10 great family films to watch on Prime Video these school holidays

Take the guess work out of Family Movie Night these school holidays with this handy guide of great films for kids and parents currently streaming on Prime Video.

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You’ll find a mix of animated and live-action features, recent hits and blasts from the past, original stories, adaptations, chuckle machines, Academy Award nominees, musicals, martial arts, and much more—all handpicked from the streaming platform’s extensive library of family entertainment.

We’ve also highlighted age appropriateness guidelines for each flick as per Children & Media Australia.

The Boss Baby

I don’t go against the grain all too often, but I’m a staunch defender of this critically punted effort from DreamWorks. Playing out like a modern day Babyface Finster, the film centres on a seven-year-old boy who’s just fine being an only child. Naturally, he isn’t stoked to learn he has a baby brother, personified as a selfish, demanding, money-chucking suit with Alec Baldwin’s voice.

More visually inventive than you’d expect with a willingness to dive deep into the absurdity of the premise, The Boss Baby comes packed with laughs and crafty physical comedy (the Catch That Baby sequence has to be seen to be believed). Impressive still, the bossy baby brother analogy goes beyond gags to deliver some genuine insight sure to hit kids wrestling with the conflicting feelings of suddenly being a sibling.

Parental guidance recommended for kids aged 5 to 8 due to themes.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Admit it: the moment you saw that image and read that title, the song instantly popped up in your head. I don’t even need to mention what song. It’s just there. For the rest of your week. Sorry about that.

Now that you’re held captive by that catchy ditty, you might as well bring the family together for this timeless 1968 fantasy adventure starring Dick Van Dyke as a budding inventor who finally creates something tremendous—a flying car—sparking a magical voyage to take the kids to see their grandfather. Fun fact: the script was co-written by Roald Dahl, adapted from a book by Bond author Ian Fleming.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Phil Lord and Chris Miller jumpstarted their feature filmmaking careers with this crackling comedy about a(nother) budding inventor who just cannot create the right contraption. That is, until he somehow makes the mother of all machines that turns water into seemingly any kind of food imaginable. Unfortunately, it works too well, causing food-related weather events like hailing meatballs and literal ice cream blizzards.

Squint hard enough and you can mayyyyyyybe find themes relating to technological recklessness and how the naïve pursuit for unsustainable growth directly influences the current climate crisis. But in all honesty, the film isn’t banging any idealistic drum that hard. It’s too busy serving everyone of all ages a good time with its witty script and bountiful visual creativity.

Parental guidance for kids under 6 due to mild scary scenes and crude humour.

The Croods

Filmmaker Chris Sanders helmed some of the most beloved family films of the century. Last year’s The Wild Robot was a winner with critics and audiences while both Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon proved so influential, their live-action counterparts are currently chucking dynamite at the global box office. 2013’s The Croods, by comparison, is a bit of a dark horse, but one that shouldn’t be underestimated.

The story centres on a stone age family whose struggle to survive the harsh prehistoric wilderness is just an average Tuesday to them. When their preciously safe cave is destroyed, the family must do the unthinkable—explore. While The Croods relishes in being a superbly silly film, it’s also not shy about the subject of death. Try not to choke up during the film’s climax.

Parental guidance recommended for kids aged 8 to 10 due to scary scenes and themes.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I’m not sure how mid-year Christmas became a thing, but to all who celebrate, this is your film. Illumination can keep their cuddly 2018 Grinch; the gross and grouchy Jim Carrey version is cinema’s ultimate yuletide meanie.

It wasn’t exactly a critical smash at the time, but Ron Howard’s take on the Dr. Seuss classic sits fondly in the memories of Millennial children. This is partly due to the strength of the good doctor’s timeless tale of a rancid reject who learns that kindness isn’t stupid. No one can deny the powerful, practical production on display, either. But mainly, as I once argued, it’s down to the fact that this was Carrey’s first time putting his incredible talents as a physical comedian on display in a film suitable for the whole family.

Parental guidance recommended for kids aged 5 to 12 due to scary scenes.

The LEGO Movie

Five years after Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Lord and Miller achieved the seemingly impossible by finding the soul inside a heavily marketed toy product and celebrating it with a witty, wild, wonderfully entertaining movie.

Telling the most delightful dystopian tale you’ll ever see, the story follows everyday nobody Emmet who wholeheartedly believes—as per the Oscar-nominated song—that Everything is Awesome. When the city’s leader, Lord Business, threatens to glue everything in place, Emmet’s eyes are forced wide open as he’s thrusted into different LEGO worlds and meets other LEGO people like Batman, C-3PO, and Abraham Lincoln.

Parental guidance recommended for kids aged 5 to 7 due to violence and scary scenes.

The Penguins of Madagascar

The best and funniest Madagascar movie is this underappreciated spinoff. I will not accept any counterarguments at this time.

After being side characters in the other films and embarking on more missions in their own TV show, the gang of spy-wannabe penguins got the secret agent blockbuster they deserved. There’s a proper story ‘n’ all, but really, the film’s out to make you laugh, which it does in hearty doses. Includes a perfectly voice cast John Malkovich as an angry octopus, an hilarious cameo from Werner Herzog as a heartless documentarian, and a Mission: Impossible-worthy skydive oner.

Parental guidance recommended for kids aged 5 to 7 due to violence and scary scenes.

Smallfoot

This is an interesting one. On the surface, Warner Bros’ 2018 rib-tickler seems pretty straightforward. The script-flipping story sees a yeti search for an elusive creature known as a ‘human’. When he makes this profound discovery, he brings the frightened lad back to his community of non-believers. It’s a fun, funny premise that allows the animators to run pretty loose on the physical gags.

But underneath the non-stop yucks lies a surprisingly smart story about disinformation, corrupted power structures, and false prophets who supress knowledge to keep a status quo that keep them on top. I’m not kidding you. The film’s really that deep. It just also happens to hold an absolute arsenal of slapstick comedy.

Parental guidance recommended for children between the ages of 5-8 due to scary scenes, violence and language.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Those heroes in a half shell have always been popular since their meteoric rise in the 1980s among the Saturday Morning crowd. For any TMNT fan in the household, no matter how old, this live-action feature film is worthy of a (re)watch. Especially for the mightily impressive stunt work done by those stunt people donning Jim Henson’s rubbery animatronic turtle suits.

Dark in both the literal and thematic sense, this origin story shows how the four ninja turtle brothers became underground heroes for NYC under the guidance of their mutant rat karate father Master Splinter. Yes, that all sounds insane when you read it out loud, but the film stays straight-faced about the dangers of a crime-riddled city and the beating heart of a strong brotherhood. Somehow, it all works, even if this one doesn’t have Ninja Rap.

Parental guidance recommended, particularly for younger children, due to scary scenes and violence. Not recommended for children under 8.

Where the Wild Things Are

In between his two Charlie Kaufman films (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation.) and Oscar-winning AI romance Her, filmmaker Spike Jonze pulled off a one-of-a-kind adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. The original’s simple story about a boy’s imaginary escape to a playful monster island before bedtime becomes something emotionally deeper with this soulful take.

The film’s grounded opening presents a wounded Max, who viciously lashes out at his mother and runs away. When he finds himself in a wild new world (populated with monsters rendered superbly using both CG and practical effects), Max relishes in being unleashed. But what first seems like absolute freedom with new friends eventually turns into an emotional unravelling for a boy who doesn’t want to—but must—grow up.

Parental guidance recommended for children aged 9-11 due to scary scenes and violence.