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You know the kind of animated movie that wins this argument before anyone starts arguing. Someone puts it on “for the kids,” the adults stop checking their phones, and twenty minutes later everybody is quoting the same line they have quoted for years. And somebody who doesn’t want to watch the movie just keeps coming by, stands around, can’t help but get indulged a bit before walking away again? Nobody cares whether the animation is historically important in that moment. You are simply having a ridiculously good time.
That is the version of best that matters here. These movies move, joke, surprise, and give you characters you genuinely enjoy spending time with. They are warm, chaotic, and a couple can suddenly hit much harder emotionally than you expected. But all eight have that rare quality where revisiting them feels less like rewatching homework from childhood and more like hanging out with something that still knows exactly how to entertain you.
8
‘The LEGO Movie’ (2014)
Emmet (Chris Pratt) is so ordinary that the people around him struggle to remember anything specific about him. Then he accidentally finds the Piece of Resistance and gets mistaken for the “Special” destined to stop Lord Business (Will Ferrell) from freezing the entire LEGO world with the Kragle. The LEGO Movie somehow takes that completely ridiculous setup seriously enough to make it exciting while never forgetting that everything around Emmet is made of tiny plastic bricks.
The jokes come at you constantly, but the movie is funniest when it treats LEGO logic as perfectly normal. Spaceships can be built from whatever is lying around. Batman (Will Arnett) is an insufferably confident boyfriend. Benny (Charlie Day) spends what feels like half the movie desperately waiting for permission to build a spaceship. “Everything Is Awesome” starts as an annoying corporate anthem and ends up becoming part of the story’s argument about conformity. Then the live-action reveal adds an emotional layer without draining any of the fun. It is basically ninety minutes of somebody dumping the toy box onto the floor and somehow finding a real story inside it.
7
‘Kung Fu Panda’ (2008)
Po (Jack Black) works in his father’s noodle shop, worships kung fu from a distance, and has absolutely no reason to believe he belongs beside the Furious Five. Then he crashes into the Dragon Warrior ceremony and gets chosen anyway. That is the joke at the center of Kung Fu Panda, but the movie never treats Po himself as the joke. He loves this world too much for that.
Watching him train is where the movie really comes alive. Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) eventually realizes that traditional discipline is useless on Po, so dumplings become motivation and lunch becomes combat. Meanwhile, Tai Lung (Ian McShane) escapes prison in a sequence that briefly makes you wonder when this cheerful panda movie became an action film. Po’s eventual confidence grows out of everything that made him seem unsuitable in the first place rather than some sudden personality transplant. It is warm, fast, endlessly quotable, and almost impossible to finish in a bad mood.
6
‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ (2000)
Kuzco (David Spade) is young, rich, powerful, and so spectacularly self-absorbed that becoming a llama might genuinely qualify as character development. The Emperor’s New Groove wastes almost no time getting there. Yzma (Eartha Kitt) wants the throne, Kronk (Patrick Warburton) mixes up the poison, and suddenly the emperor is stuck in the jungle with Pacha (John Goodman), the same man whose home he was planning to demolish for a swimming pool.
The whole movie operates on a wonderful lack of dignity. Yzma and Kronk take a roller coaster to the secret lab. A lever drops someone into an alligator pit for no apparent reason. Kronk argues with miniature versions of his conscience and remains extremely proud of his spinach puffs. Even the movie itself occasionally stops so Kuzco can complain about how the story is treating him. Pacha keeps enough heart underneath the madness to make Kuzco’s gradual improvement believable. Nothing here wants to feel majestic or important. It just wants to make you laugh, and twenty-five years later, it is still absurdly good at it.
5
‘Shrek 2’ (2004)
Shrek was great. The second installment was better. Meeting your partner’s parents is stressful enough without discovering they expected their daughter to marry a handsome prince and you are, inconveniently, an ogre. That is where Shrek 2 begins, sending Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) to Far Far Away while King Harold (John Cleese) desperately tries to undo a marriage he never wanted. Then Fairy Godmother (Jennifer Saunders) enters with a business plan for true love, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) brings his hair, and the movie somehow gets even more entertaining.
Everything is turned up just enough. Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) tries to murder Shrek, gets caught, widens his eyes, and instantly becomes impossible to hate. Shrek drinks the Happily Ever After potion and briefly wakes up looking like he should be selling cologne. The giant gingerbread man attacks a castle while people scream “Mongo,” and Fairy Godmother belts out “Holding Out for a Hero” over the entire thing. Underneath the chaos is a very relatable fear that the person you love might deserve somebody better. Shrek 2 gets the joke, the insecurity, and the huge fairy-tale ending exactly right.
4
‘Ratatouille’ (2007)
Remy (Patton Oswalt) has an extraordinary sense of taste and dreams of becoming a chef. Unfortunately, he is also a rat, which is generally considered a problem in professional kitchens. Ratatouille solves this through one of Pixar’s most charmingly stupid ideas. Remy hides under Linguini (Lou Romano)’s chef hat and controls him by pulling his hair. That’s a great dad joke for the wife by the way.
The movie commits to that arrangement so completely that you stop questioning it almost immediately. Linguini flails around the kitchen while Remy tries to save dinner from underneath a toque. Colette Tatou (Janeane Garofalo) explains the brutality of surviving a professional kitchen at approximately machine-gun speed. Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) sits at his table looking like he has personally outlawed happiness, then one spoonful of ratatouille sends him straight back to childhood. That moment gives the movie its heart without turning it sentimental. Ratatouille understands the pleasure of being genuinely good at something and the even greater pleasure of surprising people who decided what you were capable of before you started.
3
‘The Incredibles’ (2004)
Bob Parr (Craig T. Nelson) used to save lives as Mr. Incredible. Years later, he is sitting in a cubicle being reprimanded because he keeps helping insurance customers too much. That is such a perfect setup for The Incredibles because everybody in this family has something extraordinary inside them and absolutely nowhere sensible to put it.
Bob secretly returns to superhero work and immediately starts acting like someone who has rediscovered the gym, his favorite hobby, and his twenties at the same time. Helen Parr (Holly Hunter) eventually has to chase him down while Violet Parr (Sarah Vowell) and Dash Parr (Spencer Fox) turn a rescue mission into a family argument with superpowers. Edna Mode (Brad Bird) appears, insults everyone, bans capes, and leaves with basically the entire movie in her pocket. Syndrome (Jason Lee) brings real danger because his resentment began as fandom and hardened into something ugly. Yet the best fun often comes from the family itself. “Where is my super suit?” is still funny because Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) arguing with his wife during a citywide emergency somehow feels completely reasonable.
2
‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018)
Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) gets bitten by a radioactive spider and reacts the way a teenager probably would. He panics, sticks to things accidentally, cannot control half his powers, and has no idea why his pants suddenly seem too small. Then several other Spider-People begin dropping into his universe, including an older Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) who has seen better days, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), and an actual cartoon pig.
Into the Spider-Verse gets enormous mileage from that collision and for its unique animation, but Miles keeps the movie human. His relationship with his dad Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry) is loving and awkward. Uncle Aaron Davis (Mahershala Ali) is effortlessly cool until Miles learns something he desperately wishes he did not know. Peter B. Parker is supposed to train him and spends much of the experience looking like a man who would rather order takeout. Then Miles finally takes the leap, the city flips beneath him, and the movie turns one teenager finding confidence into pure visual adrenaline. It looks unlike almost anything before it, yet the reason people keep returning is simple. Watching Miles finally believe he can do this feels incredible.
1
‘Toy Story’ (1995)
Most children have wondered whether their toys move when nobody is looking. Toy Story answers yes, and apparently they also hold meetings, worry about birthday presents, develop jealousy problems, and get extremely stressed when the family moves house.
Woody (Tom Hanks) has been Andy Davis (John Morris)’s favorite for years until Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) arrives and unknowingly turns the bedroom hierarchy upside down. Buzz sincerely believes he is a space ranger, Woody is far more bothered by this than he would ever admit, and their rivalry gets both of them stranded in the outside world. That gives us Pizza Planet, the claw-obsessed aliens, Sid Phillips (Erik von Detten)’s horrifying bedroom, and Buzz’s painful discovery that the commercial on television is advertising him. The movie can make you laugh at Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) insulting everyone, then suddenly make you feel awful for a plastic astronaut sitting alone on a staircase. That balance is why Toy Story still wins. It is funny without trying too hard, emotional without begging for tears, and fun in the way only a movie you have loved for years can be.
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Safwan Azeem
Almontather Rassoul
