement, and a scene where the puppet’s wayward friend is turned into a donkey while screaming for his mother.
MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
Animator Don Bluth left a struggling Disney in the early ’80s, determined to make animated films on his own terms. One of his best from a run of classics (including The Land Before Time and An American Tail ), this adaptation of the children’s book about a group of super-intelligent mice that escape from a science lab contains greater depth, complexity, and darkness than your average kiddie flick starring talking animals.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
The first ever full-length animated feature produced in the U.S. was a revelation in 1937, became one of the highest-grossing films of all time , established the Disney legacy, and still holds up today. Though its thin but faithful rendition of the classic fairy tale isn’t exactly laudable when it comes to modern gender politics, the painstaking, innovative animation remains impressive more than eight decades later.
StudioCanal
This animated feature out of Ireland is an unusual fable about a young boy whose mother went missing shortly after the birth of his younger sister. He resents the girl, but nevertheless sets off on a quest to rescue her after learning she (and his mother) are both shape-shifting selkies of Irish legend. Underneath the fantasy trappings, it’s a moving story about the pain of loss and the bonds that can pull you back together.
Sony Pictures Releasing
Given their comic book roots, it only makes sense that the best superhero movie of all time is an animated feature. This Academy Award-winning adventure introduced the wider world to Miles Morales, a very different version of your friendly neighborhood web-slinger than the Peter Parker most moviegoers knew—and brought CGI animation into a new age. Its freewheeling style packs decades’ worth of comic book aesthetics into a reality-ripping tale that hops across dimensions but never loses track of its well-drawn characters.
Toho
Doubling (or tripling) down on the surreal elements that made My Neighbor Totoro so memorable, Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning masterpiece Spirited Away is a portal fantasy about a stubborn young girl named Sen who wanders into dilapidated amusement park styled to resemble a Japanese bathhouse. The park is populated with a bizarre assembly of talking animals and river spirits and lorded over by the cruel, shape-shifting witch who has transformed Sen’s parents into giant pigs. The dreamlike narrative will put you under a spell too.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Every bit as groundbreaking an achievement as Snow White was back in 1937, the first feature-length computer animated film reveals the secret inner lives and jealous insecurities of your favorite childhood toys. It’s a richly imagined world—instantly endearing characters and a perfectly constructed plot set the stage for dozens more classics to come from animation studio Pixar.
Sony Pictures Classics
Amid the Tour de France, an old woman and her dog set off to rescue her kidnapped grandson, with an assist from the titular trio—three elderly (but lively) women who were once a song-and-dance act. Blending animation styles and unfolding with minimal dialogue, it’s a silly and inventive homage to silent films, bicycling, and French culture that will make you want to give a hug to your most eccentric aunt.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Set in 2805, WALL-E tells the tale of a lonely little robot left behind to clean up the mess on an Earth made uninhabitable after humanity trashed it. With a score by Thomas Newman (cousin of Randy) and a weirdly touching robot love story, Pixar’s dystopian tale charms, despite unfolding virtually dialogue-free throughout its first half.
United Artists
Despite appearing in a brief live-action sequence at the end, The Beatles barely participated in the making of this animated feature inspired by their music, which is a shame. It’s the best encapsulation of their mid-’60s pop art aesthetic: light on story but heavy on style, a series of psychedelic music videos strung together via a weird narrative about music-hating Blue Meanies.
Toho
Plenty of U.S. moviegoers still think of animation as mostly kids’ stuff, but Japanese anime casts a far wider net—for example, with this funny, sexy, sci-fi rom-com (briefly the highest-grossing Japanese film ever ) following a teenage boy and girl who inexplicably find themselves jumping between bodies and across time.
This story has been updated to include additional entries, fact-checking, and copy-editing.
30 Travel Movies to Help Inspire Your Next Trip
Sony Pictures Releasing
One of the great things about movies is that they can take you places without you having to squeeze into an uncomfortable airplane seat or with all the other hassles that real-life travel entails. There are lots of great movies about people setting out to see the world , so let the big screen scratch your wanderlust by checking out these 31 films.
Some of the movies on this list are romantic, following two people as they come together in that special way that happens when you’re away from home. Others are about journeys of self-discovery, showing what can happen when you hit the road solo. Some movies are uproarious comedies that will transport you away from your troubles as you laugh along to the antics on screen. There are also movies that are less of a vacation than they are an adventure, sure to get your blood pumping. And there are some scary movies about travel—the sort that might make you think, “You know, actually, maybe let’s make this one a staycation.”
Don’t bother packing your bags. All you need to do is hit “play” to embark on any one of these 30 great travel movies.
RELATED: 24 Feel-Good Movies to Lift Your Spirits .
Romantic Travel Movies
Diane Lane stars in this charming 1996 movie as a recently divorced woman who travels to Italy in an attempt to break out of her post-divorce funk. (In her defense, her husband was cheating on her and he got to keep the house, so she’s right to be miffed.) Once in Tuscany, though, she somehow becomes the owner of a villa, and as she begins to make a new life for herself, the potential for new love emerges amidst some of the most beautiful scenery and delicious-looking wine ever put to film. It’s the type of movie that will have you looking up flights to Florence.
A destination wedding counts as travel, and the breakout comedy of 2023 was shot on location in Australia. Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney play two people who left on bad terms after a one-night stand only to have to make nice when their mutual friends get married. Anyone But You is enough to make you want to take a trip Down Under, although perhaps without all the rom-com shenanigans.
Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play lovelorn women who swap homes so that they can get away from their respective heartbreaks over Christmastime. When Winslet’s Iris and Diaz’s Amanda get to Los Angeles and London, respectively, they find new love in Jack Black and Jude Law’s characters. The 2006 movie, from the great Nancy Meyers , works extra well as a travel movie because, thanks to the house-swapping premise, it’s a reminder that everyone’s home is somebody else’s trip.
The first of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy introduces audiences to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Céline as they meet on a train from Budapest and decide to spend the night together wandering Vienna. Widely regarded as one of the more romantic movies ever made, Before Sunrise will also make you want to explore Vienna with someone you’ve just met—someone who maybe you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.
Technically, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a travel movie (because Owen Wilson’s character is visiting Paris with his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams ) and a time travel movie (because he goes back in time to 1920s). It’s a romantic movie both because of the relationship Wilson’s Gil strikes up with Marion Cotillard’s Adriana and because of how it romanticizes Paris and nostalgia—and deftly interrogates that romanticism.
RELATED: 20 Date Night Movies You and Your Partner Will Both Love .
Movies About Traveling Solo
Dev Patel stars in this 2016 film, which is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley , who was separated from his parents in India at a very young age and adopted by an Australian couple. Once he grew up, he went back to his birth country in an attempt to find his biological parents. Saroo’s trek through India and into his own forgotten past is a tear-jerking, emotional travel story, and Lion was rewarded with six Oscar nominations.
This 2014 adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail stars Reese Witherspoon as Strayed sets out to hike from Southern California to Washington State in an attempt to find herself. The tour of the West Coast’s trails is a tour-de-force for the actor as her character remakes her life one hiking boot-clad step at a time.
In 1977, Robyn Davidson set out on a nine-month journey across the unforgiving Australian Outback with her dog and four camels. She later wrote about her adventure in National Geographic and in her memoir Tracks . In 2013, her story was adapted into a film with the same name. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson in the movie, which features stunning cinematography of the Australian desert in all its harsh beauty.
A lot of solo travel stories are tales of self-discovery where the voyager has learned something by the time they reach their destination. Into the Wild offers no such catharsis, instead telling the true story of Christopher McCandless , a man who hiked across America and eventually ended up in the Alaskan wilderness—an environment he was not prepared for. It’s a poignant, tragic counterpart to the more common celebrations of wanderlust you tend to see in pop culture.
Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in this 2010 adaptation of her memoir of post-divorce travel and self-discovery. Feeling her life is aimless and without purpose, Liz elects to travel around the world, stopping in Italy, India, and Bali where she eats, prays, and well, you can probably guess.
RELATED: The 15 Movies That Won the Most Oscars .
Travel Horror Movies
Ari Aster’s supremely disturbing folk horror movie stars Florence Pugh as a young woman who is begrudgingly invited by her not-great boyfriend and his friends to go to Sweden to observe a commune’s midsummer festival. Upon getting there, Pugh’s Dani soon learns that the Hårga are not all sunshine and flowers, and that there are dark rituals and sinister plots. It’s the type of movie that will make you think twice about a Nordic vacation, and you’ll never look at a taxidermied bear the same way.
This 2005 horror movie, from director Eli Roth , is one of the biggest examples of the so-called “torture porn” subgenre, but there’s more to Hostel than just blood and guts. (There are a lot of blood and guts, though.) The film follows some American backpackers who, while traveling in Eastern Europe, become the victims of a shadowy organization that lets the ultra-rich live out their most depraved fantasies by torturing and killing unsuspecting tourists. Let’s just say that Hostel is not exactly a great promotional tourism campaign for Slovakia—something that the country was actually pretty upset about .
This 2022 film, released by the horror-centric streaming service Shudder, follows a social media influencer who, when traveling in Thailand, meets and befriends a young woman. It’s the type of movie that lives or dies on its twists, but let’s just say that Influencer is what you would get if The Talented Mr. Ripley were set in the social media age and a full-on horror film instead of a thriller.
The Creator director Gareth Edward’s 2010 debut follows a photojournalist as he tries to escort a young woman through Mexico, which has been taken over by kaiju-sized alien monsters. There are moments of beauty and discovery along their journey, as well as high-stress moments of terror when they encounter these creatures, which Edwards brings to life on a shoestring budget—though you can’t tell that by watching.
It’s right there in the title: John Landis’ 1980 comedy horror is about an American in London, although he’s not a werewolf when he first arrives in the UK. No, that happens after he’s mauled by a strange beast in the moors of Yorkshire—and that same beast kills the friend he was backpacking with. When he recovers in London, things get gnarly in the light of a full moon.
RELATED: 27 Movies With Shocking Twist Endings You Won’t Recover From .
Comedy Movies About Traveling
If you like the misadventures of the Griswold family’s first vacation attempt, great news: There are five sequels to this 1983 Chevy Chase comedy. Before the European , Vegas , or Christmas Vacation , though, Clark Griswold tries to drive his family from Chicago to southern California. Their journey makes for some classic comedy, though it might hit a bit too close to home if you’ve had to endure a family vacation that went awry.
A lot of Wes Anderson’s movies are about travel, including his most recent film, Asteroid City , and The Grand Budapest Hotel . His ultimate travel movie, though, is 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited , which stars Owen Wilson , Adrien Brody , and Jason Schwartzman as three estranged brothers who agree to make a trip through India together in the hopes of reconnecting after their father’s death.
Lots of movies are about travel, but are they about a big adventure, the way Tim Burton’s directorial debut is? Paul Reubens stars as his Pee-wee Herman character, who hits the road in an attempt to recover his beloved bicycle, which has gone missing. Following a psychic’s totally legit vision of his bike in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-wee encounters a ghost trucker, biker gangs, and all the madness of a Hollywood backlot.
Netflix’s Oscar-nominated animated movie has a setup that’s not too dissimilar from that of National Lampoon’s Vacation . Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell can’t wait to get away from her family and start film school. Her dad, voiced by Danny McBride , feels his daughter slipping away and opts to have the whole fam drive her across the country rather than take a plane to school. At the same time, an A.I. gone rogue has started a robot uprising. Oops!
In addition to featuring a hall-of-fame cameo from Matt Damon as the singer of “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” Eurotrip is a classic, if not especially intelligent, teen sex romp. It’s not the movie to watch if you want to get a feel for Europe, but it is what you put on when you want to enjoy some good, dumb laughs.
RELATED: 23 Movies Like Interstellar That Will Also Bend Your Brain .
Adventure Travel Movies
Ben Stiller directed and stars in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , an imaginative adaptation of a 1939 short story about a mild-mannered man who gets lost in his daydreams. When circumstances force Walter to embark on a trip around the world, he starts living his daydreams for real, going to Greenland and the Himalayas. Featuring a fantastic soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography of some truly beautiful, off-the-beaten-path places, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the type of movie that might make you stop just thinking about taking a trip and actually buy a ticket.
William Friedkin , best known for directing The Exorcist , also helmed this 1977 thriller about possibly the worst road trip of all time. When four people, all on the run from their various sordid pasts, find themselves trapped in a remote oil village in Colombia, they are desperate to get out by any means necessary. The opportunity presents itself when the bosses need people to drive boxes of dynamite that are extremely unstable and could blow at any minute across miles of rainforest. There is one sequence in Sorcerer that’s some of the most unbelievably tense filmmaking you’ll likely ever see. (Note that it’s a remake of another classic film, Wages of Fear , should you want another movie that’ll keep you on edge.)
Johnny Depp stars as an average man who finds himself smack in the middle of an international criminal incident when on vacation in Europe after a woman, played by Angelina Jolie , tries to trick the authorities into thinking Depp’s the fugitive they’re looking for. Thrills, laughs, and a little romance ensue.
Charlie Hunnam plays real explorer Percy Fawcett in this adaptation of the book by the same name from author David Grann , who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon . The film follows the British explorer in the early 1900s as he tries, time and time again, to prove the existence of a mythical city deep in the jungles of Brazil. Think of it as a somber, reflective take on a real-life Indiana Jones, one whose obsession with traveling to hostile environments in search of knowledge may prove to be his undoing.
This gripping survival drama about the infamous 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, as documented by Jon Krakauer in the book Into Thin Air, is the type of film that will probably make you consider an all-inclusive beach resort for your next vacation rather than mountain-climbing.
RELATED: 25 Movies Like Knives Out That Will Bring Out Your Inner Detective .
Movies About Roadtrips
This biopic follows the man who would become the Che Guevara when he, as a young man in the early ‘50s, travels across South America with his friend Alberto Granado . The film, which is based on Guevara’s trip diary, is both a road movie and a coming-of-age film about an important historical figure, as we see him become radicalized by the poverty and inequality he sees on this journey.
Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star in Ethan Coen’s romp from earlier this year, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Drive-Away Dolls “ The Big Lebowski , but just the silly parts.” Set in the late ’90s, it follows two lesbian friends who learn that the car they’ve rented has a human head and a briefcase in the trunk—and that some shadowy types really, really want whatever’s in that case back.
Burt Reynolds stars in this 1977 classic, which was the second-highest-grossing movie of its release year after the original Star Wars . He plays a legendary bootlegger who accepts a job to smuggle 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in under 28 hours. Along the way, he encounters a runaway bride played by Sally Field , and Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who wants to stop the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit also features an incredible theme song, “ East Bound and Down ,” and while the lyrics describe the plot of the movie almost beat-for-beat, you’ll find that it’s a fitting song to blast on your own car stereo when you’re on the road.
Il Sorpasso , which is sometimes given the English title The Easy Life , is a masterpiece of 1960s Italian cinema. It follows a boisterous middle-aged man who decides to take a timid, bookish college student he meets under his wing for a good time out on the road—whether or not the younger man actually wants to tag along or not. Hilarious and poignant when you might not expect it, Il Sorpasso ’s well worth the watch.
This seminal adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name stars Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as they drive to Sin City under the influence of an absurd amount of drugs. In that way, it’s the ultimate travel movie. It’s about a trip, but it’s also about a trip .
