Metacritic reviews

A masterpiece of the art of animation. The concept and some of the episodes are tainted with kitsch, but there's no other animated film with its scope and ambition—it is, in Otis Ferguson's words, “one of the strange and beautiful things that have happened in the world.”

Throughout Fantasia, Disney pushes the edges of the envelope.

Fantasia is simply terrific—as terrific as anything that has ever happened on a screen.

It is icon, uplift, art of the future, nostalgia, psychedelic journey, Americana, technological triumph, classic.

Fantasia is caviar to the general, ambrosia and nectar for the intelligentsia. It makes no compromises; it is the noblest experiment of a wizard in his bright field of artistry and creativeness. [30 Jan 1941, p. 9]

The most ambitious animated feature ever to come out of the Disney studios, Fantasia integrates famous works of classical music with wildly uneven but extraordinarily imaginative visuals that run the gamut from dancing hippos to the purely abstract. It's like a feature-length compilation of elaborate Silly Symphonies

Envisioned as a musical symphony come to life, Fantasia is a bizarre, almost trippy experience rich with hypnotic visuals, dazzling animation and beautiful music.

Though Disney's toddling cannot keep pace with the giant strides of Ludwig van Beethoven, Fantasia as a whole leaves its audience gasping. Critics may deplore Disney's lapses of taste, but he trips, Mickey-like, into an art form that immortals from Aeschylus to Richard Wagner have always dreamed of.

Disney's attempts at the visual illustration of Beethoven and Co - a dubious exercise anyway - produce Klassical Kitsch of the highest degree. Awesomely embarrassing; but some great sequences for all that, and certainly not to be missed.

This is a very patchy affair - while some of the animated pieces work, others come across as downright insane.