Wondering if anyone would like to share their experiences/recommendations for films that their whole family enjoyed. I have 3 kids, ages 10-13, and it is often tough to choose a film to watch that both the parents and the kids will enjoy.
To toss out a couple of examples of what I’m talking about:
Toy Story 1&2
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Princess Bride
I find this is a tough category, because not only do you have the basic chick-flick/guy film dichotomy, but you stretch it across generations.
A video rental we recently enjoyed as a family was A Knight’s Tale. My youngest daughter wanted to see it because the star was “so cute!” My son wanted to see the jousting. And my other daughter wanted to see it for the romance. My wife and I were a little trepidatious. But we were pleased to find there was quite a bit of humor, some of the filming was quite nice, and the sound track absolutely rocked. No, it was not a great film. But it was certainly a pleasant way for our family to spend a couple of hours together, rather than in seprate rooms.
How about the classics? Pre-1960 movies are great for families, as the sex n’ violence is kept to a minimum. You DO have to get them over the “Hey, why isn’t this in COLOR?!?” problem.
My 11 year old daughter has enjoyed, over the past few years,
THE THIRD MAN
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
DR. STRANGELOVE
CITIZEN KANE
THE MALTESE FALCON
WEST SIDE STORY
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
THE DEVIL AND DAN’L WEBSTER
TOP HAT
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES
INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (a wacky ensemble comedy from 1932)
On the other hand, she fell asleep during CASABLANCA, thought REAR WINDOW had too many slow patches, doesn’t quite get the Marx Brothers yet, and felt that SUNSET BOULEVARD was “creepy.”
…oh, Disney’s THE FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR (1986) is pretty cool, too. The SF concept is intriguing enough for the grown-ups, and the kids will get off on the cool alien spaceship with the voice of Pee Wee Herman.
One of the finest animation films of recent years (and one of the most badly marketed) is The Iron Giant. This is a great film. It’s got a nice message for kids and adults and I came out the cinema smiling.
The first rated R movie I ever saw was Tremors. My parents bought tickets for me and my brother and we saw it together. The theater was also playing Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and this one jackass my brother was friends with at the time saw us outside the theater, and kept making all these really stupid, “heheheh. I wanna see that movie. hehehe,” jokes.
On a related note, I imagine that the Wallace and Gromit movies would be a good family film.
MMMMmmm…I was going to say The Trouble with Angels, but your son might not be thrilled with that one. It’s Hayley Mills driving nuns crazy while in catholic school. Great movie for kids and adults to enjoy together, but I’m not sure boys would enjoy it so much.
Cats And Dogs was pretty good, as was Spy Kids. Dr. Doolittle 2 is going to be released on video this week, and it’s good. If there’s ever a night when your son’s gone, I recommend 10 Things I Hate About You and Bring It On for your daughter. (10 Things does deal with sex a bit, but in a good way that encourages some discussion and it’s based on Taming Of The Shrew.) An older movie, but I still love The Adventures Of Buckaroo Bonzai Across The 8th Dimension for some good fun. I also liked Legend Of The Drunken Master for some eye-popping martial arts and other than people beating on each other, no cursing or sexual themes. (I think it’s also rated PG)
Here’s a list of my all-time favorite family films:
The Secret of Roan Inish
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao
Dumbo (There are plenty of good Disney animated features, but this one’s my favorite)
Godspell (Not really a kid movie, but my kids love it)
A Bug’s Life
Iron Giant (echoing other posters)
Thanks for all the great recommendations. I think most such suggestions would fall into two categories - movies I saw and enjoyed and want to share with my kids, and movies neither the adults nor kids have seen before. One of the great joys of having kids is introducing them to good movies. A great low effort bonding activity.
What I would be most appreciative of at this time, are recommendations in the latter category. Relatively recent flicks that we may not have caught at the theater, that we can rent at the video store. Too often, the temptation is to rent an adult movie and a kid movie, and have us go to different sets in different rooms. Which has its place. But at times we’d like to watch new movies as a family.
We enjoyed **10 things I hate … ** and Finding Forrester. Another good one was The Mexican. Lots of the F-word but, other than that, I couldn’t really figure out why it was rated R.
My son is going through a major James Bond stage right now - reading the books and going through all of the films. Not my fave, but we really enjoyed what I think is the most recent one with Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh. Maybe The World Is Not Enough?
Another (older) choice is the Die Hard movies. It seems Bruce Willis is somewhat more acceptable to women than Sly or Arnold.
In the older category, I bet they’d enjoy The Breakfast Club. I hadn’t thought of Tremors in a while. Not sure if my youngest wouldn’t try to tell me it was too scary.
Older films I enjoyed as a kid are always kinda risky. I had a thread a while ago titled something like {b]I actualy liked that dreck?** A couple of my big failures were A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, The Parent Trap, and It’s a Mad Mad … World. Really disappointing when you give the film a big build up and the kids keep asking, is this supposed to be the funny part?
Anything by Pixar, especially the Toy Story movies.
Ditto the recommendations for The Iron Giant – Warner Bros. executives should hang their heads in shame for not promoting the bejeebers out of that movie.
I also recently watched and will recommend The Emperor’s New Groove for sheer slapstick zany animated comedy. Disney does Chuck Jones, and it’s better than it sounds.
For live-action, the Back to the Future trilogy is a good one. I’ll also be zany enough to recommend the two Bill and Ted movies – they have a few “questionable” moments, but the movies overall are clean innocent fun.
Here’s a few other movies I thought of while at work…hope there’s something you havent seen yet.
Birdy
Bringing Up Baby
Charlie’s Angels
Mulan (my favorite Disney flick)
Big Momma’s House
Final Fantasy is released on video Tuesday (I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you if it’s appropriate or not)
Pump Up The Volume (Bit of sex and cursing, though)
Kuffs
Dudes
Silverado
I’m on a Singing in the Rain-recommending kick. My younger children love it. Older boys especially might grump about all the dancing, but the plot is so much fun, they might actually appreciate the skill and athleticism.
I loved Emperor’s New Groove also, and the Rugrats movie. Spy Kids is good. (Antonio Bandaras is there for the mommies. :D)
I didn’t like Shrek as much, but then again computer animation annoys me in general. (One of my standing arguments is that it’s all right for inanimate objects, like toys, or bugs and such but it doesn’t work when the characters are supposed to be real people, sort of. I maintain Toy Story would have been better if just the toys were animated and the people, live-action. (Don’t ask me how to do it; I leave that up to Hollywood.)
More of our favorites: Oklahoma!, The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music (it does have slow parts), Steel Magnolias, Young Frankenstein and all the recent Disney animations (The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Hercules, etc.)
I’m on a Singing in the Rain-recommending kick. My younger children love it. Older boys especially might grump about all the dancing, but the plot is so much fun, they might actually appreciate the skill and athleticism.
I loved Emperor’s New Groove also, and the Rugrats movie. Spy Kids is good. (Antonio Bandaras is there for the mommies. :D)
I didn’t like Shrek as much, but then again computer animation annoys me in general. (One of my standing arguments is that it’s all right for inanimate objects, like toys, or bugs and such but it doesn’t work when the characters are supposed to be real people, sort of. I maintain Toy Story would have been better if just the toys were animated and the people, live-action. (Don’t ask me how to do it; I leave that up to Hollywood.)
More of our favorites: Oklahoma!, The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music (it does have slow parts), Steel Magnolias, Young Frankenstein and all the recent Disney animations (The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Hercules, etc.)
