Movies Under 90 Minutes Part 9: Semi-Finals

 

Part Nine: The Semi-Finals - Three Films Eliminated

 

After the surprising results of the quarter-finals, I am now left with our final five competitors in this battle for greatest movie of all time that’s under 90 minutes! This penultimate installment will be a combination of new and old. I’m going to save repeating myself and not say the same things about these films I’ve already written at length about; instead, I’ll include links to what I’ve previously said about these finalists before, then focus on how they compare to one another before choosing the final two films to duke it out in the final round. That means for three of these movies, this will be as far as they go. 

In no particular order, first I’m looking at Toy Story.

Toy Story (1995): Favourite Films Series - https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/11/toy-story-1995-favourite-films-series.html

Next up, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009): Favourite Films Series - https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/04/fantastic-mr-fox-2009-favourite-films.html

Next is Homeward Bound.

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993): Favourite Films Series -  https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2026/02/homeward-bound-incredible-journey-1993.html

Next is Stand by Me.

Stand by Me (1986): Favourite Films Series - https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/09/stand-by-me-1986-favourite-films-series.html

And last but not least, Pinocchio.

Pinocchio (1940): Favourite Films Series - https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2026/08/pinocchio-1940-favourite-films-series.html

 

It’s all fine and dandy to review why each of these films are part of my Favourite Films Series, but now I’m moving beyond that. It comes as no surprise that the dominant genre remaining is the family films genre. It was the toughest one to whittle down, and the remaining films are all of the highest caliber. Stand by Me is the outlier now, in terms of genres, but in many ways, that story is designed for all ages, despite dealing with some mature themes and containing content that is decidedly unfriendly for children. Does that put it at an advantage or disadvantage when compared with the other four?

Having seen each of these movies numerous times throughout my life, two considerations include which one I’ve seen the least number of times, and which one I saw latest in life. Thinking back, I’ve probably seen Pinocchio the least, which is a little ironic given it’s the oldest movie here, and among the three that were released before my lifetime (though Toy Story came out when I was only fourteen months old), but I think one of the main reasons was because I didn’t own it on VHS. There may have been some parental logic around renting types of movies that were different than what we already had at home; if I was in the mood for a Disney animated feature, it would make more sense to just put on one that we already owned, or rent something different to make the most of the rental fee. I recall picking Homeward Bound multiple times when renting movies, more often than Toy Story, and when I started buying movies myself, that was a game changer.

I can even recall in what order I came to own these five movies: first Fantastic Mr. Fox, then Toy Story, Stand by Me, Homeward Bound, and then Pinocchio. I first saw Fantastic Mr. Fox when I rented it in the twilight of my movie rental days (before streaming destroyed that wonderful pastime), and when I bought it later, it came with the Blu-ray, DVD, and a digital copy. I remember watching it on my old iPod with one of my best friends when we were on a camping trip in high school, I’ve watched the Blu-ray multiple times, and I’ve shown the movie on DVD to an art class. Homeward Bound rewatches have been lower since I’ve owned it compared to when I was a kid, but I think I’ve seen Toy Story more times as an adult and might even appreciate it more now. The same goes for Pinocchio. Stand by Me has been a consistent rewatch for me in my adult years. I distinctly remember the day I bought the DVD when I was in high school and the guy at the register looked at it, paused, and remarked on how great he remembered the movie being, and that he hadn’t thought about it in a while, but it was worth owning. I first saw it on TV, then kind of forgot about it myself for a little while, and I don’t recall what made me remember it. I think I just happened to find it when browsing at the store.

In chronological order, I first saw Toy Story, then Pinocchio, followed by Homeward Bound (all by age five, I’d estimate), then Stand by Me came later, around age 10, and last was Fantastic Mr. Fox, at age 15. There are also the individual nostalgia factors. For the sake of clarity, nostalgia is defined as pleasure and sadness caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again, so it does not mean the movie I saw first is the one I’m most nostalgic for. I would say I feel the most nostalgia watching Stand by Me, not because of my experience watching it for the first time, but because I can picture myself as Gordie Lachance, or Chris Chambers, or any of those kids, really, and remember what it felt like to be that age and experience the world at that point in life, even if their experiences differed quite a bit from my own. By virtue of the story’s core, it’s like a reservoir of nostalgia. In terms of wishing I could see one of these movies again for the first time, I think I would pick Pinocchio, believe it or not, just for how harrowing and exciting it is, as well as how unpredictable it can be, which is hard to imagine nowadays because the story is so universally known.

I’ve looked at the strengths of these movies plenty, but I must now look at some of their weaknesses. In terms of quality, that really is subjective, but there are plenty of metrics I can use. I don’t take stock in critic scores and Rotten Tomatoes percentages the way I once did, but if it’s any consolation, Pinocchio is the only film out of these five with a perfect 100 % critics’ score. All of them are 10/10 movies for me, so I need to get more specific.

Pinocchio, for all its timeless qualities, does feel a little dated in a couple respects. Whether intentional or not, for how varied the cast of characters is in terms of unique types (the protagonist is a living puppet, his sidekick is a cricket, and there are human characters amid talking animals and a magical fairy) there is a lot of boy energy; aside from Geppetto’s pet goldfish Cleo (who says nothing) and the aforementioned Blue Fairy (who only appears in two scenes), there are no female characters of note. When comparing the emotional impact of Pinocchio against some of the other Disney classics, even ones outside of this competition, Pinocchio’s desire to become a real boy isn’t the most emotionally compelling want of any Disney protagonist, and I get that it’s also connected to Geppetto’s dream of having a real son, but he’s absent for several scenes in the later part of the film, and we kind of forget about his emotional investment for a while until he’s reunited with Pinocchio in the belly of Monstro the Whale.

Homeward Bound, despite what I would call a superior emotional grip on the audience compared to Pinocchio, carries the asterisk of being a remake, and I'm going to compare it to not only the original The Incredible Journey from 1963 but also the 1961 book by Sheila Burnford which served as the source material for the initial adaptation. Homeward Bound loosely adapts the story, and any way you slice it, it’s a movie meant for kids to be watched with their families. Even compared to something like Babe, a similar film which came out two years later, it’s a softer, more easily digested tale, but author Sheila Burnford has been cited as saying she did not write The Incredible Journey just for kids to read. Having read the book myself, I recognize it’s a story that’s accessible for children but meant for all ages. Conversely, Babe was based on The Sheep-Pig, written by Dick King-Smith specifically as a children’s novel, but then the film adaptation appealed to more than just kids, partially because of its comparatively deeper themes. Homeward Bound, for all its effective meditations on survival, hope, and emotional bonds, just does not delve as deep as some similarly themed films. It’s also worth noting that in terms of legacy, the sequel, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, was seen as less impressive on a technical level after the new benchmark set by Babe a year earlier.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is arguably the quirkiest of these five films, and I think it ties with Toy Story as the funniest, for me. Some of the laughs Fantastic Mr. Fox generates are bigger, but I think it’s because of the more askew nature, from the visual design and shot composition to its narrative structure and the strangeness of some of the characters, that its emotional impact is a little less compared to Toy Story. Sizing them both up against one another, both films tell unique stories, have a broad cast of colourful, interesting characters, and place those characters in harrowing scenes filled with action, gags, and thrills. By the very nature of what Toy Story is about—a kid who is just like any other kid, who has favourite toys and loves to play with them, living in a world where toys want to serve their purpose of being played with and bring children joy—it just taps into a deeper emotional connection than the plight of a family of stop motion foxes being pursued by angry farmers.

I won’t draw this out any further than I need to. What it comes down to, for me, in picking the final two films, is highlighting which of these five contenders have the greatest number of unique qualities in tandem with the greatest emotional impact in the stories that you just can’t duplicate or get anywhere else. That is why I am picking Stand by Me and Toy Story as the finalists! I’m sorry to those fans who were championing Homeward Bound, Pinocchio, or Fantastic Mr. Fox, but the final two films have been chosen for the elimination challenge. Next time I am going to reflect back on all of the films that I have covered in this series to see how these two made it through to the end, and I will crown one of them the title of greatest movie under 90 minutes of all-time!