Best 90s Animated Movies

The Pagemaster does not get enough love. A nervous kid played by Macaulay Culkin gets pulled into a library and turned into a cartoon, where the books come alive as Adventure, Fantasy, and Horror. The animation looks a little rushed in places. I do not care. The dragon scene alone earns its spot, and the whole concept of climbing into a story is the kind of thing that lodges in your brain as a kid.

This one technically dropped in late 1988, but it lived on VHS straight through the 90s, so I am counting it. It is Oliver Twist with a kitten in New York City and a soundtrack that hits way harder than it has any right to. Billy Joel voices Dodger. The cast of colorful characters is the whole appeal.

For years I thought Anastasia was a Disney movie. It is not. It is Don Bluth, and it beats most Disney films at their own game. The story takes the lost Russian princess legend and spins it into a sweeping romance. The “Once Upon a December” sequence still gives me chills. If you want the best non-Disney princess movie of the decade, this is it.

Another Don Bluth pick, and one of the most forgotten 90s animated movies on this whole list. It follows a shy penguin named Hubie who needs the perfect pebble to win over the penguin he loves. It is goofy and sweet. The real reason to watch is Tim Curry as the villain Drake, chewing every piece of scenery in sight.

Yes, it mixes live action and CGI. Yes, I am putting it here anyway. The first Babe was gentle. This sequel is something else, a strange, dark, beautiful fever dream directed by George Miller of Mad Max. The gallant little pig wanders into a grim version of the big city, and the movie does not talk down to kids for a second.

I found this one by accident in the mid 90s and could not look away. The Thief and the Cobbler had a brutal production history and got hacked apart by the studio, but the animation underneath is some of the most insane work ever put to cels. It looks like an M.C. Escher painting that learned how to move.

Quest for Camelot is a mess in places, and I have a soft spot for it anyway. A young woman named Kayley wants to be a knight like her late father. There are dragons, there are songs, and there is a two-headed dragon doing a full comedy bit. It is a flawed, underrated 90s gem that tried to be Disney and almost got there.

People forget Disney made a straight-up action movie about two mice. The Rescuers Down Under sends Bernard and Miss Bianca to the Australian Outback, and that opening flight on the back of a giant eagle is one of the best things Disney animated all decade.

This is the most slept-on movie on the whole list, and I will fight anyone about it. Cats Don’t Dance follows Danny, a cat with big dreams of Hollywood stardom, in a town that does not want talking animals in the spotlight. The animation is gorgeous, the songs swing, and the villain is properly nasty.

Doug was one of my comfort cartoons, so the movie was always going to get a pass from me. It is small and quiet, all about Doug Funnie, a lake monster, and the usual middle-school crushes. It is not flashy. It is a nice gentle sendoff to a Nicktoon a lot of 90s kids grew up on.

Not every Don Bluth movie was a winner, and this one gets dunked on a lot. I still find it weirdly charming. A gentle troll with a magic green thumb gets banished to New York and starts turning the city into a garden. It is simple, sappy, and sincere. Sometimes that is all I want from an old cartoon movie.

Rock-A-Doodle is bonkers, and I mean that as a compliment. It mixes live action with animation to tell the story of a rooster named Chanticleer who thinks he is Elvis and whose crowing supposedly keeps the sun in the sky. It makes almost no sense. It is also impossible to forget.

The Rugrats Movie took the TV show and went big. The babies end up lost in the woods, there is a brand new sibling, and the whole thing carries more heart than a movie about cartoon toddlers needs to. Whether you were a kid or an adult in the 90s, the Reptar Wagon chase got you.

The first All Dogs Go to Heaven is a strangely dark little movie. The sequel lightens way up. Charlie is back, there are more songs, and it leans hard into the heaven angle with angels and second chances. It is fluffier than the original, and that suits it.

Here is a deep cut for the animation nerds. Bill Plympton hand-drew almost the entire thing himself, and it shows in the best way. The Tune is loose, sketchy, and unlike anything a big studio would ever release. In a world drowning in slick 3D, his stuff is a breath of fresh air.

The Swan Princess wanted to be Disney so badly, and you know what, it mostly pulled it off. It takes Swan Lake and turns it into a romance with a curse, a kidnapping, and a couple of real earworm songs. Odette deserves to be talked about right alongside the bigger names.

This one was a childhood obsession of mine. Smart dinosaurs ride into modern New York, eat hot dogs, and end up tangled with a circus. It is short, strange, and packed with everything a 90s kid wanted out of a movie. I think people of any age should give it a shot.

Balto is based on a true story, and that always made it hit harder for me. A husky-wolf mix leads a sled team through a brutal Alaskan winter to carry medicine to sick kids in Nome. It is one of the best animated dog movies of the decade, and it proves a hero can come from anywhere.

Roald Dahl plus stop-motion plus the team behind The Nightmare Before Christmas. James and the Giant Peach is stranger and a little darker than most kids’ films, which is exactly why it stuck with me. A lonely boy escapes his awful aunts inside a giant flying peach full of talking bugs. Weird in the best way.

Growing up with Batman: The Animated Series was a gift, and this movie is that show firing on every cylinder. Mask of the Phantasm is a noir murder mystery with a real tragic love story buried inside it. A lot of fans, me included, think it is the best Batman movie ever made, animated or not.

The first Land Before Time came out in the late 80s, but the sequels absolutely owned the 90s. There were a ton of them, they all had songs, and 90s kids ate them up. This was our dinosaur franchise, and the adventures of Littlefoot and his friends taught a whole generation how to deal with loss.

FernGully was preaching about the environment before it was cool, and it scared the daylights out of me as a kid. Hexxus, the oily smog monster voiced by Tim Curry, is straight-up nightmare fuel. Then Robin Williams shows up as a bat and turns the whole thing into comedy. It holds up.

I still do not know whether to file this one under Halloween or Christmas, and that is the whole point. Tim Burton’s stop-motion classic follows Jack Skellington as he tries to hijack Christmas and learns to be himself. The songs are flawless. The look is iconic. It might be the most rewatched of all the 90s animated Christmas movies, and it has only gotten bigger with time.

For a lot of us, Pokemon: The First Movie was the gateway to anime. Underneath all the battles is a surprisingly heavy story about Mewtwo, a cloned Pokemon wrestling with whether his life means anything. And yes, the scene where Ash turns to stone made every single kid in the theater cry.

Pocahontas is not Disney’s most accurate movie, and people are right to point that out. As pure animation, though, it is stunning. The way the wind and leaves move during “Colors of the Wind” still looks incredible. It is a beautiful, flawed film carried by one of Disney’s best soundtracks.

If you only watch one movie off this list, make it this one. The Iron Giant is Brad Bird’s masterpiece, a Cold War story about a boy and a giant robot who gets to choose what kind of being he wants to be. It bombed in theaters and became a classic anyway. The line “you are who you choose to be” wrecks me every time. It is the best non-Disney animated movie of the 90s, and it is not close.

Beauty and the Beast was the first animated movie ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and watching it, you get why. Belle is smart and stubborn and reads books, which felt brand new for a Disney heroine. The ballroom scene is a landmark in the medium. This is the Disney Renaissance at full power.

Aladdin is the most fun Disney had all decade. The animation moves at a hundred miles an hour, the songs are bangers, and then there is Robin Williams as the Genie, who basically reinvented what voice acting in a cartoon could be. A street kid, a magic lamp, a flying carpet. It is a perfect popcorn movie.

And here is the king. The Lion King is the highest-grossing hand-drawn movie ever made, and it earned every dollar. It is basically Hamlet with lions, with a soundtrack that everyone my age can still sing front to back. The stampede scene scarred us all. This is the crown jewel of 90s Disney animated movies.