For Parents

Family Movies Parents Actually Enjoy Too

There are films you sit through for your children, and films you actually enjoy. These are not always the same, but they're not mutually exclusive either. The films that manage both aren't accidents — they share specific qualities you can learn to look for.

Why some kids' films work for adults and others don't

The short answer is that the films that work for adults were made by people who weren't condescending to children. These filmmakers understand that the qualities children respond to — emotional honesty, visual clarity, a world that feels internally consistent, stakes that feel real — are largely the same qualities that adults respond to. The difference is in how much complexity can coexist with those qualities.

The films that don't work for adults were often made with a particular theory of what children want: bright colors, fast movement, celebrity voices, jokes that land on a single level. The theory isn't wrong — children will watch those films. But the experience of watching them is essentially one-directional. There's nothing to engage with as an adult beyond ensuring your child is happy.

The best family films are doing something more interesting: they're operating on at least two levels simultaneously, and the lower level doesn't require the upper level to be removed for the film to work. Children get the adventure and the warmth. Adults get the same things plus something underneath — a meditation on grief, or memory, or what we owe each other, or what it means to become yourself.

What to look for

Characters with an actual inner life

This sounds obvious, but it's rarer than it should be. A character with an inner life has wants that conflict with each other, makes decisions that reveal something about who they are, and experiences change across the film that feels earned rather than imposed by plot requirements. A character without an inner life is a vehicle for plot events.

You can usually identify this in the first fifteen minutes. Does the film show you who this character is, or just what's happening to them? The first kind gives you someone to be with for ninety minutes. The second kind gives you someone to watch things happen to.

The humor operates on more than one level

The best family films have jokes that children and adults laugh at for different reasons — or jokes that only adults catch at all. This is a reliable indicator of a film made with craft, because it requires actually thinking about both audiences at once. Single-level humor usually targets one age group at the expense of the other.

The films that get this right include asides, background details, and tonal jokes that require context a child doesn't have. None of this breaks the film for children — they just don't notice what they're missing. But it signals that the filmmakers were paying attention to the whole room.

Something is genuinely at stake

This doesn't mean the stakes have to be enormous. A film can have small, personal stakes — a friendship at risk, a decision about who to be — and be fully engaging for adults. What it can't have, for an adult viewer, is stakes that feel artificially managed. When you can feel the film protecting its characters from real consequence, when you sense the story deflecting difficulty rather than meeting it, the emotional engagement flatlines.

This is why the opening sequence of Up is one of the most powerful in animated film history — it doesn't flinch. The film earns its lightness later because it was willing to be heavy first.

Visual ambition

A film that's genuinely interesting to look at is easier to sit through, independent of narrative quality. This seems shallow and isn't. Visual storytelling is a form of intelligence — the ability to convey meaning, emotion, and character through composition, color, and movement rather than dialogue. When a film has it, you're engaged at a different register than you are when following plot.

The studios most consistently committed to this — Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Laika, the better Cartoon Saloon films — tend to produce the highest proportion of films that work for adults. This isn't coincidence. Visual ambition is expensive and requires conviction at the creative leadership level, which usually produces better everything else as well.

Studios worth knowing

Pixar is the most consistent. Their standard process — years of story development, peer review, a director's vision combined with collective critique — produces films that are structurally sound in ways that cheaper productions rarely are. Not every Pixar film hits. But the hit rate is exceptional, and even their weaker films are made with craft.

Studio Ghibli produces films for a different reason. Hayao Miyazaki and the other Ghibli directors make films they want to make, for children they respect. The films don't feel engineered to a demographic. They feel like visions. This sometimes means they're less accessible than Pixar — the pacing is different, the narrative logic is sometimes more associative than causal — but when they connect, they connect at a depth few animated films reach.

Laika (the American stop-motion studio behind Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, Paranorman) makes the darkest films on this list — appropriate for older children but not young ones — and the most visually extraordinary. The craft in a Laika film is visible in a way that CGI rarely lets you see anymore. Knowing that every frame was physically made changes the experience of watching it.

Cartoon Saloon (the Irish studio behind Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers) makes smaller, quieter films grounded in Celtic mythology and hand-drawn animation. Deeply adult-friendly, especially for viewers interested in art and visual culture.

Warning signs of a parent-endurance film

These are patterns that usually indicate a film made primarily for children without much thought for the adults in the room:

• Plot driven entirely by misunderstanding. A story that could be resolved by one character saying one sentence, stretched to ninety minutes. Adults find this exhausting; children generally don't notice.
• Loud, fast, frenetic pacing throughout. No quiet scenes, no breath, relentless event. The nervous system equivalent of standing in a very loud room.
• Humor that works only through repetition or volume. A character who is loud and slightly stupid, repeatedly. Characters who reference things considered funny without the things themselves being funny.
• Emotional beats telegraphed thirty seconds before they happen. The swelling string arrangement before the hug that you knew was coming. The emotional experience of being told how to feel rather than feeling it.
• Clear franchise infrastructure. A film that exists primarily to generate a sequel, a merchandise line, or a theme park attraction. These films are designed to create desire for more rather than to be satisfying in themselves.

A different way to look for films

The filter worth using — beyond age rating and platform — is critical reception alongside audience response. A children's film that critics rate very highly and general audiences rate highly is almost always a film that works on both levels. Critics are adults; their enthusiasm for a children's film usually means the film engaged them as adults. Strong audience scores among parents — as distinct from children — confirm it.

WatchWithKids's Parent Enjoyment Mode filters to titles with a vote average of 7.5 or higher, with a minimum number of votes to ensure the rating is meaningful. Films that consistently score this well over time — rather than spiking on opening weekend and dropping — are usually the ones worth your evening too.