I never miss a single Pixar film. Toy Story was such an entertaining movie that the studio practically bought my loyalty at the very start, and the winning streak that immediately followed didn’t hurt. Which means, of course, that I have ranked all 30 of their films from worst to best and I have decided to share that list here. I know I have different tastes from most people so you’ll probably disagree with me about a lot of stuff here, but these are just my honest opinions and I will explain each of my decisions as you go down the list.

30. Lightyear (2022)

None of Pixar’s movies are bad. I ranked this the lowest and I gave it a 5/10, which basically just means I think it’s kind of mediocre. But of all of Pixar’s films this one offended me the most. As a sci-fi adventure film, I think it’s bland and I find all the characters too uninteresting to care about. But as the movie that sparked Andy’s love for Buzz Lightyear, I did not buy it. Putting aside the laughably preposterous notion that this is supposedly a ’90s movie, if you expect me to believe that Andy stayed awake through this film, you’re just insulting my intelligence.

29. Elemental (2023)

If Pixar pitched me a rom-com about a fire person and a water person falling in love, I would have greenlit it because that premise totally sounds like something in Pixar’s wheelhouse and possibly a Romeo and Juliet for the modern age. But poor execution ruined this one for me. The humor was weak, the plot was predictable, Ember and Wade’s chemistry as a romantic couple never really drew me in, nor did Ember’s family drama which felt to me like it was mixed in with the romantic drama in order to maximize the conflict in a way that felt cheap and narratively messy. Good idea undone by half-baked storytelling.

28. The Good Dinosaur (2015)

This movie felt different from most Pixar movies because it was a bit less humorous and more quiet and melancholy. Don Bluth made the “drama about a young dinosaur separated from his family” premise work in The Land Before Time and it could have worked here too, but my big problem with this is that the main character Arlo was not as interesting or as likable as Little Foot. I also felt that adding humans into the story was a strange choice because making this take place in an alternate timeline where dinosaurs did not go extinct added nothing to the movie when they could have made Spot a baby pterodactyl instead of a caveboy or made Arlo a bear instead of an Apatosaurus and the story would not be radically altered.

27. Brave (2012)

Speaking of bears, this might be the Pixar film that disappointed me the most because I couldn’t believe filmmakers could screw up such a great sounding premise. You got your rebellious Scottish princess, your witch’s curse, your heartfelt mother-daughter story and the pedigree of Pixar behind you, and you managed to come back with the most bland and formulaic princess movie in Disney history. The fact that How to Train Your Dragon came out two years earlier made it look even worse.

26. Cars 2 (2011)

This spy movie satire about Mater going undercover as a secret agent is fine but totally unmemorable. It’s the Cars movie that even Cars fans don’t like, and while I don’t mind a sequel that goes in a completely different direction, I’ve also watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and M3GAN 2.0 so I know that creative swings don’t always lead to creative home runs, and this felt similarly misguided. Even more so for Pixar fans who saw Toy Story 3 receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture mere months before this movie came out. Talk about whiplash.

25. Cars (2006)

Not that I thought the first Cars was much better. My problem with this movie (and Cars 2) is that it is very difficult for me to get emotionally invested in talking cars for the span of a feature film. That premise works better for cartoon shorts like Tex Avery’s One Cab’s Family and Disney’s Susie the Little Blue Coupe (which served as the stylistic inspiration for Cars), especially since it was easier to accept the premise of those shorts than a movie that takes place in a car world where humans don’t exist. The implications of which are almost too distracting for me to even focus on the movie’s plot. Who built these cars? Do they have steering wheels and brakes inside them? Is there a car God? Did they take over the planet and extinguish the human population like in Planet of the Apes? I hate how many questions this raises! But even if I do what the filmmakers want me to do and just stop thinking about it so much, I still can’t enjoy this because I find none of the characters interesting enough to carry a film. Except Doc Hudson, who I thought had a lot of depth as a former race star turned mentor to Lightning McQueen, but he was a supporting character.

24. WALL-E (2008)

By far Pixar’s most overrated film. I know the premise is really good. A future Planet Earth that is turned into a garbage-filled wasteland maintained by robots while the human population is living like pigs on a space station? That’s a pretty good satirical take on what the future holds and definitely an unsubtle critique on our damage to the environment. But as interesting and imaginative as this premise is, nothing about the way they build a narrative around it captures me emotionally. Especially when you center your story around robots. And I’m not even saying movies with robot protagonists can’t work, because I loved The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot. But the first 40 minutes of this film takes place in an abandoned wasteland and centers on two robots with artificial faces, artificial voices and artificial emotions (and a cockroach) and the film expects me to get emotionally attached to these things in a way that I found way too presumptuous. This works fine as a fable for humanity but it doesn’t really work for me as a feature film because there is no emotional hook when too many of your characters don’t actually have the capacity for emotion. I like R2-D2 in the Star Wars films but I never once wanted a spin-off centered on him.

23. Luca (2021)

I thought this one wasted a lot of its potential. It’s a nice friendship story with a beautiful art style and it feels a lot more Ghibli-esque than most Pixar films. But it’s pretty formulaic and none of the characters are fleshed out well enough, mainly because the plot hogs the movie. I thought more time should have been spent on developing and strengthening the friendship between the three young protagonists to make the more dramatic moments hit harder. Instead this feels like an American animated film trying to take lessons from indie animation while still being held back by Hollywood conventions.

22. Elio (2025)

Despite the fact that a movie about a lonely human boy who finds acceptance in a society of space aliens sounds absolutely like my kind of movie, this was mostly underwhelming. It got better in the third act and I absolutely bought the friendship and the bond between Elio and Glordon, but the film’s greatest offense is that it just lacked fun. You can argue that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was a much worse animated sci-fi movie overall but I think it’s pretty obvious why that film made a billion dollars and why this film bombed.

21. Monsters University (2013)

I love Mike and Sulley as characters even if this prequel to Monsters, Inc. suffers in comparison to the first movie. Although even on its own, I found the humor in this film occasionally amusing but largely mediocre and the story devoid of any real emotional investment. I can tell the filmmakers are having fun and people who actually went to college will likely get more out of this movie than I did, but I felt like I was observing the movie more than investing in it. I wasn’t expecting a wild comedy like Animal House or a coming-of-age story like Dazed and Confused, but at the very least I was expecting it to be better than An Extremely Goofy Movie.

20. Cars 3 (2017)

This is the first Cars film that I enjoyed. Unlike the first Cars, I actually liked Lightning McQueen in this movie because he is less of a spoiled hot shot in this film and is actually a bit more mature. Which is really driven home (no pun intended) by his meeting with racing fan Cruz Ramirez as well as his near fatal crash, both of which put things in perspective for Lightning and his mortality. This isn’t the most original story or memorable film Pixar ever made, but it does have depth, heartfelt moments, a satisfying character arc for Lightning McQueen and a genuinely inspiring story about never giving up on your dreams.

19. Soul (2020)

One of Pixar’s most ambitious movies but it doesn’t quite reach the level of greatness it is striving for. Every scene in this movie looks great from the realistic human scenes to the stylish and abstract scenes in the Great Before, but just like Luca, it feels like the story is trying to be something more than what Pixar as a big Hollywood-owned studio is capable of delivering. This film addresses deep existential issues and examines the human soul in intelligent ways while also trying to be light, funny, kid-friendly entertainment and I don’t think this film’s vision is focused enough to pull off that balancing act smoothly enough. There are definitely enough great scenes in it to make it worth watching and I understand why people like it more than I do, but this would have landed better for me if the narrative was a little less conventional.

18. Onward (2020)

Definitely a Pixar film in the same vein as Monsters, Inc., taking place in a suburb populated by mythical creatures, but instead of focusing on the corporate world, this tells a more personal family-oriented story about two elf brothers who try to resurrect their father from the dead. This never wowed me and I think the film’s predictable tropes, average sense of humor and dull cast of characters is a big part of that, although it gets better as it goes along and it actually surprised me with its heartfelt ending, which levels it up a few points in my ranking and makes it the least bad of all my least favorite Pixar films.

17. Incredibles 2 (2018)

I enjoyed Incredibles 2 for much of the same reason I enjoy Brad Bird’s other films: he is good at mining drama, humor and thrills out of his stories in a way that is often natural and executed cleverly. But that doesn’t change the fact that this pails in comparison to The Incredibles, especially when none of the new characters are as well-written or as funny as the old characters. The most memorable new character was that raccoon, which is not a good sign in a movie centered around superheroes and supervillains.

16. Up (2009)

Another big favorite among the film community that I liked but not quite on the same level as other people. The love story between Carl and Ellie is the emotional core of this story and when the film centers on that, it soars the highest. I was less amused by the film’s weak sense of humor which was basically just an hour and a half of “grumpy old man gets annoyed by enthusiastic child” and “this tough looking dog has a squeaky voice.” However, its dramatic scenes are so effective that I can forgive most of those things. Most memorable of all to me is the way this film has much more emotional depth than Hollywood animated films are typically willing to explore.

15. Coco (2017)

Impressively well-made fantasy about a Mexican boy looking for his family in the Land of the Dead is a feast for the eyes and a feast for the heart, because this both looks beautiful and tells a beautiful story. My one quibble with the film is that the cast of characters seems too big for the film to explore each with a satisfying level of depth, but all the best characters still have the most screen time so that didn’t hinder my enjoyment at all.

14. Hoppers (2026)

Pixar at its most absurd. This is the Emperor’s New Groove of Pixar movies, and as a person who loves all things absurd, weird and offbeat, this feels like the most “me” of all of Pixar’s films, which is partly why I loved it so much. I especially appreciated director Daniel Chong’s clear vision for what this movie is and how to balance the heart and the humor well enough so that neither undermines the other.

13. Turning Red (2022)

This is the Pixar movie that walked so that Hoppers could run. Domee Shi’s tale of teenage drama centered on an average boy band-obsessed Canadian girl growing up in the 2000s who magically transforms into a giant red panda was much more wacky and creatively bold than Pixar movies of the past but at the same time it also felt grounded in real emotion. The way that the film portrays Mei’s relationship with her family and her friends as well as her struggle to choose between her family and her friends is handled sensitively and believably enough that it helps anchor the film’s more fantastical moments in something emotionally true.

12. Ratatouille (2007)

The premise of this movie is so good that it almost overshadows the quality of the actual writing. But the writing is still pretty good. When you hear the premise, which is basically that a rat dreams of becoming a chef and disguises himself as a human to cook food at a restaurant, you think you have an idea for what that story might be like, but this surprised me in positive ways on several occasions. The screenplay by Brad Bird is one of Pixar’s most witty and intelligent.

11. Finding Dory (2016)

It’s not as good as Finding Nemo (few films are), but this sequel centered on the character of Dory is still masterfully handled and effectively emotional, despite Dory working better as a sidekick than a lead character and a cast of characters that are good but not quite as memorable as the cast from the first movie. Although it helps that Dory was my favorite character in Finding Nemo so I’m already emotionally invested in anything she does.

10. Monsters, Inc. (2001)

This movie is a great blend of slapstick humor, witty banter, strong characterization and enough heartfelt moments to keep the story grounded. Which are all very similar to the reasons why Disney’s The Jungle Book also worked so well as a friendship story between beast and child, with Mike Wazowski serving as the Bagheera to Sulley’s Baloo in this case. The only reason why this is at the bottom of my top ten is strictly due to the stratospherically high quality of every film ranked above it, but this is still one of the most funny, heartfelt and memorable movies in Pixar’s entire catalog.

9. Toy Story 4 (2019)

Woody’s emotional journey coming to terms with the end of his relationship with Andy and his literal journey from Bonnie’s bedroom to the world of lost toys was a satisfying character arc for him while the writing in the film itself was moving, captivating and hilarious as usual. Doesn’t measure up to the quality of the trilogy and Woody takes more focus away from the other characters than in previous films, but this was overall a great movie and all the new characters were great as well.

8. The Incredibles (2004)

Not only one of Pixar’s best films but one of the best superhero films ever made, because it juggles multiple genres skillfully in addition to superhero action, including satirical comedy, mystery, espionage thriller, family drama and crime drama. A cross between James Bond and Fantastic Four that is practically flawless in its execution.

7. A Bug’s Life (1998)

One of Pixar’s most underrated films, aka the Pixar movie from the nineties that isn’t Toy Story or Toy Story 2. Also one of the best underdog stories I’ve ever seen, and the central character not only comes out on top and proves his worth by the end of the movie but he also topples a system of oppression by finding the courage to step out of line under the slave labor of an evil grasshopper. Although one of the most important things about having political messages in films like this is making sure you are still telling a fun and entertaining story in the process, and thankfully the filmmakers at Pixar never forget to do that here.

6. Inside Out 2 (2024)

Sequel to Inside Out expands on the emotional journey in the first film by tackling the turmoil involved with navigating anxiety, and I think the film did a clever job doing that while remaining imaginative but also deeply relatable for anyone who is or ever has been a teenager.

5. Inside Out (2015)

The ways in which joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust are explored and characterized in this film, often in ways that are smart, entertaining and true to human emotion, are what make it such a masterpiece and help it resonate so much. One of the best elements of the story is the way that the character of Joy initially villainizes the character of Sadness until she learns to accept Sadness as an essential part of life as you grow up. A pretty nuanced message for a company like Disney that usually tells stories with happy endings, but a welcome one.

4. Toy Story 3 (2010)

This should be shown in a film class to teach people how to make a film so good that the audience will immediately want to watch it again and again. When Andy goes to college and the toys get donated to a daycare that is friendly on the outside but not all that it seems, the film turns into a captivating and suspenseful prison break movie, enhanced by a loveable cast of characters, sharp writing, surprisingly heartwrenching drama and practically flawless execution from every department involved.

3. Toy Story (1995)

Pixar’s first feature film is still one of the best films they ever made. Part buddy comedy and part existential drama and executing both genres perfectly, it was unlike any other animated film that had come before back in 1995 but it still holds up thanks to writing that is equally heartfelt and hilarious. This has one of the best screenplays ever written for an animated film. Even the human kids like Andy and Sid were well-written. Which is no small accomplishment because listening to a fictional child character speak is one of the quickest ways to detect bad writing.

2. Toy Story 2 (1999)

While there are things about Toy Story that I liked more and I thought were handled better than in Toy Story 2, all the positives of Toy Story 2 outweigh those. To explain that in mathematical terms, Toy Story 2 does everything MORE than Toy Story, which for comedy means leaning into humor that is MORE silly (which I view as a slight negative), and for drama means leaning even MORE into the emotion (which I view as a big positive). Jessie, Bullseye and the Prospector are all excellent new additions to the cast while Woody’s struggle between his allegiance to Andy and his allegiance to the Roundup gang is also an excellent source of conflict, and the film does a good job making you understand every decision Woody makes in that struggle. But one of the biggest reasons why I love this movie so much is because it asks an all-important question: “Is the experience of love worth the heartbreak of loss?” And by the time the movie ends that question is basically answered. Pixar said to the world, “What is the point of living a life without the people you love?”

1. Finding Nemo (2003)

This is my favorite Pixar film as well as my favorite Disney film of all time and currently my favorite animated film of all time as well. This does absolutely everything right from a narrative perspective, from the way the story is set up with the death of Nemo’s mother to the way the story ends with Marlin finally overcoming his fear of letting Nemo go out into the world by himself. That character arc is well-developed and well-earned and also one of the reasons why I praise this movie’s pacing so much. It’s also the first Pixar film to center on a character who underwent such a traumatic event as Marlin did, which is one of the reasons why it was such a smart move to introduce Dory early into Marlin’s journey to rescue Nemo, not only because she serves as an effective comic relief for what would otherwise be an overly gloomy movie but because, through their journey together, Dory inspires Marlin to be less uptight and show less fear, so that by the time he reunites with his son, he is less afraid of being away from him. And like icing on a cake, this cleverly realized rescue adventure and family drama made me laugh out loud several times as well thanks not only to Dory but characters like Bruce, Crush and the Tank Gang. One of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had with a movie because every emotion it aimed for worked and worked really well.