The 5 Best Musicals Ever Made, According To IMDb

Many have noticed the following trend in recent years, and it strikes everyone as incredibly odd. Whenever a major Hollywood studio pours millions into a high-profile movie musical, they insist on eschewing the fact that they have done so in the film's advertising. One might note that the early previews for Jon M. Chu's "Wicked" didn't feature any of the film's songs, despite being based on one of the most popular Broadway musicals of all time. Likewise, trailers for "Mufasa: The Lion King" didn't boast any of the film's songs, despite them having been written by Disney superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda. Earlier this year, previews from the musical rendition of "Mean Girls," also adapted from a Broadway show, didn't have any singing in them, and the ads for the 2023 hit "Wonka" were also song-free. 

This has led many pundits and critics to ask why Hollywood is manufacturing a stigma against musicals. There is no stigma; the box office dictates against it. "Mufasa" has already racked up over $328 million, and "Wicked" is the sixth-highest-grossing movie of the year, having made nearly $700 million. As mentioned, "Wonka" did a gangbusters $634 million, and Disney's animated musical "Moana 2" surprised everyone with an $882 million B.O. take. One can even look back to 2016 to the $472 million made by "La La Land" to see that musicals can be hits, even when they're not whimsical children's fantasies. Heck, even "Deadpool & Wolverine" had a dance number at the beginning.

But somehow, advertisers have it in their minds that boasting song-and-dance numbers in a film's publicity will somehow hurt its chances at the box office. It's an absurd belief, but here we are. Looking back over film history, in fact, reveals that some of the highest-grossing films of all time are musicals, and a few of them are even highly rated by users on the Internet Movie Database. 

Indeed, using the IMDb as a guide, five notable musicals are among the best movies ever made.

It's worth stopping to note that IMDb's top 250 is infamously skewed toward the violent and the masculine. Crime movies, prison dramas, action flicks, and war stories tend to rank very high, while comedies, musicals, dramas, and any films about female characters tend to rank far further down the list. Weirdly, horror movies also tend to rank low. So it's a coup to recognize that the list contains any conventional musicals at all. 

Right near the bottom of the list, ranked at #235, is Robert Wise's 1965 ultra-smash "The Sound of Music," that year's Best Picture winner at the Oscars. When adjusted for inflation, "The Sound of Music" remains one of the highest-grossing films ever. In 2024 dollars, it made over $2.85 billion. 

Based on the 1959 Broadway show by Rodgers and Hammerstein (which was, in turn, inspired by Maria von Trapp's 1949 autobiography "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers"), "The Sound of Music" tells the story of Maria (Julie Andrews), an aspiring nun in 1938 Salzberg with a flighty, rebellious streak. Maria is hired by the stern and rule-obsessed widower Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) to be the governess of his brood of seven children. Georg wants the children to be dutiful military soldiers, but Maria exposes them instead to music, the arts, warmth, and more traditional family togetherness. Georg's heart, by the film's end, will melt. The story is backdropped by the rise of Nazi fascism, which will eventually invade their remote home. 

The film is just as warm as Maria, and Andrews gives a career-high performance. And, yes, the songs will lodge deep, deep into your brain. It's easy to play the "Do Re Mi" song on the piano.

Victor Fleming's 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" could easily be described as the most famous movie of all time. Drastically reworked from the novel by L. Frank Baum, it tells the story of ... do I even need to tell you? The characters, songs, and iconography from "The Wizard of Oz" has become so deeply entrenched in the American subconscious that we may as well consider them to be Jungian archetypes. You know the story. You can sing all of Harold Arlen's songs. You might even be able to recite the entire film from memory. I can. 

No list of the best films ever made can be complete without "The Wizard of Oz." Its whimsical fantasy, amazing performances (from Judy Garland, Roy Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, and Toto), dazzling color, and cutting-edge special effects remain impressive almost 86 years after its release. 

One can only speculate why the users on IMDb ranked "The Wizard of Oz" so low. As mentioned, the list tends to disfavor films that star female protagonists, and Dorothy may not be as intriguing to many as, say, Don Vito Corleone from "The Godfather" or Tony Montana from "Scarface." Also, "The Wizard of Oz" has become an icon of the queer community ("Friend of Dorothy" has long been a code for queerness), and voters on IMDb, for lack of a better term, seem to vote heterosexually. 

Or perhaps we all feel that "The Wizard of Oz" is such a cinematic standard, that it no longer needs to be listed on film rankings. We all know it's kind of #1 by default and that no one needs to be reminded to watch it. 

Coming in at #88 is Gene Kelly's and Stanley Donen's energetic love letter to cinema, 1952's "Singin' in the Rain." Set in 1927, "Singin' in the Rain" is a lighthearted fictionalization of the early days of sound cinema, and how performers famously had to adapt to memorizing lines and speaking into microphones. Kelly plays Don Lockwood, a vaudeville performer turned Hollywood stuntman who is eager to see where this new sound thing will go. He is joined by his hilarious best friend Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) and constantly aspiring performer Kathy (Debbie Reynolds). It will be Cosmo who ultimately suggests that the talented Kathy dub over the singing and speaking of the studio's biggest star, the whiny, squeaky-voiced Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen). 

Gene Kelly didn't know how to make movies that were anything but cotton candy. He smiles through his songs and even laughs at the lyrics. Kelly also brought a style of dancing to the big screen that was muscular and modern, a stark contrast to the spindly exactitudes of Fred Astaire's generation. The songs were by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. "Singin' in the Rain" contains a few out-of-reality "dream ballets," wherein the film stops dead to let Kelly dance his feelings. These are impressive showcases, even if they do lift out of the movie. I must guiltily admit at this juncture that I often fast-forward through the "Gotta Dance" sequence. 

Voters on IMDb are not immune to Kelly's charms and likely appreciate that "Singin' in the Rain" is just as much a film about Hollywood history as it is a lovely, upbeat, glorious love story about music and dancing. One can find its spiritual successor in Damien Chazelle's "Babylon."

Bollywood films don't often get major theatrical releases in the United States, but sometimes one will make its way through. Note, the popular actioner "RRR" is actually Telugu cinema, which comes from a different Indian studio system than Bollywood, and film experts would thank you not to conflate them. Rajkumar Hirani's 2009 comedy epic "3 Idiots" did, however, get a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles, and the scant audiences who made their way to it were treated to one of the most delightful Bollywood musicals of all time. It was also one of the most successful at the time, making the equivalent of $132 million worldwide. 

"3 Idiots" starred Bollywood mega-actor Aamir Khan as Ranchhoddas "Rancho" Shamaldas Chanchad, and tells the story of his adventures in college with his two best friends Farhan (R. Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi). Over the film's 171 minutes, the plot crashes into a decade's worth of after-school specials, including student pressures, romantic dalliances, on-campus suicide, artistic conflict with disapproving parents, last-minute baby deliveries, the interruption of a wedding, and a challenge to the academic status quo. The ethos of the Bollywood machine seems to be one of entertainment guarantees: if audiences are plunking down money for a movie, they're going to get everything at once: love, music, melodrama, more melodrama, MORE MELODRAMA! Not to mention sexy people dancing and singing multiple times throughout. Sadly, some American audiences aren't ready for the bombast of Bollywood, and some writers have foolishly mocked it. 

"3 Idiots" is a delight for Bollywood newbs, and comes highly recommended. It's nice that voters on IMDb were able to push this one up the list, beating out even "Singin' in the Rain."

The highest-ranked musical on the IMDb's top-250 is Roger Allers' and Rob Minkoff's 1994 animated film "The Lion King," boasting Oscar-winning songs by Elton John and Tim Rice. "The Lion King" was a massive phenomenon when it was released, marking the zenith of the 1990s Disney Renaissance. "The Lion King" tells the story of a lion cub named Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, later Matthew Broderick) who is heir to the lion throne of the African savannah. His father Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is kind and benevolent, but his uncle Scar (Jeremy Irons) is dastardly and sinister. Scar, like Claudius from "Hamlet," conspires to kill his brother and usurp the throne, forcing the young Simba into hiding. Simba, like Hal from "Henry IV," grows up in a remote forest with bug-eating clowns, learning peace and happiness. 

Simba, years later, is lured back to the savannah by his childhood sweetheart Nala (Moira Kelly) to wrest the kingdom back from Scar. 

"The Lion King" is often considered one of the best films to come from Disney's animation studio, and many critics are impressed with its Shakespearean parallels. I suspect that IMDb voters do too. It has inspired remakes, sequels, prequels, TV shows, and video games. As of this writing, "Mufasa: The Lion King," a prequel to the 2019 remake, is burning up the American box office. Audiences love these lions, and the John/Rice songs can still be heard in karaoke bars to this day. 

Other music-forward films have made their way onto IMDb's top-250 ("The Pianist," "Amadeus," "Some Like It Hot," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"), but the above films are the only proper musicals on the list.