Founded by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney, the Walt Disney Corporation has, over the last hundred years, grown from a studio focused on animated short films to one of the largest and most influential multimedia juggernauts in the world. Having absorbed other companies like Lucasfilm, Marvel, and 20th Century Studios, Disney’s catalog of movies has grown tremendously. Even before the merger, they were consistently making successful films on a critical and financial level, with many of their animated films in particular ranking among the best in the industry.
Of course, not all of Disney’s films have been successful. They’ve balanced out their record of amazing films with a large variety of contenders for the worst, some of which go even further back than their current trend of mediocrity. It’s good to look back at what can be found at the bottom of the pile, both as a form of catharsis for those displeased with the company’s current actions, and to help showcase why their best movies deserve their titles.
10 ‘The Pacifier’ (2005)
Directed by Adam Shankman
Following the death of government programmer Howard Plummer (Tate Donovan), his widow, Julie (Faith Ford), is escorted to Switzerland to recover the contents of his safety deposit box. While she’s gone, U.S. Navy SEAL lieutenant Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) is left to watch over her five children and search the house for Howard’s secret project, GHOST. Unfortunately, the assignment proves to be more than Shane anticipated as he finds himself forced to keep house and play father-figure for the kids.
The Pacifier is one of the lesser examples of a large, muscular man comically defeated by children and domestic life. Occasionally, it’s able to tug at the heartstrings as Shane bonds with the kids and helps them through their individual grieving processes, but it’s weighted down by unfunny humor, a needlessly complex plot, and too many side-characters. It’s also tonally all over the place, going from comical scenes of Shane pulling a diaper out of a ball pit to implications that the eldest son, Seth (Max Thieriot), might be a Neo Nazi.
9 ‘Home on the Range’ (2004)
Directed by Will Finn and John Sanford
Maggie (Roseanne Barr) is a show cow who is sold to a small farm called Patch of Heaven after her owner’s herd was stolen by notorious cattle rustler Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid). Unfortunately, the bank demands that Patch of Heaven’s owner, Pearl (Carole Cook), repay her debt in three days or her land will be auctioned off. Teaming up with local cows Grace (Jennifer Tilly) and Mrs. Calloway (Judi Dench), Maggie tries to get an extension on the loan before deciding to capture Slim and use his bounty to save the farm.
At the time of release, Home on the Range was seen as the movie that killed Disney’s 2D animation, and while not completely earned due to the shifting landscape of the 2000s, it certainly didn’t help. Much like The Aristocats, this movie is concerned with only pleasing very young children, but older audiences couldn’t get behind its simple story and garish visuals. It also doesn’t help that the film contains some of Disney’s most annoying characters.
8 ‘The Wild’ (2006)
Directed by Steve “Spaz” Williams
At the Central Park Zoo, Samson the lion (Kiefer Sutherland) is a major attraction thanks to his mighty roar, which he attributes to having grown up in the wild, but struggles with raising his pre-teen son, Ryan (Greg Cipes). After an argument, Ryan accidentally gets locked inside a metal container bound for Africa. With the help of his friends Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi), Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard), Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo), and Larry the anaconda (Richard Kind), Samson escapes from the zoo and steals a boat to rescue his son.
The Wild is a black sheep among Disney films, and fittingly, failed to win audiences over due to its off-putting animation and lackluster storytelling. Most of the film feels like a ripoff of Madagascar, with a sprinkling of Finding Nemo in regard to Samson and his son’s estranged relationship and the father having to go on a journey to rescue him. The third act sees the most original content, but it goes off the walls in its insanity, with William Shatner playing a zealous wildebeest who wants to disrupt the natural order by hunting and killing a lion.
7 ‘Planes’ (2013)
Directed by Klay Hall
Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook) is a young crop duster who dreams of flying in the Wings Around the Globe Rally race. Though he is able to qualify with help from his friends, Dusty faces steep competition, especially from three-time defending champion Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith). If his fellow racers weren’t bad enough, Dusty also has a fear of heights that prevents him from flying at optimal levels.
Planes is a spin-off to Pixar’s lucrative Cars franchise, but fails to even reach the levels of the first movie in terms of emotional impact or likable characters. The plot is as cliché as can be expected from a sports film: a plucky underdog makes his way to the big leagues, overcomes adversity, beats the bully, and gets the girl. None of the characters stand out from their most basic archetypes, and none of the film’s emotional moments come close to matching Cars’ phenomenal climax.
6 ‘Chicken Little’ (2005)
Directed by Mark Dindal
Chicken Little (Zach Braff) is turned into the town pariah after he causes a panic thinking that the sky is falling. His luck changes when he tries out for the school baseball team and does surprisingly well, becoming the town darling and re-earning the love and respect of his father, Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall). However, Chicken Littel discovers that what he thought was the sky falling was actually a piece of an invisible alien spacecraft, and tries to warn everyone of the coming invasion.
Chicken Little might just be the most mean-spirited of Disney’s animated movies, and fittingly ranks as one of its worst. The first half is pretty much watching Chicken Little suffer as he is treated terribly by both the town and his own father, who is so ashamed of his son that he throws him under the bus rather than stand up for him. The second half at least has some decent visuals due to the design of the aliens and their ships, but the message about the importance of family is undercut, especially regarding Buck’s turnaround.
5 ‘The Country Bears’ (2002)
Directed by Peter Hastings
When Beary Barrington (Haley Joel Osment) learns that he is the adopted son of a human family, he runs away from home and goes to the Country Bear Hall, the former concert hall of an anthropomorphic bear-band called The Country Bears. Unfortunately, he learns that the hall is slated for destruction by banker Reed Thimple (Christopher Walken). Beary suggests that they perform a benefit concert to raise the money needed to save the hall, and sets off to reunite the scattered band members.
While the puppet work used to bring the bears to life is impressive, it’s not enough to save The Country Bears from contributing to the trend of Disney’s terrible adaptations of their famous theme park attractions. The design of the bears looks ugly instead of charming, and the story is another predictable comedy film that ends with a message about the importance of family. Still, it does give one of the most indelibly unhinged Walken performances, and it’s hard not to smile alongside him when he destroys a model of the Country Bear Hall.
4 ‘Artemis Fowl’ (2020)
Directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh
Artemis Fowl Jr. (Ferdia Shaw) is a child prodigy living with his father, Artemis Fowl Sr. (Colin Farrell), in Ireland. One day, his father is kidnapped by a mysterious figure, who tells Artemis that he has three days to recover an artifact called the Aculos that his father allegedly stole. Accompanied by his butler and bodygard, Domovoi Butler (Nonso Anozie), Artemis’ journey to find the Aculos takes him deep beneath the earth, to a hidden world inhabited by mythical creatures.
Despite being based on a popular book series, Artemis Fowl somehow managed to enrage all groups of viewers, killing any chance of a franchise. This is due to the film’s lackluster CGI failing to bring to life its fantastical world, and a story that makes little sense due to numerous changes to the original books. The worst of these is making Artemis into a bland hero, when in the books, he was a much more villainous kind of protagonist, offering audiences something new to experience.
3 ‘Pinocchio’ (2022)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Before falling asleep, Italian woodcarver Geppetto (Tom Hanks) wishes on a star that his newest creation, a puppet named Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), could be a real boy. That night, his cottage is visited by a Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo), who brings Pinoccio to life and tells him that if he’s brave, truthful, and selfless, he will fulfill Geppetto’s wish. She appoints a cricket named Jiminy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to be Pinocchio’s conscience and help him make good choices, but this proves to be difficult as Pinocchio gets involved in several shady situations.
Pinocchio exemplifies the worst aspects of Disney’s current trend of live-action remakes of their beloved classics. For the most part, it’s just a souless re-skin of the original, but trades groundbreaking hand-drawn animation and special effects for uncanny CGI that makes the animal characters look like demons. The film also feels more juvenile than the original through such new additions as Pinocchio sniffing a pile of dung and an annoying and superfluous seagull companion named Sofia (Lorraine Bracco).
2 ‘Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World’ (1998)
Directed by Cullen Blaine, Dale Case, Daniel de la Vega, Barbara Dourmashkin, Bob Kline, Burt Medall, and Mitch Rochon
During the height of Disney’s Renaissance, the company was doing everything it could to capitalize on the success of its films, such as making direct-to-video sequels and television shows. In the case of Belle’s Magical World, they did both by combining three (later four) episodes of a failed Beauty and the Beast show into a single anthology movie. Set some time after the Beast (Robby Benson) saved Belle (Paige O’Hara) from the wolves, it shows how Belle and Beast overcome more trials and tribulations on their path to romance, while also helping out some of the servants with their problems.
While some of Disney’s direct-to-video sequels proved to be sleeper hits, Belle’s Magical World is a contender for one of the worst. The animation is terrible even by the standards of Disney’s television division, resulting in plenty of off-model shots and stilted movements that don’t match the high-quality voice acting. In terms of writing, everything feels juvenile and like it’s aimed at very young children, particularly the Beast, whose outbursts somehow feel even more childish than they did in the original film.
1 ‘Mars Needs Moms’ (2011)
Directed by Simon Wells
After being sent to his room for feeding his broccoli to the family cat, Milo (Seth Green and Seth Dusky) tells his mother (Joan Cusack) that he’d be better off without her. That night, aliens from Mars abduct Milo’s mother, and in an effort to save her, Milo stows away on their ship. On the planet Mars, he meets a man-child named Gribble (Dan Fogler), who explains to Milo that the martians kill human mothers and extract their memories to power their mom-robots.
Mars Needs Moms has gone down in infamy as one of Disney’s biggest financial losses. Its tone is all over the place, bouncing from slapstick comedy and juvenile jokes one moment to images of a totalitarian state and children watching their parents be killed in another, resulting in a confusing narrative. The motion-capture animation also results in terrible levels of uncanny valley, especially on the Martians, leading to a messy and off-putting art style that further turned audiences away.
