The Rocketeer
Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version)
Stagecoach (?)
I just want to add that Cannibal Holocaust II is much more toned down than its original, if you really feel you need to get your kids into the mythos of that genre.
I’ll take Adventures of Mark Twain, Mysterious Stranger section and all, over these heart-rending tear jerkers.
Someone’s mentioned Spirited Away so I’ll just add:
Kiki’s Delivery Service
My Neighbor Totoro
The Cat Returns
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Porco Rosso
Howl’s Moving Castle
And my son (8 years old) and I have been working through The Last Airbender series, 4 episodes at a time, as our movie night.
Seconded. They are a little scary, but not too scary, Stream Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein from Netflix for them. Fang, whose seven, identified with Costello’s character.
We’ll be trying out The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers in a couple of weeks.
PG, if you don’t mind some bad words: Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run. The boys should like watching chases.
Galaxy Quest shouldn’t be any problem; nearly all of the jokes would go over their heads.
Zathura or Jumanji?
Many of our kids’ favorites were already named, but here are a few that haven’t been yet:
Monkey Trouble
*Andre *(the Seal, not My Dinner With…)
Animals Are Beautiful People
i say get them into musicals, maybe?
Annie
Music Man
Sound of Music (they’ll fall asleep by the time the Nazis roll around anyway)
Mary Poppins
My Fair Lady
etc are all kid friendly and you’ll be providing a firm bedrock of broadway knowledge so they can win trivia nights at the local pub when they’re in college.
Hot Lead & Cold Feet is one of Disney’s best live action movies from the 1970’s.
Here is Netflix’s description:
This Western features two dueling twin brothers (Jim Dale, in a dual role) with very different occupations: One is a harsh gunslinger, and the other is a humble employee of the Salvation Army. Together, the twins take part in a string of outlandish competitions to see who will take home a large family inheritance and thus rule the small town. Co-stars Don Knotts, Karen Valentine and Darren McGavin.
My 8th grade class watched this so I was about 13. I liked it then and I’d watch it today as an adult if it was on.
I didn’t see any mention of The Three Stooges. I loved that stuff as a kid.
I know several of these have already been named, but I want to point out that, especially with older movies, actors tended to do a lot of similar movies. If you like one of their movies, you might want to check out the others. Dean Jones and Don Knotts basically just played the same characters over and over again in different settings.
I enjoyed the Hayley Mills movies: The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat!, and The Trouble with Angels. She did more, but these are the ones I remember liking.
I also really liked Dean Jones when I was a kid: The Love Bug movies, The Shaggy DA, The Ugly Dachsund, The Million Dollar Duck. I think I also liked Monkeys, Go Home! and The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, but I don’t really remember them.
I may be the only one, but I always liked the Tommy Kirk movies: The Shaggy Dog, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, The Monkey’s Uncle, Son of Flubber. Tommy Kirk was also in Old Yeller, but that might be a little sadder than what you’re going for.
Kurt Russell did some Disney movies as well. The only one I remember is The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. It was okay, but other people might like it more than I did.
I don’t think they were all Disney, but, as someone upthread said, Don Knotts did several kid-friendly movies: The Incredible Mr. Limpit, The Reluctant Astronaut, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. My parents love the Apple Dumpling Gang and the sequel. They watch them whenever comes on.
Most of these have animals or physical comedy that your little one would probably enjoy. I recently caught a Dean Jones marathon, and found the Ugly Dachsund, and the first Love Bug to be very watchable. I didn’t like the Shaggy D.A. quite as much, and they didn’t show any of the others. I watched all of the Tommy Kirk movies in college or later, and really enjoyed them. Then again, I like the Frankie and Annette movies, so I know my taste is unusual. I tried to watch Benji a few years ago and couldn’t get through it, though.
A lot of these movies have been remade, and some of them aren’t bad. Lohan was good in the Parent Trap, and Ricci in That Darn Cat! That also reminds me of Freaky Friday. You can pretty much take your pick on the version: Jodie Foster in 1976, Gaby Hoffman and Shelly Long in a 1995 TV version, and Lindsey Lohan with Jamie Curtis in 2003 (apparently rated PG but I can’t for the life of me remember why). I think Kirk Cameron did a remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. I didn’t like it as well as the original, and it has Kirk Cameron. It sounds like your kids may be willing to watch the older version, though, and you might enjoy the originals more, if for no reason other than nostalgia.
Also the newer Ponyo.
Charlie Chaplin. His films are family-friendly gold.
ETA: I’d be careful with the Three Stooges, though. As much as I love them, and as much as they’re a great example of good clean comedy, you don’t want the kids to start smacking each other.
Savannah Smile
The Billion-Dollar Hobo
The Cat from Outer Space
Escape from Witch Mountain (the original!)
My Dog Skip
Follow That Bird- It’s a Sesame Street movie, starring Big Bird, and it is amazing. Besides Cinderella, it was my big brother’s favorite movie as a kid. It might freak out your younger kid, though- there are some intense sad parts. But the happy bits more than make up for them, in my experience.
Have you considered watching documentaries? We never watched documentary film when I was a kid, but in terms of television, I was glued to episodes of Nova, Nature, and that show where Alan Alda talked about science (Scientific American Frontiers, but I had to look that up) when I was little (as early as I can remember onward), and then of course Bill Nye the Science Guy later (premiered when I was 5).
How do you feel about old comedy, like The Three Stooges? “It’s not a vernacular, it’s a doiby!” was one of my favorite sayings ever when I was 4.
Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre is pretty good. Even though the stories are mostly the familiar ones, they have little twists and jokes all through them.
Cinderella too scary? You have to toughen up your kid! Watch Hostel, or any of the Saw movies
Stuart Little (1 & 2, they’re both good).
The Borrowers
Labyrinth
Neverending Story (first one only)
Nanny McPhee
Good…good…your journey towards the Dark Side has made you powerful! 
Anyways, back to the OP, I’d also suggest monster movies. Specifically, giant monster movies, like most of Toho’s classic stable. Even the “serious” ones are pretty tame by today’s standards, and a lot of the later ones were designed with a younger audience in mind to begin with, so you should be pretty safe. Godzilla vs. King Kong might be a good start.
'course, speaking as not-a-parent myself, I confess I’ve always wondered a bit at people limiting the stuff their kids see on TV, something which seems to get ever more cautious as time passes…when you consider the stuff the parents must have watched when they were children. I know for a fact that my father watched Jonny Quest (complete with machine-gunnings and the occasional screaming heathen natives) when he was a kid—and hell, when I was 4 or 5, I was watching the Disney Channel. Do you have any idea of the kind of twisted stuff they had on back then? Starting with “Return to Oz”? :eek:
And I loved it! Hid behind the damn couch peeking at the screen, but I always came right back and did it again for the next rerun!