What Movies Do You Watch With Kids?

This is a rather old post, but I’ve raised a couple boys and here and many they’ve enjoyed: Megamind, Thunderbirds, Sky High, Hidden Figures, Ramona and Beezus, The Greatest Showman, 42, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (original), Big Hero 6, Enchanted, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, The Lion King, Charlotte’s Web, the Kevin Sullivan “Anne of Green Gables” series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Alexander and the Terrible…, Up, Star Wars, Ant Man, Wonder Woman, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Ratatouille, ET, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Because of Winn Dixie, Lemony Snicket, the Narnia series, Ever After, The Black Stallion, Spy Kids, Tangled, The Karate Kid, Lilo and Stitch, Mad Hot Ballroom, Hook, Jurassic Park, Holes, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Parent Trap, and Nim’s Island. These were the ones which got multiple views at our house.

My 3yo thought Finding Nemo was scary, but loves Finding Dory (Sing is her all time fave). We just watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and it was a big hit, as was Mary Poppins. Another great one from yester-year is Homeward Bound.

We have a Studio Ghibli box set. My son LOVES Totoro! We got him one of those full bodied plush costumes and he has worn it at least 3-4 times. Also Ponyo.

Other favorite: Moana, Trolls, Cars, Fantastic Mr Fox.

Olive Us! These are the cutest short videos created by the Blair (Design Mom) family. Our kids love them because they are easy to relate to (they are the same ages, 4 & 7, as some of the Blair kids).

From their website (oliveus.tv): “The series is made up of short episodes (typically 2 to 5 minutes) and showcases values we care about like working hard, being kind, helping each other, being creative, problem solving and staying positive even when frustrating things happen.
Our family relationships aren’t perfect, but we hope by modeling positive examples in the videos that it will help us practice better relationships in real life.”
Some of our favorites:
-Stacking Wood
-Lemonade Stand
-How to be 2
-Lemon Waffles
-Kitchen Clean Up Dance Party

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was a major classic in our house and swept through the primary school (in Australia). Its a beautiful and funny NZ film but has a bit of swearing – no more than Back to the Future though.

My eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son fell completely in love with Home Alone 1 and 2 this past Christmas season. They continue to quote the line, “Keep the change, ya filthy animal!” in an old time movie voice. It’s adorable and makes me smile every time I hear them say it. In the fall, we watched “Baby’s Day Out,” which (unbeknownst to me at the time) is also a John Hughes movie. My son giggled so much during that movie. Growing up in the 80s, I was and still am a huge fan of John Hughes and became an official member of his fan club when I was 14! I received a 45 with “Beat City” on it from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and “She’s Having A Baby” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” pins, which I wore proudly in 8th grade. Last week, my daughter was talking about a scene in some other movie and said, “I mean, it was funny, but not John Hughes funny.” The legend lives on.

I’ve just remembered Short circuit to watch with my 4 year old son

Yea, as much as people make out Harry Potter to be super child friendly, it’s really the exact opposite.

I always know it sounds mean and exclusionary to other people when I say young children really shouldn’t be consuming Harry Potter, but the blockbuster success of a fantasy story leads a lot to assume it’s fine for kids because everyone watches it, right? And it includes magic, and young people, and a boarding school. Right? But it also includes a lot of politics, discrimination and bigotry, mass amounts of character death and murder, torture, sadomasochism, fascism, righteous anger, depression, and self-sacrifice.

Harry Potter, and the wider J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World brand, is really quite obviously a brand meant for and marketed to teenagers and younger adult audiences. I believe they’re the oldest skewing films you mention in this post.

Seriously, it’s relatively common knowledge that three of the 8 films had to really push against the R rating.

And with the content being coming-of-age and loss of innocence oriented, the films and the books especially contain a lot of bloody violence, strong horror elements, true tragedy in which the main character comes to sacrifice himself, extremely complex plotting and characterizations, sensual and moderately sexual elements between teens and adults, profanity, including the words slut, bastard, arse, and bitch, and scenes where the teen and adult characters drink, sometimes to drunkenness, and sometimes to numb the pain of death. The amount of tough, really adult situations and emotionally deep realms it handles is, for a mainstream fantasy blockbuster, quite shocking.

Saying Harry Potter is “too scary” for little kids is putting it mildly. It’s simply not a story that’s crafted for them. Some parents think it’s great for them because they like some of the more whimsical magical details of the series, but seriously, its audience is adolescents at youngest. Please wait till then, or you might risk spoiling the experience for your child, as they’ll either find it too dark and frightening, they won’t understand it (the reading level is also, at youngest, middle school/high school oriented,) or they’ll enjoy it for extremely immaterial reasons while not understanding anything remotely plot or character related, and they won’t come back to it again. The series does grade into darker territory than the first installment, but the first installment is still, again, quite dark relative to most or all of the films you list, and I think they shouldn’t be introduced to the first one if they can’t near understand and handle the entire series. It’s a journey of a story, adapted from novels, inspired by the author’s personal struggles with death, depression, single motherhood, abuse, trauma, and poverty. Its not as much a sit down piece of entertainment. And while it has its lighter moments, it is, overall, quite dark, and needs to be taken fairly seriously for all of the themes to hit and the entire story and array of character motivations to be clearly understood. Most of the themes a child just will not be old enough to make sense of or even understand at the most basic level. And when the last installment includes the bloody murder of a whole room of people, girls being tortured, branded with slurs, and almost murdered, near-rape, self-strangulation, bloody animal mauling, snakes bursting out of old women’s necks, naked make-outs between teens, and a brief image of a man cannibalizing a schoolgirl? Yea, no. I’m frustrated that people just sort of encourage the Harry Potter stories to be read and watched by young audiences who it clearly wasn’t written or made for. This has started to show up even in newer marketing for the Wizarding World brand. Not only is it just inappropriate, it really does a lot to trivialize and cartoon-ize an otherwise very dark and quite mature coming-of-age fantasy epic.

Go with the first shirt!

I never watched it growing up, but my partner was a huge fan, so we watched “The Princess Bride” with our 6yo (at the time) twins. They LOVED it. Hearing them repeat scenes is the funniest thing. It’s become a family favorite. We also loved Coco–all four of us were crying throughout.

My son has loved movies since he was 2.5. His favorite to date is the new version of Pete’s Dragon. He watched it soon after turning 3. The soundtrack is beautiful too.

Any suggestions for movies with zero scary parts? My 4.5 found both Happy Feet and Moana too scary.

My Neighbor Totoro has always been a favorite of mine! Kiki’s Delivery Service is another good one by Studio Ghibli. I was obsessed with Balto as a kid, and the classic animated Robin Hood.

My mom made us watch classic musicals growing up. Many of them didn’t stick, Singing in the Rain was and still is a favorite! The dancing and plot and actors are adorable. Also, the Princess Bride will forever have a place in my heart! Might be better for when they’re a little older.

High School Musical (the third one especially) is an abosulte favorite of my 3 year old daughter. Also Newsies! And Singing in the Rain!

So funny about ones that didn’t work. ‘Tangled’ didn’t work for my boys – they freaked over the Mum faking being loving when really was a villain – as they said Mums can’t be like that!?!?!? Star Wars is still too much for my 7 year old, so he has only seen a few. Also agree with ‘inside out’ – we adults loved it, them not so much. i have a rule : if it’s a book, we read it first, then see the movie. Favourites have been Marley and me (we all ugly cried), the secret garden, wonder. Saw the recent Jumangi this week and it was a HIT!!!

Ponyo
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki’s Delivery Service