When fans are children—for better or worse—some stuff goes over there to go over their heads. This is part of the blissful innocence of childhood. Nobody needs to know everything, certainly not a kid, so movies are meant to be enjoyed and not processed at a much deeper level than that.
However, as adults, viewers gain more agency as audience members and actually grow to critique the movies they grew up enjoying. While some movies don’t hold up to their nostalgic memories, there are arguably some Disney movies that are even better when fans are older than when they were children.
10 Fantasia (1940)
Fantasia may be nearly a century old now, but there is hardly a Disney-loving kid out there that hasn’t seen this movie. When fans are young, Fantasia is fun as a movie—but hard to understand conceptually. However, as an adult, one finds it much easier to understand what Fantasia was going for.
This movie does something many interesting animated pieces of the time, like popular Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes cartoons, used to do—utilize classical music in their animated shorts. Fantasia was made up of eight separate animated sections that were all set to different classical music pieces. This is much more enjoyable for adults than for children, even if children do like it well enough.
9 Beauty And The Beast (1991)
While Beauty and the Beast recently got a live-action remake, there is no topping the original version of this film. It is a beautiful movie with stunning visuals and wonderful music, and children enjoy it for the joy of the film and the story between Belle and the Beast. However, as children grow into adults, they start to read more and more into the film.
Some see themselves in the bookish Belle, fighting against what others expect of her; others still see themselves in the Beast, who considers himself a monstrosity but whom Belle comes to love. It seems that Beauty and the Beast improves as the audience grows old enough to understand the characters and their stories.
8 The Lion King (1994)
Much like Beauty and the Beast, the popular Disney film The Lion King deals with some heavy themes that children may not fully process—at least not consciously. Subconsciously, movies like The Lion King help children process many concepts like death or feeling isolated and depressed.
Adults who rewatch The Lion King after years of not having seen it often realize just how good The Lion King truly is. Not only does it deal with a lot of adult themes, but it is just a genuinely good movie, and it’s fun to acknowledge and see how good this movie is as an adult.
7 A Goofy Movie (1995)
While any kid can enjoy A Goofy Movie, adults who watch this film find themselves in the unique position of either reminiscing on their own experiences via Max’s side of things or looking at the film from a new perspective reflecting on Goofy’s perspective in the film. A Goofy Movie sees the adult Goofy and his high school-aged son Max going on a fishing trip together in an attempt to bond.
This took place about three years after the events of the show Goof Troop and has a powerful heart. At one point in the movie, Goofy reminds Max that, no matter how old Max may get, he will always be Goofy’s son—a moment that touches children of all ages and resonates even more with adults now than ever.
6 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
For better or worse, The Hunchback of Notre Dame deals with a lot of heavy adult themes. The film sees one of Disney’s worst villains in Frollo, somebody who killed Quasimodo’s mother and was forced to care for him as a result. He locks Quasimodo up for his entire life. Not only that, but Frollo lusts after Esmerelda in a completely unsettling and inappropriate way.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a lot to take in as a kid and can potentially be incredibly overwhelming. However, adults have more capacity to understand and process a movie that does as much as this one does.
5 Tarzan (1999)
Like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the 1999 Disney film Tarzan deals with some genuinely heavy adult themes. The movie opens with a shipwrecked couple getting eaten by a jungle cat, leaving behind their orphaned baby. This orphaned baby is taken in by Kala, the gorilla, who lost her own child to the leopard who killed Tarzan’s parents.
The movie has many dark moments after this horrifying intro, including when Tarzan kills Sabor, and another moment where Clayton’s hanged shadow appears on the screen after he dies. This movie is better when one is an adult. It is a lot easier to handle as an adult than as a child.
4 The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
Honestly, The Emperor’s New Groove is a treat for all ages. When it was released over two decades ago, children enjoyed it, and their parents were more than happy to oblige when asked to put it on. It was a movie that adults could enjoy then and can still enjoy now. While it is a fun movie for kids to watch, The Emperor’s New Groove has a lot of humor that appeals more to adults than children.
Countless jokes were either mildly funny or just nonsensical to child viewers that now actually make sense. Upon reflection, this was actually one of Disney’s best movies and is even better to watch as an adult now than before.
3 Lilo & Stitch (2002)
There are many movies in the Disney canon that deal with heavy topics, but Lilo & Stitch stands apart for how unique it is and how well it handles its specific topics. Lilo and her older sister, Nani, have been orphaned, and Nani has to raise Lilo while still basically being a kid herself.
The scene where Nani believes she has to say goodbye to Lilo and sings goodbye to her using the song "Aloha ʻOe” (a song written for Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch) only gets more emotionally impactful with time. This is one of Disney’s greatest movies and improves with every rewatch.
2 Enchanted (2007)
Now that Enchanted is nearly fifteen years old, kids who watched it when it came out are now certifiably and legally adults. This movie was a lot of fun, but it was able to mix animation and live-action in an elegant way that was actually important to the story.
This was a fun outing for Disney that proved that they could still make good movies, though many of the jokes don’t always land for kids. Enchanted is great and only gets better as its audience ages and can enjoy it more and more every time.
1 Tangled (2010)
Tangled is over a decade old now, and people who were kids watching it could now be adults when they rewatch it. As disorienting as that may be, Tangled is a movie that actually improves if one watches it as an adult instead of when they were a child. It deals with a lot of heavy themes that are easy for kids to miss.
Characters like Mother Gothel are evil in subversive ways and, much like Frollo, are a kind of real-world evil that can be unsettling for kids and adults alike. Tangled also showed that Disney was back on the right track and making good movies again, which was a good sign for any adult viewer—but probably wasn’t something on kids’ minds watching this film.