Disney is by far one of the biggest entertainment companies on the planet, and it has been for quite some time. As far as their movie production goes, they’re a pillar of Hollywood history, particularly in what concerns family entertainment. Over the course of their long history, they have made several great films, from old classics to modern gems, but they have also made lots of duds.
Particularly in recent years, but over the course of their past as well, Disney has made a few films that are so bad you could reasonably call them unwatchable. It’s the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst, the stuff that isn’t even worth approaching. From forgotten ’90s disasters like Mr. Magoo to notorious recent embarrassments like Pinocchio, these Disney films prove that even the House of Mouse isn’t infallible.
10
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ (2021)
Directed by Swinton O. Scott III
Probably one of the worst animated movies of all time — or, at the very least, of the past few years —, Disney’s animated adaptation of the beloved Diary of a Wimpy Kid book is undoubtedly the worst thing that has ever happened to Jeff Kinney‘s creation. Which is odd, because he penned the movie’s screenplay. Whatever the case, though critics liked the movie to a decent extent, fans hated it.
The animation looks cheap and unfinished, the voice acting is terrible, and the direction is lackluster at best. Even though the movie sticks to the source material pretty closely, it’s executed so lifelessly that it never ceases to be entirely boring for grown-ups and kids alike. It’s a fine enough film if there’s nothing else available to watch, but there’s always something else available to watch, so this isn’t really a worthwhile movie.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
- Release Date
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December 3, 2021
- Runtime
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58 Minutes
9
‘Song of the South’ (1946)
Directed by Wilfred Jackson and Harve Foster
The infamous Song of the South is one of the most controversial films in all of Disney’s catalog. Some people, usually those who hold some level of nostalgia for the film, defend it as a mostly harmless little classic with great music whose problems are easy to brush aside. Others, pointing at the romanticized way it paints plantation life in the Antebellum U.S., dismiss it as an offensive film that has aged like milk and is better off left in the past.
Song of the South is built on top of harmful stereotypes that are hard to ignore unless you’re wearing rose-colored nostalgia glasses, even if its songs and vibrant mixture of live-action and animation somewhat redeem it. The thing about this one is that it’s literally unwatchable, Disney having removed it from Disney+ and there not being a DVD or BluRay available for purchase. Even the film’s most ardent critics agree that this was a poor decision. Problematic as it is, Song of the South is an important watch precisely to be able to discuss these dated stereotypes.
Song of the South
- Release Date
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November 20, 1946
- Runtime
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94 minutes
- Director
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Harve Foster, Wilfred Jackson
8
‘A Kid in King Arthur’s Court’ (1995)
Directed by Michael Gottlieb
It’s only fair to hold kid-oriented entertainment, including movies, to a different standard. These are films that don’t need to be particularly complex, artsy, or even smart in order to be great for their target demographic. However, there are some children’s movies that are unforgivably terrible by any imaginable measure. A Kid in King Arthur’s Court is an example of such a movie.
The ’90s definitely had worse comedies, but they didn’t have very many worse Disney comedies. Predictable, unoriginal, unfunny (even for kids), and worse-looking than an old Disney Channel original film, it’s a misfire through and through. It has performances by young Daniel Craig and Kate Winslet, lending it some historical interest, but not nearly enough to make it worthwhile.
A Kid in King Arthur’s Court
- Release Date
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August 11, 1995
- Runtime
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89 Minutes
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Thomas Ian Nicholas
Calvin Fuller
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-
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Paloma Baeza
Princess Katey
7
‘Mr. Magoo’ (1997)
Directed by Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai
Mr. Magoo stars the usually-hilarious Leslie Nielsen as the titular character, and it’s an adaptation of the cartoon of the same name about a myopic millionaire defeating jewel smugglers by accident. Not even Nielsen’s charismatic presence is able to rescue this intelligence-insulting mess, and the material is so awful that even he looks bad by the end of the whole ordeal.
With none of the charm or humor that makes the original cartoon a classic, Mr. Magoo pointlessly moves from boring gag to boring gag, boring adults with a lack of laughs and confusing kids with an overcomplicated plot. When slapstick comedies decide to rely entirely on their set pieces and not have any sort of meaningful narrative, they better make sure that those set pieces are fun. Mr. Magoo doesn’t have a single scene that isn’t painfully forgettable.
Mr. Magoo
- Release Date
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December 25, 1997
- Runtime
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84 minutes
Cast
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Kelly Lynch
Luanne LeSeur / Prunella Pegula
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Leslie Nielsen
Mr. Quincy Magoo
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-
6
‘Mars Needs Moms’ (2011)
Directed by Simon Wells
Mars Needs Moms proves that cutting-edge animation technology does not a good-looking animated film make. This massive box office bomb looks freakishly horrifying, and the story really isn’t any better. The whole thing is a bland, poorly plotted, emotionally unengaging fiasco that Disney fans seem to have forgotten all about already. It’s for the best.
One of the most unwatchable animated movies of the 21st century, Mars Needs Moms is technically astonishing, but that isn’t really enough to make it entertaining. With Disney having so many animated gems for families that have more positive messages, a better visual style, more heart, more effective humor, and a better-executed story, there’s really no reason to ever check out Mars Needs Moms.
5
‘The Country Bears’ (2002)
Directed by Peter Hastings
Before 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl proved that movies based on attractions from the Disney theme parks definitely could work, The Country Bears (the third-ever Disney film based on a park attraction, after 1997’s Tower of Terror and 2000’s Mission to Mars) proved that the formula was still very much in need of perfecting.
The technical skills on display are unarguably impressive, but the trite story, creepy tone, and terribly unfunny humor make this movie unwatchable.
The movie failed with critics and at the box office, proving to be a failure no matter how one sliced it. The technical skills on display are unarguably impressive, but the trite story, creepy tone, and terribly unfunny humor make this movie unwatchable. It’s a film so unbelievably bad that, even if it had been released straight to video like many of Disney’s animated movies used to be, it would still have been considered a monumental flop.
The Country Bears
- Release Date
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July 26, 2002
- Runtime
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88 minutes
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Officer Cheets / Ted Bedderhead (voice)
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Candy Ford
Trixie St. Claire (voice)
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James Gammon
Big Al (voice)
4
‘Pinocchio’ (2022)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
1940’s Pinocchio was Walt Disney‘s second-ever animated feature, and what a legendarily beautiful animated classic that is. As such, when the studio announced that the tale of this wooden boy who wants to be real would be the latest victim of their rampage of turning iconic animated classics into lifeless live-action films, fans knew that things wouldn’t be pretty. Indeed, they weren’t.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, once a legendary director behind masterpieces like the Back to the Future films and Cast Away, 2022’s Pinocchio is one of the worst movie remakes in history. The visuals are mesmerizing, but that’s about it — and it definitely isn’t enough to make this version of the story worth anyone’s time. The movie has no heart, terrible pacing, and a jumbled script. Having the original available to watch on the same streaming platform, there really is zero reason to ever get into this objectively inferior version.
Pinocchio
- Release Date
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September 7, 2022
- Runtime
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105 minutes
3
‘The Shaggy Dog’ (2006)
Directed by Brian Robbins
Disney released plenty of forgettable live-action comedies throughout the 2000s, and The Shaggy Dog might just be the worst. A remake of a Disney film of the same title from 1959, which isn’t great but also definitely isn’t bad, this one has absolutely nothing going for it. It’s one of the worst comedies of the 2000s, about a man trying to live a normal life despite the fact that he sometimes turns into a sheepdog.
Uninspired, silly, and sometimes incomprehensibly bizarre, this is as stale as Disney comedies come. The performances are terrible, the visuals are nothing special, and the convoluted slapstick is likely to prove ineffective on anyone over the age of ten. And for people who (for some reason) are really, really interested in this premise, the original is right there — a criticism which seems to be a pattern across many of Disney’s worst outings.
The Shaggy Dog
- Release Date
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March 9, 2006
- Runtime
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98 minutes
Cast
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-
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Danny Glover
Ken Hollister
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Spencer Breslin
Josh Douglas
2
‘The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild’ (2022)
Directed by John C. Donkin
In 2019, the House of Mouse acquired Fox. The purchase included several subsidiaries, including the beloved Blue Sky Studios, who made many good movies before Disney shut them down, chief among which is the Ice Age franchise. As it went along, the series kept getting worse and worse — but even the weakest of the original movies looks like Spirited Away next to what Disney decided to do with the franchise: the spin-off The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild.
The animation is unbelievably awful, most of the original voice cast is gone, and the writing wouldn’t be good enough to get a passing grade for a high school screenwriting class. The film feels like it was made by a group of people who were told to make an Ice Age movie, but who had never seen any of the previous installments before. It’s a gargantuan disappointment even for the younger fans of the group of friends who refuse to go extinct.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
- Release Date
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January 28, 2022
- Runtime
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82 minutes
1
‘Artemis Fowl’ (2020)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Just for context: The second lowest-rated Disney film on Letterboxd is Adventures of Buck Wild, with an embarrassing 1.8-star rating. The lowest-rated is a full half-star behind, at 1.3 in total. It’s Artemis Fowl, a disaster entirely deserving of all the hate it gets. Fans of the series of books that the movie is based on will be gutted to see the source material obliterated into smithereens. Those who have never read the books will be gutted to see their intelligence insulted at every possible turn.
Artemis Fowl has some decent visuals, but the writing is so incredibly horrible and the cast does such an abysmal job that it’s genuinely painful to try and get through the whole thing. Never will a mere 95-minute runtime feel so tortuously stretched. This is far and away one of the worst family movies of recent years; a childishly unfunny, painfully unimaginative, strangely vulgar chapter in Disney’s history that’s better left buried under the sands of oblivion.
