The Best Disney Movie Kisses

When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in 1937, it blew audiences away with its rich animation and memorable performances. So innovative was Snow White, it changed the face of film forever: Filmmakers from Federico Fellini to Orson Welles were inspired by it, its success pushed MGM into green-lighting The Wizard of Oz, and, most magically of all, it made Disney the number-one stop for animated fantasy.

Snow White also started the Disney trend of ending with a very important kiss. The movie delivers its grand romantic finale without any character dialogue at all: The prince approaches Snow White's coffin, backed by a solemnly romantic song, and kisses her with uninterrupted grace. It makes you feel as though you're watching an animated ballet, so swift and sure is each movement.

Of course, the expectations of audiences and animators have evolved since then. While the couple in Snow White falls in love at first sight — or, well, song — and don't actually interact very much, now we like to see some back-and-forth. This concept even gets spoofed in Frozen, where Anna's claims of falling in love in a single evening are treated with (correct) skepticism. Plus, one party is dead-ish during the kiss, which is not ideal, to say the least. But a kiss that magically saves someone's life and introduced the world to a series of stories that generations would fall in love with makes it all worth it.

Before 1955, spaghetti and meatballs may have been one of the least romantic dinners you could order on a date. The potential for sauce splashes, dropping pasta, and garlic breath were just too risky. But that year, Lady and the Tramp came out, and suddenly, sharing a long strand of pasta seemed like a viable way to accidentally-on-purpose lock lips. The scene is not just one of Disney's best kisses, it's one of the most famous in cinema history. If that's not impressive enough, get this: For one of its  artists, it was also the very first scene he worked on as a Disney artist.

Willie Ito landed a job at the studio based on his high school sketches and the recommendation of Supervising Animator Iwao Takamoto, who saw his potential. When Ito reported for his first day of work, he was given the confusing instruction to head to the Lady Unit — which turned out to be Lady and the Tramp. He was immediately assigned to work on the spaghetti scene, following animator Frank Thomas and supervised by Takamoto. Ito didn't predict the legacy of the scene he drew on his very first day on the job, but he's definitely proud of it. "I always feel that, 'Wow, that particular scene did make an impact.' It makes me feel good," he told ABC News in 2018.

By 2009, Disney was no longer regurgitating fairy tales in their most familiar forms. Their adaptation of The Princess and the Frog opens with a reading of the traditional story, then flips it for a more modern and satisfying ending ... that still involves a magical kiss.

Unlike her shallow but sweet friend Charlotte, intelligent and practical Tiana believes that the only way to get what you want is to work for it. Charlotte is ready to pucker up and kiss a frog if it will turn him into a prince, but Tiana thinks that's disgusting, and, more importantly, too good to be true. The twist in the tale arrives when Prince Naveen, transformed into a frog, begs her to kiss him, thus lifting his enchantment. She does it in exchange for the promise of money to fund the restaurant she dreams of opening ... only to end up as a frog herself. The kiss only works if it's from a princess.

In the end, Tiana and Naveen, having fallen in love, accept their froggy fate. When they kiss at the apex of their all-animal wedding, however, they regain their humanity: Their marriage has made Tiana a legitimate princess. But of course, the real magic lies in the fact that they had committed to a life together, no matter the cost.

Many of Disney's protagonists are not physically capable of engaging in what humans would call a kiss. Yet one of the most beloved kisses in Disney history involves lions, whose jaws are better suited to locking onto prey than locking lips. Despite these potential obstacles, the scene showing  Simba and Nala falling in love is indisputably one of Disney's most romantic ... even if it's technically more of a licking, head-rubbing scene.

This is thanks in large part to the song it's set to. The Lion King soundtrack contains many classics: The movie claimed three of the five available slots for Best Song at the 1995 Oscars. Ultimately, the award went to this scene's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," which surprises no one who has seen the sequence in question. However, while music may be the food of love, it doesn't get all the credit. Nala and Simba were already friends (and, er, possibly half-siblings?) with a playful, unguarded relationship that survives their years apart. Suddenly seeing each other all grown up was bound to prompt some capital-f Feelings. The characters fit together, the animation is a visual journey, and the music is still played at weddings. It's the perfect kissing scene — and definitely the best ever framed by a meerkat and a warthog — meat-ripping jaws and all.

Many Disney movies that revolve around princesses end with the heroine falling in love. But in 1991's Beauty and the Beast, it's the not-so-conventionally-handsome prince who obsesses over true love.

Here's a refresher. A rude young prince is cursed by a witch, turning him into a big, hairy, minotaur-esque creature. His servants become anthropomorphic household appliances, and his fairy tale castle gets a haunted mansion makeover. The witch gives him a path to redemption, in the form of a rose: If he hasn't found true love by the time the last petal falls, this new beastly form becomes permanent.

Years go by, and he becomes known as the fearsome Beast. Then, he unexpectedly meets bookworm and village oddball Belle. He kidnaps her father, she comes to rescue him — you know, the usual meet-cute routine. They clash immediately, but as time passes, their bickering resolves into romantic tension. Then, a frenzied mob comes to kill him, a climactic battle is fought, and she confesses her love at the last possible moment. At last, his humanity is restored.

Disney apparently draws the line at human-on-undetermined-beast kissing, so the couple don't kiss until after he's returned to his princely form. But when they do kiss, it causes a magical fireworks show that restores everything in the castle to its original nature. Literally the kiss of life.

A kiss is not just a kiss in The Little Mermaid: It's a matter of hanging onto your soul. Human-obsessed mermaid Ariel rescues Prince Eric from a shipwreck and falls in love. To get to him, she trades her beautiful singing voice for legs in a deal with the fabulous sea witch Ursula. If Ariel can get Eric to kiss her within three days, she can keep her legs. If not, she goes back to being a mermaid, and Ursula keeps her poor unfortunate soul.

Once on land, Ariel tries to charm Eric into kissing her, with help from the ocean's greatest conductor, Sebastian. But it takes a battle with a giant Ursula and Ariel's dad's blessing to bring the two together. At the end of the movie, Ariel walks out of the ocean, finds Eric on the beach, and he sweeps her into his arms for a kiss that goes on so long, the scene melts into their wedding day. Sure, this kiss took a whole lot of work to earn, but it's worth the wait.

Disney kisses are some of the first many of us ever watch, so it's not surprising that they become the standards by which we measure our own romantic experiences. The Princess Diaries both parodies and pays tribute to this idea of the movie-perfect kiss.

San Francisco resident Mia is 15 and deeply uncool when she learns that she is, in fact, a princess of Genovia. It's somewhere in Europe, it's tiny, it's famous for its pears. When her formerly dismissive classmates find out, her crush Josh asks her to a beach party. She goes with him, breaking plans with her friend Michael, who is secretly into her. Mia wants to have her first kiss at the party, and imagines her leg will pop up, the way it does for heroines in movies. But when Josh tries to kiss her as they hide from paparazzi in a shed, her leg gets caught in a fishing net.

Mia has her first kiss later with Michael, at the ball where she accepts her royal title. Her leg pops up with magical ease, accidentally flicking a switch that turns on the fountain behind them. We might laugh at Disney for being sappy, but sometimes, sappy is exactly what we want.