Family Movie Night is a delicate dance of negotiation, even with Disney+ to help, and just when you think you know what to expect they go and grow up on you! Make the most of your time together with this guide to The Best Family Movies on Disney+!
All Disney Dads know that a family movie night list where they get to make all the picks isn’t very realistic, so I’ve drafted my own team of Disney+ experts (my own family) to put together our guide to family movies you won’t want to miss.
The Best Family Movies on Disney+
We each picked one Animated Feature and one Live Action, so whatever your gang is in the mood for, we’re ready to answer the call with the best family movies on Disney+!
Mama Bear’s Picks: Orphans and Plenty of ‘Em!
Best Live Action Feature: The Journey of Natty Gan
My wife and I grew up when Sunday night TV was dominated by Disney live-action movies obsessed with orphans or broken families, hard times, and adventure, to which 1985’s The Journey of Natty Gan was a bigger-budget throwback. During the Great Depression, 12-year-old tomboy Natty makes her way from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest to find her father who is looking for work. Along the way she befriends a wolf because of course she does.
Best Animated Feature: Lilo and Stitch
More orphans! More Adventure! Mama Bear has a pattern. Thanks to the naturally occurring magic of Hawaii, what starts as a zany comedy set in outer space quickly becomes so much more as an alien creature with a high “badness level” finds his own family all by himself. The family is little and broken, but still good, as is this excellent, funny, big-hearted pick for best family movie on Disney+.
Photo Courtesy of Disney+
Teen Bear’s Picks: Adventure is Out There
Best Animated Feature: Treasure Planet
This space-traveling but otherwise surprisingly straight-ahead adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate adventure doesn’t get a lot of love, but it does in our house! It may be the least likely Disney animated feature to ever get an attraction at Walt Disney World, but the solar-sail starship designs are thrilling and imaginative, the pirates be scurvy knaves indeed and the “baddie”, Long John Silver, is softened just enough to fill the story with heart that merits many a return visit on family movie night.
Best Live Action Feature: The Princess Bride
There are three stages of a person’s life, as defined by this perfect, perfect movie. In the first, you believe this movie to really be about Inigo Montoya and his hilarious, swashbuckling quest to avenge his father’s death. When you are old enough not to mind the kissing parts so much, you believe the movie is about Wesley and Buttercup, and their perfect love. One day you are shocked to realize that the Princess Bride is and always has been about the love of a parent (or grandparent) for a child, as the brilliant Peter Falk delivers his final “as you wish” and walks away with the movie. Whatever stages your family are in, this may very well be the best family movie on Disney+.
Photo Courtesy of Disney+
Baby Bear’s Picks: The More Things Change…
Best Animated Feature: Tangled
I’ll be honest with you; I was shocked by this pick. Not that Tangled isn’t a perfect movie, because it is, but for years my daughter’s pick would have been Frozen, where the heroine has bigger things to worry about than an A-plot romantic interest. Or maybe Moana, where there is none at all. Zero. And suddenly Baby Bear’s Movie Night Pick is a love story with a smoldering rogue whom any dad would happily throw in the dungeon. I foresee complicated years ahead for Papa Bear… except on movie night, where we all agree that Tangled makes an excellent pick for best family movie on Disney+.
Best Live Action Feature: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
Another surprise from Baby Bear! She normally greets Marvel content with low-grade antipathy in spite of (or, perhaps because of) my “continual state of rewatch” devotion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the Guardians of the Galaxy have always been her exception. With Volume 3 serving as the end of the trilogy and an origin story for her favorite character, she is passionately devoted to seeing the villainous High Evolutionary get his just deserts for what he did to adorable big-eyed baby Rocket.
Papa Bear’s Picks: Get Out Your Hankies
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
What Marvel did for live-action with Guardians, Pixar did with animation: parked a perfect trilogy, but they played with our hearts in the process. After Jessie’s musical flashback in the previous movie, I was sure I would bawl at some point. I did not expect what followed: a sustained 20+ minutes of solid ugly-crying and sobbing over the existential crisis of a wooden cowboy doll and his friends. So why do I keep going back for more? Because the emotion is completely earned through three films, and the final act is staggeringly beautiful on every level.
Best Live Action Feature: The Great Muppet Caper
More than just the best family movie on Disney+, The Great Muppet Caper may be the Citizen Kane of Muppet movies and is definitely the first in which Kermit the Frog and company are essentially actors playing other roles. Kermit and Fozzie are identical twin reporters for the Daily Chronicle, as we learn in the first few minutes, while we also enjoy the greatest opening number in the history of musicals and witness the diamond heist that drives the rest of the story. Later Kermit and Piggy break character briefly for a screaming match as to whether she will walk off the picture entirely just seconds before the bicycle sequence that still takes my breath away. Brilliant.
Photo Courtesy of Disney+
Those are our picks for the best family movies on Disney+…at least today. But there are as many different lists as there are families ready to spend some time together sharing magical stories. Plan yours today.
*Streaming service programming may vary according to regional contracts and agreements.
