What’s the greatest animated Disney movie of all time?
According to OVS students and teachers, the competition isn’t even close: it’s Ratatouille in a runaway.
Sixty four of the best animated Disney movies ever made competed in an invigorating, NCAA March Madness-style bracket competition over the past month. Childhood staples such as Big Hero 6, Bolt, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book and Toy Story competed against each other to see which would rise to the top in the minds of the members of the OVS community.
The conversation started in the journalism classroom when Brody Moller and Ella Schuette stumbled upon an animated Disney movie bracket.
“We were talking over what the best Disney movie was and it just started spiraling,” said Ella, who serves as On The Hill’s publications editor.
The journalism students completed the bracket on their own in journalism, and Wall-E came out on top, taking down Mulan in the final round.
The journalism students had so much fun, and engaged in so many fights filling out the Disney bracket, that they decided to open the competition to the entire school.
Ella used the Disney bracket, found on a Reddit page, to create polls on the OVS journalism Instagram that put the movies to a vote.
There were heartbreaking losses and triumphant wins.
In the early rounds, for example, Aladdin took down Robin Hood and The Nightmare Before Christmas before falling to The Lion King in an Elite Eight matchup. Journalism favorite Big Hero 6 beat out Meet the Robinsons, Frozen and Bolt before getting wiped out by Tangled, also in the Elite Eight round.
In the Final Four, one side of the bracket featured a matchup between Peter Pan and Mulan. The other side of the bracket pitted Tangled against Ratatouille.
In the end, Ratatouille took down Mulan by an overwhelming margin.
“It was disheartening that Ratatouille was THE best Disney movie according to OVS,” said junior Hannah Little, who is editor of On The Hill. “It’s alright, but it’s no Big Hero Six or Wall-E.”
However, some people’s favorite Disney movies didn’t even make it into the quarter-finals.
For example, The Jungle Book lost its first round matchup to Peter Pan.
“The Jungle Book is the all-time best Disney movie by far,” said Upper Campus Head of School Craig Floyd. “To think it gets knocked out in the first round is BS.”
Others felt that the Disney princess movies were robbed of their rightful spot on the top of the bracket.
“Little Mermaid is the best Disney movie,” said OVS Spanish teacher Gretchen Wachter. “Any of the Disney princess movies are better than the movie that ended up winning.”
Junior Tigran Nahabedian said his favorite Disney movie of all time is Wall-E, and he was surprised it didn’t make it further through the bracket. Wall-E only made it into the Elite Eight, where it was felled by Monsters Inc.
That said, Tigran said the Disney bracket provided a welcome distraction to the demands of school life.
“I do feel it was a fun extra thing to do outside of classwork,” he said. “It was interesting to see what people preferred.”
