Children's movies: animated ones are best?

[mtbc]

I was thinking about the children's movies that I think are actually rather good: ones that bear rewatching and are worth keeping on DVD. Those that come to my mind, such as Coraline (2009), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and Wall-E (2008), are all animated. When I try to think of live-action movies I've seen since having children myself I come up a bit short in terms of ones to which I'd actually be happy to pay full attention again: I can't off-hand think of anything much better than the Harry Potter movies which are okay but hardly special and entrancing. Perhaps this says more about me than it does children, but I am struck by how the children's movies I like the most are all animated.

Comments

[damerell]

JOOI, how many are Studio Ghibli?

[mtbc]

We own a fair few. (-: Especially, another I rather like is Spirited Away (2001).

[gerald_duck]

A friend made an astute observation about South Park, the other year. It's a cartoon for adults. The themes are adults. It's utterly inappropriate for children. A lot of the controversy seems to stem from people making the mistake of assuming that a cartoon with children in it is a children's cartoon.

So: child characters does not imply children's movie. Does the absence of child characters imply it's not a children's movie?

Which brings me to my main question: what's the difference between a movie for children that adults also enjoy, and a movie for all ages? Star Wars, for example, is U-rated in the UK.

[mtbc]

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.

[mindstalk]

Hmm. The movies I've seen with Friendkids, and what they get from their grandparents, are pretty much all animated too, for a wide variety of 'animation'.