ByBrian Tallerico,
a film critic with over 20 years of experience covering movies and TV.He is the president of the Chicago Film Critics Association, the co-producer of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, and managing editor of RogerEbert.com.
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.Photo: Illumination.
This article is updated frequently as titles leave and enter Netflix. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
Netflix has massive catalogs of TV shows aimed at children, but it can be harder to sift through their movie library to find something that the whole family can watch. That’s why we’re here to help. From recent Netflix Originals like Orion and the Dark to timeless family hits like The Annie or Minions, these films offer a little something for everybody on family movie night.
How We Pick Our Films
Critic Brian Tallerico watches and writes about movies and TV every day. To curate this list, he dives into Netflix’s catalogue every month to surface family-friendly titles both kids and adults can enjoy — using his taste and a lifetime of cinema study as his guide, instead of whatever the algorithm happens to be pushing. After triple-checking to make sure they’re still available, he watches each and writes his recommendation. We highlight more than just the crowdpleasers: Family movies may be intended for kids, but that doesn’t mean their artistry or ideas don’t have the potential to be just as interesting. Read on to find something to watch.
*Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Year: 2017 Runtime: 1h 28m Director: David Soren
Fox adapted the hit book series by Dav Pilkey into a film that underperformed enough at the box office to make it unlikely we will see another. That’s too bad because David Soren’s family flick is clever and funny. It’s a sweet study of friendship, creativity, and a different kind of heroism. And it features a villain named Professor Poopypants.
Year: 2000 Runtime: 1h 24m Directors: Peter Lord, Nick Park
We don’t deserve Aardman. The geniuses behind Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and others made their biggest cinematic splash with this hit. A clever riff on prison break movies like Escape From Alcatraz (but with chickens!), this is actually the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time, a title it’s held for over 20 years now.
A rare animated sequel that’s just about as funny as the first film, this 2013 sequel built on the visual wit and sharp characters from the 2009 movie. Bill Hader and Anna Faris lead a stellar voice work as Flint Lockwood are forced to return to Swallow Falls to save the day. It’s inventive and very fun.
Year: 1984 Runtime: 2h 7m Director: John G. Avildsen
The massive success of Cobra Kai on Netflix brought young viewers back to the original films about the kid who learns karate from Mr. Miyagi. The 1984 original is still, by far, the best, starring Ralph Macchio and the great Pat Morita. Less successful are the sequels, but the 1986 follow-up is also on Netflix, for the record, as is the pretty decent Jackie Chan remake.
A little movie that could, this animated Christmas adventure was so critically beloved that it competed with giants like Pixar and DreamWorks for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It’s a delightful little fable about a postman who ends up stationed so far to the north that he meets a reclusive toymaker there named Klaus. Yes, it’s a Santa Claus origin story. With lovely, old-fashioned style, this is the kind of joyous film that the whole family can watch any time of year.
Great Laika films drop in and out of the streamers, but this masterpiece has actually been one of the hardest to see. Revisit the story of a young boy on a journey to defeat his evil aunts with the power of his strings, and the partnership of a snow monkey and a beetle. Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s also gorgeous and deeply moving, one of the best family films of the 2010s.
Year: 2008 Runtime: 1h 32m Director: John Stevenson, Mark Osborne
The movies about Po (Jack Black), the martial arts-loving panda, have a habit of bouncing around the streaming services. As of right now, two of the three sequels are on Netflix, including the recent Kung Fu Panda 4 (they’re skipping part 2, for some reason). This movie was massive, spawning three sequels, a spin-off TV series, and more. See where it all began.
Year: 2023 Runtime: 1h 46m Directors: Rob Marianetti, Robert Smigel, David Wachtenheim
Adam Sandler’s Netflix output has been steadily improving, including this 2023 animated Happy Madison venture, the Sandman’s first cartoon in over two decades. He voices the title character, a lizard who has lived a long life in a classroom. When he begins an existential crisis about his mortality, he ends up going home with different students to teach them lessons about life. It’s smarter than it needs to be, and genuinely sweet.
Year: 2023 Runtime: 1h 22m Director: Benjamin Renner
One of the best Illumination films is so for a number of reasons, including a screenplay by Mike White, great voice work from Kumail Nanjiani, and sharp visuals from Benjamin Renner, the French cartoonist behind the gorgeous Ernest & Celestine. Yes, this is not your typical movie from the house that the Minions built.
Year: 2021 Runtime: 1h 54m Directors: Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe
Originally planned for a theatrical release by Sony (with the much-worse title Connected), the studio sold this off to Netflix during the pandemic…and probably regretted that decision. One of the most critically and commercially beloved animated films of 2021, this is an incredibly smart and sweet family vacation movie, a comedy that’s as much about a tender relationship between a father and daughter as it is the fact that they end up having to save the world together.
Year: 2024 Runtime: 1h 32m Director: Sean Charmatz
The great Charlie Kaufman wrote a kids movie! This new animated Netflix original owes such a debt to Pixar films like Toy Story and Inside Out, but it carves out its own personality too. It’s about a kid (Jacob Tremblay) who’s afraid of just about everything, and how he overcomes his fear one night on a journey with the literal dark (Paul Walter Hauser). The story wraps in on itself in a way that one would expect from Kaufman, but never gets too complicated for the little ones too. Honestly, it’s better at doing the Pixar Thing than most recent Pixar movies.
Year: 2022 Runtime: 1h 56m Director: Guillermo del Toro
The Oscar-winning director took his visionary skills to stop-motion animation with this instant classic, a retelling of the beloved fairy tale about the wooden boy who longed to be real. With spectacular voice work, this version reimagines Pinocchio during the period before World War II, allowing him to explore his themes of innocence and violence again. It’s a deeply personal, beautiful film.
Year: 2022 Runtime: 1h 55m Director: Chris Williams
One of 2022’s most surprising hits for Netflix has been this film from one of the creators of Bolt and Big Hero 6. It’s a blend of a lot of things that have been done before with echoes of How to Train Your Dragon, Moana, and Pirates of the Caribbean (with a little Kaiju too) but this is a detailed adventure film that really plays to everyone in the family.
Year: 2016 Runtime: 1h 26m Director: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney
It may not be as big as the little yellow guys, but this is an essential building block in the history of Illumination. A pre-cancellation Louis C.K. voices a spoiled house pet whose life is turned upside down when a new dog joins the family, voiced exuberantly by Eric Stonestreet. Their conflict spills into the streets and brings in an ensemble of fun vocal performances, especially Kevin Hart and Jenny Slate.
Year: 2019 Runtime: 1h 27m Directors: Richard Phelan and Will Becher
Shaun the Sheep is an international treasure. The silent comedy star leads one of the most consistently hilarious franchises of all time in his own TV episodes and feature films. This one is a brilliant Netflix original from Aardman Animations about how everyone’s favorite ovine helps a stranded alien return to his own kind.
The masterful director of Your Name and Weathering with You returned in 2022 with this gorgeous fantasy film about a 17-year-old named Suzume who finds a door in the middle of nowhere that could be the answer to solving world catastrophes. While the script is culturally powerful, this is a reminder of Shinkai’s visual mastery, resulting in some of the best animated art of the 2020s to date.
Year: 2023 Runtime: 1h 31m Directors: Walt Dohrn, Tim Heitz
This is easily the worst movie so far in this franchise, but most kids don’t care. It’s got the tunes, the bright colors, and the familiar characters to keep them distracted. Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake return in a story that kind of pays homage to the true story of its male lead as Branch’s boyband, BroZone, gets reunited to save the day. It’s a bit trippier than other Trolls movies, and one senses that the passion isn’t really there anymore from the creators, but, again, it’s distracting enough to pass the time in a way that doesn’t feel like it insults the intelligence of kids or parents.
Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Year: 2005 Runtime: 1h 24m Directors: Steve Box, Nick Park
The winner for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature was, sadly, the last theatrical outing for the wonderful characters that put Aardman on the map. The cheese-loving farmer Wallace and his loyal mutt Gromit star in a film inspired by Hammer Horror flicks. The pair are reportedly returning in an in-production film soon. It’s long overdue.
Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline finally returned this year with this clever and twisted tale co-written by Oscar winner Jordan Peele. The comedian also co-stars as one of the title characters, the literal demons for a girl who blames herself for the death of her parents. Selick is a master of stop-motion animation and this project allows him to stretch his visual prowess in new, gross ways. It’s a new Halloween classic (that can be watched any time, of course!)
Remember when Tim Burton made weird, slightly disturbing kids movies? This truly inventive 2020 comedy feels inspired by those flicks as four kids decide that they’re going to replace their apathetic parents with ones that actually care. Based on the book of the same name by Lois Lowry, this flick includes voice work by Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews, and Ricky Gervais, and it’s probably the best family movie on Netflix that you probably haven’t seen.
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