The 50 greatest children’s films of all time: ‘Your kids will never be the same!’
The summer holidays can hang heavy if you have children to entertain. And while we’d all like them to be romping at the seaside or trekking up Yr Wyddfa, sometimes that just isn’t possible. So Guardian writers have compiled a list of children’s films that can’t fail to move, amuse or thrill. The best ever? That’s a tough call – but everyone will have a good time trying to find out.
For zero to five-year-olds
The Jungle Book
The ultimate toe-tapping, child-friendly cartoon musical, reworking Rudyard Kipling’s India-set stories into an irrepressible blast of fun. Songs such as The Bare Necessities and I Wan’na Be Like You are rightly hailed as classics; there’s not a wasted second in the whole thing.
Yellow Submarine
The Beatles might not have anticipated that the animated movie inspired by their 1966 hit single would become a bewitching Technicolor vision for the ages, but that’s what happened. The childlike psychedelia lends itself to a simple plot even little ones can follow, and what’s to be lost by getting them to listen to the likes of Nowhere Man and All Together Now so early in life?
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit
“Just a bit of harmless brain alteration, that’s all,” Wallace reassures his side-eyeing beagle in this Aardman foray into cackling horror. The film sees the duo working as humane pest controllers, summoned by Lady Tottington who finds her castle grounds overrun with bunnies on the eve of the village vegetable show. Predictably brilliant, helped by game guest voice stars Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes.
Roald Dahl’s yarn is possibly the most kiddy of his major books, meaning it translates
