Sunday, June 21, 2009

My Pixar Films Ranking

I was thinking about this, and figured I'd give it a stab. What order would I rank the Pixar films in terms of my personal enjoyment of them, as well as how good of a film I thought they were? Well, here's my list.

1. WALL-E
2. The Incredibles
3. Up
4. Monsters Inc.
5. Ratatouille
6. Finding Nemo
7. Cars
8. Toy Story
9. Toy Story 2
10. A Bug's Life

First off, I love pretty much all of these films (Bug's Life is really the only one that left me kind of cold, and even that had some good moments). Cars and Finding Nemo are kind of tied for me; I liked Cars much, much more than most people and was almost tempted to switch it with Finding Nemo in this list, but I think Finding Nemo is a better movie. Also, WALL-E and The Incredibles, along with Beauty and The Beast, are far and away my favorite American animated films (my favorite animated film ever is My Neighbor Totoro).

I should note here that Nemo leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth because of how many friggin times I had to see it in college; I owned it the first day it came out, and because my room was big and had a TV, everyone came over to watch movies, and Nemo was the most popular choice after, get ready for this, Quills (the Marquis de Sade movie). I probably saw both Quills and Finding Nemo, no exaggeration here, about fifteen times my first year of college. And guess what? Finding Nemo had the better characters (the sea turtles, Mr. Ray, and Dory are just wonderful), but Quills holds up better as a film.

The Toy Story movies don't hold up that well to me in light of the later Pixar movies, although Buzz Lightyear is one of the great animated characters. Monsters Inc. is by far my favorite film of Pixar's pre-Brad Bird era. I saw that film in theaters opening day, in a packed house full of little kids. The kids were all completely into it, and there was a collective "awwww" at the end shot. One of my favorite film-going moments.

Really, these are all terrific films; like most people, I have yet to be disappointed by Pixar, and am in awe of their ability to not only put out great films on a consistent basis, but to try out completely different ideas every time. Let's hope that the next ten films are as good as these!

2 comments:

  1. I've never seen Cars, Finding Nemo, or Monsters Inc. But of the 7 I have seen, I think I like them in the exact same order as you. For me, there isn't much of a difference in 1-3, which I like much more than Ratatouille, which I like somewhat more than the Toy Stories, which I like much more than A Bug's Life.

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  2. Cool, glad we agree. Yeah, as I posted earlier, I liked Ratatouille much more the second time I saw it; if I hadn't seen it a second time, it probably would have been lower on this list, probably swapped with Cars.

    Of the three you haven't seen, I would definitely recommend Monsters Inc. the most; it's a really sweet and well-done movie, and Billy Crystal and John Goodman are terrific together.

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