Our 10 favorite live action family movies
Meet you on the couch on Friday.
One of our tenets here at TCF: a low-screen family doesn’t have to be a no-screen family. Screens can be beautifully connective, inspiring, and restful if used in a thoughtful way and kept in their right place.
My favorite example of this? Family movie night.
The fall that June started kindergarten, we joined the ranks of many, many families before us and set aside Fridays to partake in this well-worn tradition — and boy has it become a beloved one. Four years later, the kids look forward to it all week and, to be fair — since we paired it with a takeout tradition we started after a mini emotional meltdown over the passing of time, no big deal — so do the parents.
And it is truly family movie night at our house, not kid movie night. I want my children to see me enjoying leisure time, not scrolling on my phone or cleaning up the kitchen while they enjoy themselves. In a twist that makes it even more appealing to the grown-ups, our rule is that the adults get to pick the movie.1
Annie joined the fun last year, at age three. With our kids now spanning ages four to nine, we’re solidly in our animation era — and we’re also starting to branch out by mixing in some live action movies. As with our diet of Disney classics, the live action picks are mostly movies John and I loved in childhood. If you think this means they contain no surprises, you’d be wrong — ha! We’ve been unexpectedly jolted by lines and entire scenes that must have gone right over our heads when we were younger (which I suppose is encouraging, in its own way).
Whether because of language, innuendo, violence, or fear factor, live action picks feel a little trickier to choose confidently. To help you build your family movie night queue, I’ve rounded up our top ten live action family movies from what we’ve watched so far. I’ve also included a few we avoided or didn’t care for — and a few more we can’t wait to watch once the kids are a bit older.
In alphabetical order…