3 great kids’ movies for your family

Here are three children’s movies you can stream to keep your family entertained as well as enhance their world view.                        

Babe (1995)
Director: Chris Noonan
Rated: G
Not recommended under 5, PG to 10 (disturbing scenes)
Memorable quote: Farmer Hoggett: “That'll do, pig. That'll do.”

What’s not to love about Babe? Farmer Hoggett, a man of few words, wins a piglet - the runt of the litter - at the local fair. The orphaned piglet calls himself “Babe” and learns to get along with the other animals on the farm. Fly, a sheepdog, becomes his special friend and changes the course of Babe’s destiny because you see, dear reader, Babe decides that he wants to be a sheep-pig. Babe is a natural herder, qualities prized by the farmer. This saves him from the fate that is subtly suggested but luckily never realised. Babe is smart. So, with some training and determination this little piggie becomes a prize-winning sheep herder. 

Messages: There’s a lot of goodness in this pig-escapes-becoming-bacon story. Babe is about hope and optimism; an individual being (OK, allow for anthropomorphism) having power over their own destiny, no matter what circumstances they were born into. It explores important values such as empathy and services to others through the animals’ perspective. Plus, along the way young viewers are introduced to the musical genre with the slightly surreal interludes of some tiny singing mice. 

Babe is family movie that just keeps delighting new audiences and stands the test of time for those who’ve seen it before.

Ratatouille (2007)
Directors: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava
Rated: PG to 8 (some scary scenes and violence)
Memorable quote: Anton Ego: “Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

This charming, animated film features Remy; an endearing rat who has dreams beyond his station. Unsatisfied with his lot, he wants to become a great French chef. His family disagrees with his career choice. From this central irony (who wants a rat in the kitchen?) the plot goes on a roller coaster journey which ends with Remy realising his dream. But not without a lot of very amusing high jinks.

It all unfolds when Remy is separated from his family by fate and is swept through the Parisian sewer system only to emerge under the restaurant of his hero, a famous chef whose cooking has seen better days. He befriends the chef’s hapless and accident - prone nephew.

The plot then reworks the Cyrano de Bergerac theme in a very clever way. You see, the nephew is the human front man who does the physical cooking allowing Remy’s culinary genius to shine. Working under the cover of the nephew’s chef hat, Remy creates sublime food that Paris falls in love with at his own restaurant “La Ratatouille”.

Along the way Team Remy overcomes the baddie – the restaurant critic Anton Ego – and all is well in the end. The wonderful details of this animation make repeat viewings a journey of discovery for both kids and adults.

Messages: With passion and determination, you can succeed despite the odds and the circumstances of birth. True talent will find its own path.  Plus, your kids will be introduced to an important literary theme - Cyrano de Bergerac where a less attractive but more worthy suitor asks his more attractive but ultimately less worthy friend to woo the object of his affections, Roxanne. Sound familiar? Think of Roxanne (1987) orThe Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) - both are PG rated.

WALL-E (2008)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Rated: G
Not suitable under 5; PG to 8 (violence and scary scenes)
Memorable quotes: Ship's Computer: “You will survive.”
Captain: “I don't want to survive, I want to live!”
WALL-E stands for: Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class. EVE stands for: Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator.

The animated film WALL-E is set in the future where the Earth has been completely used up and spent thanks to the greed of humanity. Only garbage remains. The surviving humans float around in a spaceship in a perpetual wandering.  Automation means these very fat people loll about on purpose-built devices or personal transportation devices as they drift around in space with no real purpose. They were supposed to return once organic lifeform was found on Earth. Meanwhile the planet was to be cleaned up by robots, but only one remains – WALL-E aka Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth class. Enter the bad guy – Auto, the autopilot unit on board their spaceship has its wires crossed and is operating on the basis that humans are never to return. But as no one else received the message, the ship continues to send out a probe to look for signs of life. Along the way WALL-E meets and falls in love with one of these probes – the appropriately named, EVE – aka Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. When she finds a single living plant, EVE takes it back to the mothership as she no doubt has been programmed to do. Mayhem ensures as Auto carries out its mission (or obsession) to keep the humans in space and tries to destroy the precious sample. WALL-E, Eve, the captain and their robot team overcome Auto allowing the humans to return to Earth to restart a better life.   

Messages: Lots of food for thought here, with the clear reminder to protect and conserve the Earth’s environment as it sustains us all. As a cautionary tale it works wonderfully as it’s buoyed by hope and a very cute robot. As a bonus, your child will be introduced to the sci-fi genre with the unmistakable reference to the rogue machine-gone-bad HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey.

WALL-E is a gentle introduction to the genre of science fiction where ideas or innovations are extrapolated into imaged future realities.

Plus, kids are also introduced to a complex antagonist in Auto. Yep, he was the bad guy but was simply carrying out orders and yet wrecked a lot of damage. Interesting…

And to top it off – love conquers all.   

These movies are available on Amazon Prime Video

Please check the handy guide on the  Australian Council on Children and the Media website or https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ to check the suitability of the films mentioned in this article for your child.

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