The best Netflix movies for kids

Klaus takes the hoary figure of Father Christmas and dares to build a fresh origin story around him. It’s not all rotund saints and flying reindeer either, with a far more grounded tale set in 19th century Norway. The way this humble story of a heartbroken woodsman performing acts of kindness for his embittered island community spins out into the legend we all know today is ingeniously handled. Meanwhile, the use of traditional animation techniques really sets the movie apart from the CG masses.

The inestimable Olivia Colman voices a chillingly lethal AI in this modern day tale of technology gone awry. It sees a family road trip turn into a fight against the machine apocalypse. The premise might not sound particularly kid-friendly, but the tone is kept jaunty throughout, with reassuringly heroic feats from our mildly dysfunctional family and a pair of robotic companions. The computer animation is top drawer, while the script is equally stacked with witty winks to adult viewers and brilliant choreographed action set pieces for younger eyes.

For successive generations of kids, Farmageddon is a very big deal indeed. It’s a follow-up to the original Shaun the Sheep Movie, which spun off on from a hugely popular and long-running claymation series currently some 170 episodes and six seasons deep. Thankfully, Farmageddon doesn’t let the quality slip one iota, offering the same mixture of slapstick comedy, inspired visual gags, and hilarious pop culture references clearly aimed at mum and dad. Farmageddon also does its sequel duty and ramps the scale up to galactic proportions, but without losing Aardman’s homespun style.

It’s rare in movies (and especially animated ones) that a sequel matches the original, but Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 might just have managed the feat. The superstar writing team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller returns, as does scientist Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) with his fantastical food replicator invention. This time it’s kicking out a batch of food-animal-hybrids, each with a gleefully puntastic name. If you’re at all intrigued to see what a Tacodile or a Hippotato looks like, fire this tasty movie up as soon as you can.

We’ve featured Nimona a lot on ShortList, partly because it ticks so many boxes and crosses so many boundaries, but mainly because it’s really good. It’s a kid-friendly computer animated movie with the production values, thrills, and spills to mix it with Disney’s finest. Despite all that, it also breaks new ground with its innovative art style, its fresh sci-fi-fantasy universe, and its inclusivity. Whatever you’re looking for in a kid’s film, from thrilling set pieces to a heartfelt story, Nimona has it in spades.

The director behind Your Name and Weathering with You, Makoto Shinkai, has made another beautifully observed slice of Japanese teenage life, all shot through with his customary taste for the uncanny. Our titular hero is on a mission, along with a mysterious young stranger, to close a series of infernal gateways dotted around Japan. Along the way they’ll encounter talking cats and globe-shaking demon worms, but as with all of Shinkai’s films, Suzume always remains grounded in quotidian matters and tiny details. It’s a rare animated film that’ll appeal equally to kids and adults.

Based on Dav Pilkey’s 1997 children’s novel and made by the mighty DreamWorks Animation, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie tells the story of a pair of 10-year-olds and their devious plan to hypnotise their mean principal into donning the mantle of their favourite superhero. It’s all deeply silly stuff, with a level of toilet humour that speaks to its young audience. But it’s all pulled off with such warmth and energy, even adults will struggle to suppress a smile.

Adults may be interested to know that Leo is a member of that exclusive club of really good Adam Sandler Netflix movies. Kids will be more interested to know that it’s about an ageing class pet lizard who becomes an agony uncle to a bunch of young students and their mean substitute teacher. It’s a rare animated film that takes a genuinely unexpected turn, though it still has the requisite toilet jokes and cheesy musical numbers to hold the attention of younger viewers.

Based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name, and directed by Danny DeVito (who also plays the title character’s crooked father), Matilda is an absolute riot for kids with an anarchic streak. It’s proper wish fulfilment stuff, as young and bookish Matilda uses her telekinetic powers to wreak sweet revenge on her awful parents and the other mean-spirited authority figures in her life. DeVito isn’t afraid to embellish the source material, despite its elevated status, resulting in a film that sports its own oddball energy.

The Irish animation studio behind Wolfwalkers and Song of the Sea returns to make another wonderful hand-drawn animated movie, this time for Netflix. Jacob Tremblay plays the young boy who flees his turbulent life in the city to find a legendary dragon on a neighbouring island. What ensues is a charming, magical tale that’s perfectly suited to younger children, but with a level of artistry and a strong ecological message that will reward the attention of older viewers too.

Maisie Brumble is a young British orphan who stows away on a hunting ship with the dream of becoming a great hunter of mythical beasts. Suffice to say, lessons are learned and familial bonds formed, but not before a series of breathtaking aquatic action scenes. As well as helming Big Hero 6 and Bolt, director Chris Williams also co-directed Moana, so he clearly knows his way around a nautical set piece – not to mention lush water effects. All that expertise is right up on the screen to see in The Sea Beast.

At just 32 minutes long, Robin Robin is more of an animated short than an out and out movie, but for a young and attention-deficient audience that’s probably a good thing. This delightfully seasonal Aardman production features the British company’s signature stop motion animation style, which feels deliciously tactile. This hand-crafted approach is applied to a story about a young bird who is raised by a family of mice, and who sets out on a daring heist to prove she’s one of them.

Charlie Kaufman is the writer of some of the most left-field movies of the past 30 years – Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York, to name but three. He’s not the kind of person you’d expect to make a kid’s animated film for Netflix, which is precisely what Orion and the Dark is. With that said, a films about a neurotic 11-year-old who befriends the living manifestation of the dark sounds pretty Kaufman-esque to us.

Netflix was really on a CG animation roll around the turn of the decade, and The Willoughbys is evidence of that. No longer content to simply ape the Pixar approach, The Willoughbys treads some commendably dark and weird territory. Four unloved kids concoct a plan to kill off their awful parents and recruit new ones. As kid-friendly premises go, it’s not exactly Disney material, but it works on its own gothy terms with wit, style, and narration from professional grouch Ricky Gervais.

The Rise of Gru is the second Minions movie and the fifth in the extended Despicable Me universe, but you don’t really need to know any of that. All you need to know is that this is another slice of high-grade physical comedy starring everyone’s favourite gang of babbling yellow buffoons. The twist this time is that we’re going back in time to the formative years of supervillain-with-a-heart-of-gold Gru, voiced again by a squeakified Steve Carrell. The ’70s setting is beautifully realised, as is the accompanying old-meets-new soundtrack.

It doesn’t say it in the title, but Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is a direct spin-off from the SpongeBob SquarePants series. The main cast of that hit show returns, but the focus this time is on SpongeBob’s anthropomorphic squirrel friend Sandy and her Texas hometown. Perhaps the most notable aspect of Saving Bikini Bottom, however, is its switch to using a striking combination of CGI animation and live action footage. It all works to lend the film’s signature madcap style a much grander sense of scale.

In this new take on the classic Ultraman franchise, our towering superhero is saddled with on orphaned baby kaiju – the kind of beast that he spends much of his time fighting. It’s an abrupt change of tone for what has always been a relatively straightforward heroic franchise, but it works. A large part of that comes down to the striking computer animation style, which has a real sense of style about it. Fans of the franchise needn’t worry either, as there’s plenty of monster-bashing and building-smashing action to keep things ticking over.

This vibrant animated musical tells the story of a young half-human, half-alligator boy who is abandoned at an early age and duly adopted by a kindly swamp-dweller. When Arlo comes of age and sets out to discover his New York roots, he discovers a gang of friends, encounters a pair of croc hunters, and ultimately meets his douchebag father. If that doesn’t all sound quirky enough, the film’s 2D animation style really is something special, tipping its hat as it does to some of the earliest cartoon classics.

Fans of 2000’s Chicken Run might wonder where lead voices Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson have gone, though the former omission is way more problematic than the latter. Replacements Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi do a stand-up job evoking the spirit of the original. It’s another witty heist movie, but this time our plucky chickens are fighting to emancipate their daughter, Molly, from a sinister super-farm. The film is notable for combining Aardman’s painstaking stop motion animation style with modern computer-based production methods, with stunning results.

Who would have thought that the director behind such horrific delights as Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, and The Devil’s Backbone could make such an accomplished film for kids? Del Toro has always told dark fairytales of one sort or another, and his take on Pinocchio can be seen as another example. It’s totally kid-safe, and indeed kid-focused, yet it doesn’t shy away from knotty subjects such as fascism and what it means to be human. If there’s any film that deserves the old ‘one for the whole family’ description, it’s this one.