30-Year-Old South African Man Rates 72 Disney Films After Watching Them For The First Time — ‘It Has Altered My World View’
While he was unsure of what to expect, he found the endeavor worthwhile.
Neirfy | Canva Pro Disney movies are a fundamental part of most kids’ lives. We often just assume everyone around us grew up watching "The Lion King," and "Cinderella."
However, that isn’t necessarily the case. Everyone leads different lives, and despite their pervasiveness, it would simply be impossible for every single person to watch all of Disney’s films as a child or even later in life.
One man embarked on the task — or at least close to it. The South African watched 72 Disney movies and ranked them all!
One man who did not grow up with Disney decided to give its well-known films a trial run and ranked his favorites.
An anonymous man posted on Reddit to share the adventure he went on watching 72 of Disney’s famous movies.
“I didn’t grow up with Disney animated films and it left a big cultural gap in my knowledge, so I dedicated a few months to sitting down and watching my way through Disney’s core history of films,” he explained.
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The man, who watched over 100 hours of films, offered some personal background information: “For whatever it might be worth, I’m a Black South African man who’s in his early 30s.”
“I grew up mostly with horror films and documentaries, but I am genre agnostic — if it’s good, it’s good,” he continued. “I had only seen ‘The Lion King’ as a child. I limited this to animated originals and their sequels and remakes.”
The man said his top five films from his project were "The Lion King" (1994), "Frozen II," in the second place spot, "Lilo & Stitch," coming in third, "Tangled," and "Fantasia," rounding out the top five.
Meanwhile, his bottom five were "The Lion King" (2019), "Chicken Little," "Dumbo" (2019), "Mulan" (2020) and Pinocchio" (2022).
There were three factors that went into the man’s ratings of the films, which were “story, visuals and sound/music.” “I found this useful for the Disney films as most are musicals and fit neatly into this,” he stated.
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this adventure, but it ended up being a good decision overall.
“I went into the journey skeptical and assuming torture, but I found that Disney’s reputation is not without reason, as some of these films joined my favorite films of all time,” he said. “There are films here that I will happily return to in later years because they offered such riveting or beautiful experiences that I otherwise would have missed if I had not gone through this.”
The man also became a fan of Disney’s music, saying they had “a wealth of bangers.”
He included the link to his entire list of the 72 films ranked in order of enjoyment on his Letterboxd account.
While this man didn’t grow up on Disney movies, many his age did.
BBC reported on just how pervasive knowledge of Disney movies is. “The generation now filling up workplaces were fed a feast of feature-length animations during their formative years like no others before them,” Richard Gray said, writing for the outlet.
A study performed by the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work found, “Disney films, for example, combine entertainment with life lessons about love, friendship, good versus evil, death and loss, and the importance of family. Talking about these important issues together can strengthen a child’s cognitive and behavioral development.”
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Although they may seem like nothing more than whimsical fairy tales, Disney films can teach children a lot, and their repeated exposure to them may be a good thing.
However, Disney movies can also have the opposite effect.
Not all lessons taught by Disney movies are positive. BBC noted that there are many examples of stereotyping in the films, especially along lines of gender and culture.
While Disney movies have many admirable attributes, they are not perfect, just like any form of media. This man was certainly not suggesting so.
But, in many people’s opinion, they are a fun way to spend time. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.