Mark Carroll's Journal

I remember my surprise when I discovered Maus and that comic booksgraphic novels aren't necessarily juvenile. (I'm not about to hand Preacher to Miranda.)

There are things like Thomas the Tank Engine and, say, the movie Rio, which use non-children but with social interactions that children would certainly recognize. I am guessing that social relatability, in terms of behaviors and suchlike, must be part of what makes something a children's movie. Indeed, in such movies, especially comedies, adults may act in rather childish ways.

This reminds me of how, when my children were little, Miranda would twist Benjamin's stories to fit her interests: for instance, amid some threatening androids we might have a subplot develop in which a baby android had lost its mother, rather than anything akin to South Park's savage social satire.

Update: I should add, I did mean to be groping toward an answer to your question: Perhaps a movie for all ages involves behaviors, situations, interactions that we can all relate to. Television shows like Clangers may do this through the device of a family all with quite recognizable roles, though, and I suppose that's for children. So maybe I really don't know.