--- name: "Kevin Lima" canonical: "https://film.one/person/kevin-lima" fi1m_id: "kevin-lima" imdb_id: "nm0510674" tmdb_id: 15775 wikidata_id: "Q2336709" roles: ["Director"] born: "12 June 1962" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_as: "director" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-24T01:43:01.135728+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Kevin Lima ## Identity Kevin Lima - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/kevin-lima - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** kevin-lima - **IMDb ID:** nm0510674 - **TMDB ID:** 15775 - **Wikidata ID:** Q2336709 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Lima, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2336709, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0510674/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/15775 Director. Born 12 June 1962 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 12 June 1962, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA - **Active:** 1992–2007 - **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 directing, 1 writing - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1990s 82 (1), 2000s 76 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Lima, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2336709, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0510674/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/15775 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Enchanted*](https://film.one/film/enchanted.md) (76) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Kevin Lima > Kevin Lima drew for Disney before he directed for it, and his one lasting film is about the cartoon meeting the real world. *Enchanted* (2007) is funny, well sung, and unable in the end to stop believing the thing it was sending up. Ten minutes into *Enchanted* (2007), a cartoon maiden is pushed down a well by a cartoon queen and climbs out of a manhole into Times Square in her wedding dress. That shot is Kevin Lima's career in one cut. He spent years drawing for Disney and then filmed what happened when the drawings met the traffic. The joke is Disney sending up Disney, and for an hour it is a good joke, told briskly and sung as if everyone meant it. He came up as an animator and character designer, on *Oliver & Company* (1988), *The Little Mermaid* (1989) and *Beauty and the Beast* (1991), and did story work on *Aladdin* (1992). We rate *Aladdin* highly, though his part in it is not the kind that can be picked out of a finished cartoon. His first feature as director was *A Goofy Movie* (1995), a father-and-son road trip that asked Goofy to carry feelings, which some critics found an uneven fit. He co-directed *Tarzan* (1999) with Chris Buck, moved into live action with *102 Dalmatians* (2000), Glenn Close as Cruella, and made two Eloise television films in 2003. Then *Enchanted*. Then, as far as the screen is concerned, a long quiet: projects shelved, years spent in development with his production partner Brenda Chapman. What he does well is the join. He knows how a hand-drawn character moves and he can get an actor to move that way without turning it into mime. Amy Adams's Giselle is the proof, a cartoon princess in the flesh who never once winks at us, and Lima has said the film would be half of what it is without her. He is right. The musical numbers belong to their settings rather than stopping the film for them; the one in Central Park is the best of them. We went in braced for a corporate in-joke and laughed through most of the first hour, and the reason is that Lima plays the collision straight and lets Adams find the comedy in believing every word. What he does less well is finish. *Enchanted* stops teasing in its last half hour and starts believing, and it is less fun once it has. The hybrid idea, clever as it is, gets set aside for ordinary plotting whenever the story needs to move, and some of the slapstick is pitched at the smallest children in the audience. The parent-and-child thread that runs through *A Goofy Movie* and *Tarzan* is his one recurring subject, and it is a soft one; he is fonder of his characters than he is hard on them. He has said he loves the imperfection of hand-drawn animation, that those films breathe differently from computer ones. On the evidence of *Enchanted*, he does too. It has been a long time since anyone let him try again. ## Biography Kevin Lima is an American film director, animator and voice actor. Born on 12 June 1962 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, he studied film and animation at the California Institute of the Arts in the mid-1980s. He began his career in animation, contributing to films including *Oliver & Company* (1988), *The Little Mermaid* (1989) and *Beauty and the Beast* (1991), and worked as a story artist on *Aladdin* (1992). Lima directed *A Goofy Movie* (1995), co-directed *Tarzan* (1999), and directed *102 Dalmatians* (2000) and *Enchanted* (2007), in which he also voiced Pip in New York. He has directed the television films *Eloise at the Plaza* (2003) and *Eloise at Christmastime* (2003). Lima is married to animator and director Brenda Chapman. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) ### Directed (1) — the average rests on these - *Enchanted* (2007), Fi1m 76, as Pip in New York (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/enchanted.md) ### Wrote (1) - *Aladdin* (1992), Fi1m 82, Story — [page](https://film.one/film/aladdin.md) ## Complete filmography (20) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Pip's Predicament: A Pop-Up Adventure* (2008), Director - *Enchanted* (2007), as Pip in New York (voice) · Director — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/enchanted.md) - *The Wild* (2006), Executive Producer - *Eloise at Christmastime* (2003), Director, Producer - *Eloise at the Plaza* (2003), Director, Producer - *Return to Never Land* (2002), Thanks - *102 Dalmatians* (2000), Director - *Tarzan* (1999), Director - *A Goofy Movie* (1995), as Lester (voice) · Director - *Aladdin* (1992), Story — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/film/aladdin.md) - *Beauty and the Beast* (1991), as Visual Development — Fi1m 91, [page](https://film.one/film/beauty-and-the-beast.md) - *The Rescuers Down Under* (1990), as Visual Development - *The Little Mermaid* (1989), Character Designer — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/the-little-mermaid-1989.md) - *Oliver & Company* (1988), Story - *The Brave Little Toaster* (1987), Character Designer, Animation - *Sport Goofy in Soccermania* (1987), Animation - *A Birthday* (1987), Thanks - *Child Proof* (1984), Thanks - *Let's Misbehave* (1983), Director, Animation - *Paws* (1983), Thanks --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/kevin-lima