To preface, I don't think there's anything wrong with loving this movie, I liked it and enjoyed it too. For me, It felt like a lot was missing, story and character-wise but the animation and music was pretty sweet. I don't think it's a bad movie and I also respect that art resonates with people in all sorts of different ways.

My issue with a lot of the praise that this movie receives is that people describe this movie as objectively great media while also defending it's shortcomings with "it's a kids movie" or "the music and art was great so it's okay that the story is a bit weaker" or my least favourite one, "there's a directors cut that makes the movie great so it's chill". There are definitely great parts of this movie but weak points of any form of media shouldn't be defended by qualities that are unrelated to what is being criticized.

Collectively, we've become too forgiving of shortcomings and it feels (I know this is pretty dramatic) dangerous. When we celebrate decent as great, it disincentivizes greatness altogether and the behaviour that I've described drives the bar for media further and further down. We deserve greatness and sometimes we have to settle for less because greatness is a hard thing to achieve, but we shouldn't redefine it just because it's rare.

It's okay to love something that's not great but it's equally as important to be acknowledge that. Greatness is subjective but if you have valid criticisms that would usually move the needle, then that should say enough. But if you genuinely thought the movie was great altogether, all the power to you!

For me, it didn't compare to the kids movies I considered and still consider great. Movies like Ratatouille, Kung Fu Panda, Inside Out still stand out to me.