The best family movies on Netflix (that you'll enjoy even if you don't have kids)

It’s rare for a sequel to be more memorable than the first movie, but Addams Family Values outshines its 1991 predecessor. Barry Sonnenfeld’s original wasn’t dull, but it was designed mostly as a re-introduction to the characters for a new audience that likely didn’t grow up watching the ’60s sitcom, with an incredible cast winning over even those without fond memories of the all-together-ooky clan. Christina Ricci became the most recognizable version of Wednesday Addams, inspiring a new generation of goth girls. Anjelica Huston and Raúl Juliá delivered a refreshing portrayal of a married couple that’s still madly in love over a decade into their marriage. And with Christopher Lloyd playing him, Uncle Fester became an even more lovable goof. But Addams Family Values is the movie that allows us to fully fall in love with these characters, furthering the development of their stories and reminding us that even as outsiders, the Addams are actually pretty relatable at their core. []

Freely adapted from the 1978 children’s book by Judi and Ron Barrett, the new animated movie Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs feels like a warning from another era, a parable about the perils of living amid abundance. But Cloudy—co-directed and co-scripted by first-time feature-makers Phil Lord and Chris Miller—doesn’t get too bogged down with moralizing. It flits swiftly between easy-but-funny sight gags involving gin food, send-ups of disaster-film clichés, and endearing characters brought vividly to life by a pleasing visual style, plus funny vocal performances from Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, and Mr. T. Hader plays a hapless geek with a lifelong gift for building inventions that almost work. His luck changes—and with it, the luck of his island town, whose sardine-based economy has been hit hard by the revelation that, as one headline puts it, “Sardines Are Super Gross”—when he unveils a machine that makes the sky rain whatever food he chooses. But the tremendous gift works largely to make his fellow citizens lazy, and it leaves Hader no happier than before, even with the arrival of a pretty weather reporter (Faris) who shares some of his nerdy obsessions. []

’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, now following Jaws in a pristine (though less revelatory) deluxe Blu-ray edition, draws on the director’s memories as a child of divorce, when he created an imaginary friend to keep him company. Spielberg and his screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, have channeled those memories into a open-hearted piece of storybook science fiction, but the fundamentals of E.T.—the reason why everyone talks about it making them cry—have nothing to do with the marvels of outer space and interstellar connection, or even the touching vulnerability of the creature itself, as it struggles to survive on an uninhabitable planet. The core theme of E.T. is home, and the journey of the film, taken in literal synchronicity by the young hero and his alien friend, is about them helping each other find it. It’s a common story told on a celestial scale. []

The Jungle Movie maintains Hey Arnold!’s warm tone and careful pacing, its willingness to let its young characters absorb dramatic moments and contemplate within silences. It’s not an aesthetic many kids may be accustomed to—today’s youth-oriented programming is geared more toward wackier, faster-paced TV animation—but newcomers familiar and comfortable with an energy that’s between and will be satisfied. And the Hey Arnold! vets will feel right at home, noticing various deep-cut references to the show that rarely distract from the story being told. The Jungle Movie’s strengths are in the quiet moments, the ones in which the camera lingers on characters at their most emotionally honest and vulnerable, or when it tracks across city landscapes populated with people engaged in their own lives. The film utilizes montages for concentrated community work or emotional poignancy: Arnold’s grandparents (Dan Castellaneta and Tress MacNeille) confronting their grandson’s desire to ditch the class trip and search for his parents, or the testing of the complex, tenuous relationships between Arnold (Mason Vale Cotton), his best friend Gerald (Benjamin Flores Jr.), and his schoolyard bully/secret admirer Helga G. Pataki (Francesca Marie Smith). Letting characters and moments breathe was always Hey Arnold!’s hidden forte, and the same is true of The Jungle Movie. []

Hunt For The Wilderpeople, an enjoyably goofy adventure that manages to bring some freshness to the moldy “cantankerous adult reluctantly bonds with adorable kid” subgenre. Starring Sam Neill as the cantankerous adult, the film plays a bit like Jurassic Park minus Lex and dinosaurs, mining humor from the incongruity of its odd-couple pairing and basic fish-out-of-water elements, plus some Flight Of The Conchord-ish wit. []

Missing Link, the new stop-motion feature from the masters of the form at Laika, is [not] a study in stillness. There are slapstick bar fights and actual cliff-hanging. There are celebrity voices, including Zach Galifianakis in full (if genteel) rambling mode. Even the animation itself is noticeably smoother than some past stop-motion classics, with animators’ fingerprints less visible just outside (or sometimes fully inside) the frame, as Laika continues to push forward with its own medium-specific technological advances. But the movie also has the freedom of its constraints. It operates on its own little wavelength, rather than broadcasting itself loudly…. []

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines doesn’t confine its screen-time observations to metaphors: As a synth-y score builds and the Mitchells embark on a last-ditch road trip to drop Katie off at college, a new line of robo-helpers rebel against their masters, efficiently creating a (bloodless, family-friendly) apocalypse. By sheer luck, the Mitchells evade capture and become humanity’s last long-shot hope. When other humans are shipped off to the “rhombus of infinite subjugation” and rogue comic-relief robots voiced by SNL alumni become crucial to the plot, the Mitchells’ animated lineage becomes more clear: This is the latest work godfathered by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, architects of , , and … []

Cartoon Saloon is undoubtedly one of the essential underdogs of modern animation studios, perhaps only comparable to Laika in their dedication to their now-niche discipline within the medium. Their Irish Folklore trilogy, culminating in the transcendent Wolfwalkers, is an achievement of gorgeous hand-drawn animation that would be difficult for any studio to follow up—which leaves with some lofty expectations…. My Father’s Dragon is a timely parable, addressing a pre-adolescent fear stemming from the realization that parents aren’t always in control of their destiny, and affirming that it’s okay to be afraid of that uncertainty. Cartoon Saloon may here be aiming for a younger audience than usual, but there’s still a sense of maturity underpinning their film’s messaging that’s absent from a lot of their contemporaries. []

Big Holiday returns Pee-wee Herman to the highways and byways for a shaggier, less rigorously paced adventure, finding frequent and long-lasting laughs along the way. At 63, Paul Reubens’ physical and vocal range isn’t what it once was, but he still gives Pee-wee (and Big Holiday) an undeniable energy. Dulled though his tics and twitches might be, Reuben’s face still sparks to life in close-up, like a child discovering all the many ways to twist and contort the human features. It’s clear that Pee-wee and his weird, wonderful world continue to amuse and excite Reubens, and his Big Holiday collaborators share the sentiment. John Lee’s direction doesn’t have the unmistakable personal stamp of a Tim Burton, though that just gives more authorial control to the main character. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is the Pee-wee movie that really makes its possessive apostrophe count. [] 

Frenetic and frequently funny, Penguins Of Madagascar represents the DreamWorks Animation franchise style—which boils down to self-aware, but naïve, talking animals who learn kid-friendly life lessons—at its most palatable. Indebted more to the wackiness of old Warner Bros. shorts than to the realist Pixar sensibility that informs most American animated features, Penguins is packed with gags and moves with the kind of gummy elasticity—the stuff of eye-pops, anvil drops, and giant mallets pulled out of nowhere—that’s become awfully rare in the age of computer animation. []