Disney started from humble beginnings in animation. However, with the right amount of hard work, love, and passion, became one of the greatest movie companies in history. These days, Disney owns massive Hollywood properties as well as still creating films in-house that audiences can enjoy. Love it or hate it, it’s easy to say that the House of Mouse has a grip over cinema today.
However, every great studio has thrown out a few movies that fans didn’t like, and Disney is no exception. While awful movies from them didn’t happen as much back in the day, as time went on, they became much more frequent. Remember the mid to late 2000s? Those were dark times for Disney fans. It was a time where they were experimenting with animation and trying to start their own massive live-action franchises.
Now that Disney has hundreds of movies under their belt, and they’re creating their own movie empire with other acquired franchises, it’s easy to forget a lot of the films they’ve made over the years. Regardless of whether those films were underrated or not, there was something about them that caused people to either dismiss them or immediately lose interest. Fast forward years after those films came out, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone that remembered them.
Disney’s track record hasn’t been perfect, and if you still aren’t on board, then be prepared to see some hard facts as we go through 25 Disney movies that fans pretend don’t exist.
25 Chicken Little
Chicken Little was Disney’s first attempt at CGI animation for the entire film and, boy, was it awful. Just about every character was bad (Chicken Little’s dad being the most irritating of the bunch), the backgrounds were bland, the environment had no lighting system, and generic songs were used for the soundtrack, which is painful considering how good Disney is at creating original music. The story doesn’t work from any angle, and it was the kind of film that people forgot a few years after it came out.
24 Mulan 2
Disney sequels are easy targets, so we’ll try to keep them at a minimum. That said, Mulan 2 is easily the worst of the bunch. Where Mulan had great soundtrack, a compelling story, and beautiful visuals, its sequel throws all of it away. Not only are the songs simply bizarre and awkward rhythmically, but the voice acting is a noticeable downgrade, and the visuals take a serious hit. It doesn’t help that the movie is all based on Mushu being an insufferable jerk and Shang being a non-masculine dork.
23 Home On The Range
Home on the Range, despite being the “big animated feature” Disney was parading around during its time, was the kind of film that wasn’t trying to be anything other than mediocre. The songs didn’t leave any lasting impression, and the story wasn’t fleshed out enough to pad out its runtime. It quickly became known as one of the worst movies in the “Disney canon,” and not many people could even tell you what it was about. Spoiler alert: you’re not missing much.
22 Bedtime Stories
This is an Adam Sandler movie. Need we say more? The movie presented itself as this magical story where dreams come to life. Instead, it was just a way that Adam Sandler’s character got ahead in life. Needless to say, this movie was average at best. It’s far from Adam Sandler’s worst movie (his standard humor was tuned down for a younger audience), but it’s still not great. Like a lot of movies that came out during this time, it was forgotten shortly after it released.
21 Mars Needs Moms
There are a lot of people who still like the Polar Express, but the animation was unsettling to say the least. It was an animated movie created using motion capture, which blurred the lines between cartoon and reality. This style of animation was used for Disney’s Mars Needs Moms. Not only did the animation look even creepier in this film, but the plot was just so bizarre that it was instantly panned by critics everywhere. Even the title was so off-putting that it prevented many from even watching it.
20 Planes
If you thought that Disney couldn’t get any greedier with the Cars franchise after Cars 2, then you’d be wrong. They decided to make another movie set in the same universe. It was appropriately titled Planes. Not only did this movie rip off the plot of Cars, but it lacked the touch of quality animation that Pixar had, making it an average movie at best. The worst part was that the movie was only made so that Disney could sell a whole new line of toys.
19 Prince Of Persia
Even Disney attempted to adapt a video game into a movie. As you might expect, the Prince of Persia film was okay at best, despite their best efforts to make sure it was a success. The film has some generic acting and set pieces. Perhaps the most egregious sin of the film was that the entire plot was essentially undone at the end of the film, making the final moments feel anticlimactic and pointless. It’s quite telling that their next attempt at a video game movie was an original concept.
18 G-Force
G-Force stars a team of guinea pigs who are also spies that try to save the world. On paper, it seems like the kind of idea that could be charming. However, in execution, it’s the kind of bad movie that was so directly targeted toward kids that it became annoying. Filled with many “crude” jokes, this live-action, CGI hybrid film was mediocre at best. It was the sort of thing that parents watched with their kids once and never brought up again.
17 Tinker Bell
Remember Tinker Bell, the ill-tempered, sassy fairy that appeared in Peter Pan? She was deemed so popular by Disney that she was eventually given her own movie. The difference this time was that she was turned into a character for little girls to love. As a result, her snarky personality from her original appearance was stripped away in favor of someone you’d see hanging out with Princess Sofia. It began an entire franchise of movies that were each just as forgettable as the last.
16 The Wild
Disney and DreamWorks have never gotten along, so when both companies decided to make movies about animals escaping from the zoo, the heat was on. You’ll probably remember Madagascar and forget about The Wild, though, because one was much better than the other. The Wild came across as nothing more than a shameless rip-off. Not only did it have worse animation, but the plot wasn’t as charming nor were the characters as well-designed as the likes of Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria.
15 Camp Rock
High School Musical is far from Disney’s best franchise, but it also is well-remembered. If there is another Disney Channel movie that will forever be lost in time, it’s Camp Rock. This was another attempt at capitalizing on the popularity of High School Musical. This time around, it revolved around a summer camp where Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers were thrown for good measure. Disney Channel movies were hard to love in the first place, but the ones that ripped off of each other were even worse.
14 Underdog
There’s no denying that the old Underdog cartoon was a beloved and corny show that older people grew up loving. When Disney decided to take the show and movie it into live-action, the results weren’t quite what they wanted. Underdog is a downright weird and awkward film, having lackluster special effects and awkward dialogue. What made it even worse was the fact that poor Peter Dinklage got sucked into playing the villain for the film, and he had to work with what he was given.
13 John Carter
When Disney adapted the “John Carter of Mars” books into a movie, they were wanting to create a series that could compete with Star Wars. Unfortunately, the John Carter film was as basic as they came, with a by-the-numbers plot and awkwardly-designed characters. There wasn’t much to say about the movie other than the fact that it was seriously forgettable. It was far from the competitor they wanted, so they ended up deciding just to by Star Wars and take it from there.
12 The Lone Ranger
There are a lot of people who are fans of Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer’s The Lone Ranger film. However, critic reactions were more than enough to keep people from either seeing or remembering the movie. As a modern re-telling of the classic Western TV series, it lacked the heart and soul that made the show so great in the first place. It had a few great action setpieces, but that alone wasn’t enough to save the movie from being forgotten.
11 Inspector Gadget
The Inspector Gadget TV series was a beloved cartoon, so it was only a matter of time before a big studio came and tried to make a live-action film out of it. Unfortunately, Disney’s Inspector Gadget film was more concerned with special effects than it was telling a good story, leading many to regard it was the worst live-action movie the company ever made. If you need convinced that the film is bad, just remember they cast Matthew Broderick in the titular role.
10 The Country Bears
The Country Bears was a movie based on an attraction at Disney World. With that premise alone, you can tell what direction this movie went. It wastes no time shoving product placement down your throat with a weird story that only gets worse from start to finish. If we were watching a movie that was one long advertisement, then we’d try our best to forget it as well. If you absolutely need a Disney movie with singing bears, just go watch The Jungle Book.
9 Tron: Legacy
The Tron franchise was one that had been dormant for many years. Leave it to Disney to try and revive it. While the effects of Tron: Legacy were top notch, there were a lot of elements that didn’t please both newcomers and fans of the series. Despite their best efforts, Disney couldn’t manage to spark a revival in the series, and Tron: Legacy became the last Tron film to date. Now that Disney is spending their efforts on Star Wars, most Disney fans don’t even remember Tron.
8 Into The Woods
Into the Woods is a musical that was brought onto the big screen thanks to Disney. It’s not something that’s particularly bad, nor is it even mediocre. It’s a faithful and somehow magical re-telling of a story that people loved. However, the film has quickly been forgotten, coming out in 2014, and seemingly never being discussed again. Other movies that came out at the time were much more popular, including some of Disney’s own live-action films.
7 Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True
While Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True was one of the best-selling direct-to-video Disney sequels, it wasn’t that great of a film, and people soon forgot about it. It followed the story of the original film, but was broken up into three separate stories. Couple this with the dip in animation quality, and it looked like something that should’ve been in a Disney cartoon rather than its own project. It was given a sequel that was much better received, but still just as forgettable.
6 Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure
Due to the popularity of the High School Musical franchise, there was a spin-off created that took place after the events of the third film. As the title implies, it followed the adventures of Sharpay Evans as she tries to make it in the big time. Not only did the lack of familiar faces severely hurt the movie, but it also felt cheap and devoid of what made the preceding trilogy so popular with a lot of young minds. Disney should’ve just attempted a High School Musical 4.
