Five family movies on Netflix to watch with your kids
More often than you think, family movies get dismissed as kids’ stuff, which is a bit sad because the real cinephiles know there are two audiences in the room.
Children get the adventure; the grown-ups get good writing to keep all age groups engaged and satisfied. Everybody wins! Oh, and don’t go writing these off as mere ‘children’s films’, because some of Netflix’s family picks have gone all the way to the Oscars, so you might want to think twice before sticking them in the kiddie corner.
That distinction matters, mind you. A cracking family movie does not talk down to children, and it does not treat the adults as just chaperones either. There is craft in getting that balance right, and when a film cracks the code, you can tell.
So, we have picked five Netflix films that manage the trick where you get the family viewing without the whiff of compromise.
Five family movies on Netflix to watch with your kids
Swapped (Nathan Greno, 2026)
Of the five, Swapped is the fresh meat, and that gives it a nice little edge because you are not walking in with half the film lodged in your memory.
The story is about Ollie and Ivy, two animals from rival species who end up trapped in each other’s bodies after a freak mishap, which, as you can imagine, gives birth to nothing but utterly chaotic situations. Kind of like a Freaky Friday for animals.
Adults might get the delight from the familiar voices, with Michael B Jordan voicing Ollie, while Juno Temple takes on Ivy, and Nathan Greno, the director behind Tangled, is at the helm. He drew from nature documentaries when building the creatures and their world, which gives the film a bit more character than your bog-standard body-swap story.
KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, 2025)
KPop Demon Hunters needs no introduction at this point. The film was one of Netflix’s, nay, the world’s biggest films of 2025, and ‘Golden’ was everywhere. Huntr/X had escaped the screen by that stage, which tells you how far the thing travelled.
And yes, your kid might’ve watched it what, 50 or more times by now, so that level of hype can make you wary, but this one earned its keep and then some. But look past all the noise, and you’ve got a beautiful family film about three K-pop stars who spend their other lives fighting demons, while the Saja Boys turn up and throw a spanner in the works.
The kids get all the razzle dazzle, while you get a heartfelt story and songs that stick in your head. Adding the Oscar win to it and calling it a ‘kids’ film’ feels a bit rich.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021)
If Swapped is about seeing life through someone else’s eyes, The Mitchells vs the Machines presents it to you with a robot apocalypse. Katie is desperate to get to film school.
Sadly, her dad, Rick, hasn’t got a clue what makes her tick, so he cancels her flight and decides the whole family is driving across America instead. Soon enough, the machines revolt, and this already messed-up family ends up being humanity’s best shot at survival.
Director Mike Rianda came from Gravity Falls, so the humour makes perfect sense, and Katie’s own doodles keep bursting into the animation as if the film can’t sit still. Olivia Colman voices PAL and the AI causing all the trouble, so it’s like peeping into the near future. But adults, they get a genuinely lovely father-daughter story.
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (Matthew Warchus, 2022)
Matilda has been around the block for ages, so this is not really a new recommendation, but hey, it’s the Netflix version; there’s always a catch. Roald Dahl’s book came first, then the 1996 film became a childhood staple, and the stage musical gave the story another lease of life.
So this Netflix version had its work cut out for it from the start. The clever move was not trying to remake what came before, but it takes its cue from the stage show, with Tim Minchin’s songs giving Matilda’s rebellion a much bigger voice.
Alisha Weir plays Matilda with plenty of steel, while Emma Thompson has once again proved that she is a chameleon by playing Miss Trunchbull. The woman is a total nightmare headmistress, and it’s the music that you have to pay attention to.
Klaus (Sergio Pablos, 2019)
Klaus has given the Santa story another chance, and you’ll be delighted to know that the platform has made it feel fresh again. Jesper is hopeless at postal school, so off he goes to freezing Smeerensburg, where two families have been at each other’s throats for years, and nobody bothers sending letters.
Then he meets Klaus, a carpenter living on his own with a house full of handmade toys, and before long, the children’s letters start setting something bigger in motion. Spoiler alert: it is dangerously sentimental.
Sergio Pablos, one of the minds behind Despicable Me, made his directing debut here. He brought a unique blend of hand-drawn animation with modern lighting to give the whole thing that gorgeous storybook feel. JK Simmons voices Klaus, Jason Schwartzman plays Jesper, and the film even picked up an Oscar nomination.