Waiting for Something Incredible: My Rankings of the Best Disney-Pixar Movies

Pixar Animation Studios has combined with Disney to create tremendous family-oriented films that can truly be enjoyed by people of all ages. While it may seem odd that Disney chose to partner with another animation studio to produce movies, the results have been outstanding. Pixar and Disney have combined to release seven major motion pictures. Here are my rankings of the best of the Pixar and Disney offerings.

7. Cars (2006): This is a good movie, even if it ranks at the bottom of the Pixar and Disney offerings. It has tremendous visuals, a decent story and fun cameos. But one of the key attributes to a successful animated feature is a strong vocal cast. And this movie started out behind the 8-ball featuring the vocal talents of Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt and Larry the Cable Guy. I would be quite happy if I never saw or heard any of these three actors again.

Anyway, the story is about rookie race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his quest to win the Piston Cup. Along the way McQueen gets caught up in a small town on Historic Route 66, where he learns lessons about life and love that he puts into play during the final race.

The movie is too long and drags in several spots. While my family will usually watch these movies over and over again, we've seen this one just twice and have no plans to watch it again anytime soon.

6. A Bug's Life (1998): Two animated movies came out at virtually the same time about insects. You can tell them apart because Antz featured the voices of Woody Allen and Sharon Stone. Meanwhile, A Bug's Life is the one worth seeing.

A parody of The Ant and The Grasshopper, the movie revolves around Flik (Dave Foley) who accidentally destroys the offering made by the ants for the grasshoppers and spends the rest of the movie trying to make things right. Of course, he fails in that regard, but the ants still come out on top as Flik and the rest of the ants experience an awakening.

The story itself captures your attention throughout and it is only on repeated viewings that you get to enjoy all of the spectacular visual effects and sly references, many of which are to fellow Disney and Pixar movie Toy Story.