Top Children’s Movies of All-Time

I recently began doing research on a list of the top children’s movies ever made. I’d hoped to be able to compile a list of 100 great movies you can watch with any age child and not have to explain anything to do with sex, cover their eyes during graphic violence or explain ideas that are well over their heads. The first thing I discovered is that there really aren’t that many resources for this type of list and no one seems to ever have been able to come up with 100 movies that you could watch with both a 4-year-old and a nine-year-old. I fairly quickly assessed that my list would have to be considerably shorter. Perhaps 50 films. In reality, fewer films.

Many lists included films that I believe everyone should see at some point in their lives but I didn’t feel were even remotely appropriate for or interesting to children. Some of the truly wonderful animated films that were included in other lists I simply have found too complicated for younger children to understand and, in some cases, too frightening. Many included movies that would be terrific for your pre-teen and teenaged children, but not for younger children. What I was looking for were those films that your family could pop into the DVD player on Friday evening and watch as a family. Eventually, I put together a list of 45 films that you can all watch together. Disney is, of course, heavily represented, mostly because they are the only studio that has been putting out movies for children for as long as they have. Many are classics, some are new, some are foreign (but no subtitles are needed), many are animated, and some are part of a series. I have not attempted to rank the movies; I’ll let you do that on your own.

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. National Velvet
3. The Yearling
4. Old Yeller
5. Black Stallion
6. E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial
7. The Princess Bride
8. Fantasia (the original)
9. The Red Balloon
10. Babe, the Gallant Pig
11. Toy Story (both)
12. Beauty and the Beast
13. Finding Nemo
14. Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
15. The Music Man
16. The Sound of Music
17. Shrek
18. The Little Mermaid
19. Mary Poppins
20. The King And I
21. Peter Pan
22. Pinocchio
23. James and The Giant Peach
24. The Secret Garden
25. The Rookie
26. Duma
27. Neverland
28. The Incredibles
29. The Princess Diaries
30. Fly Away Home
31. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
32. Cinderella (animated)
33. Sleeping Beauty
34. Wallace & Gromit (the trilogy of shorts as well as the full-length feature)
35. Oliver (1968)
36. Whale Rider
37. Jungle Book
38. The Bear
39. The Incredible Journey (original)
40. Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang
41. The Lion King
42. The Iron Giant
43. The Secret of Roan Inish
44. Pollyanna
45. Lassie Come Home