What are your kids favorite movies?
We recently took our kids to go see The Sound of Music. Because we first let them listen to the soundtrack, they seem to have enjoyed it.
Seeing it made me realize how family-friendly older movies are. Most "kids movies" these days (Disney, Dreamworks, etc.) are far too scary for our 3.5yr old, as are some of the animated movies from the 80's.
The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins come to mind as good family-friendly movies (and by family friendly, I mean something that the adults will enjoy too). What are your favorites?
3 Answers
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That's really interesting that you think the older movies can be more family friendly because I've found that many the older movies have too slow pacing to keep my kids interested. Which is a very big dissapointment for me because I was looking forward to showing them all my favorites from when i was a kid. Namely the first Disney Jungle Book. It was my all time fave. I love the music and the characters were so well developed. But my kids like the newer version, the pacing is so much faster, the music is so much more elaborate. They just don't appreciate the subtle beauty of the first one. sigh. oh well. I just watch it without them for now. In the mean time they like:
All the Pixar films; Finding Nemo, Cars, Toy Story 1&2, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E...
All the Miyazaki Hayao films; Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Totoro...
Robots, Ice Age, Over the Hedge, Brother Bear, Kung Fu Panda, the Tale of Despereaux and of course all the Shreks.
Not all older films fail to hold thier attention though, Disney's Robin Hood from 1973 is a hit, and so is Sword in the Stone, Fox and the Hound and Alice and Wonderland. The original Star Wars is a huge hit. I really thought they wouldn't understand it and would walk away after 10 minutes, but I was sooo wrong.
Oddly enough, the one non animated film my kids will watch over and over agian is "Zathura". I would have thought it too scary for them, but they both love it. When I get up on Saturday morning they are often sitting there watching it together. go figure.
Lindsay
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Sammy's current favorite movie is "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" (which is not nearly as good as the book), but I was going to say the Pixar and Miyazaki films that Lindsay already mentioned.
I tried a few of my childhood favorites like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" but they were far too scary and long. I didn't realize that CCBB was well over 2 hours long (144 minutes).
They don't make them like they used to, but sometimes for good reason.
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Yup, the old movies are fantastic. I believe that movies (and books) are part of how we propagate our culture and values to our kids. Not that they should be moralistic or have a clear message, but I want my kids to be able to resonate to ideas and issues that I resonate with, at least to a point. So the idea of letting the kids watch a movie that I wouldn't enjoy watching with them makes me extremely uneasy.
A lot of old Disney movies are great: The Love Bug (and sequels), The Shaggy Dog, Gus, The Apple Dumpling Gang, No Deposit No Return, etc. My boys (at six) definitely enjoyed all the star wars movies. The kids aren't going to understanding everything, but they don't have to to enjoy the movie.
This basically covers my kid's favorite movies!
- Juan, Nov 8, 2010