Choosing Movies for Children: a guide

Finding an enjoyable age-appropriate movie for your children to watch is not always easy. There’s a very wide range of titles now in cinemas and on free-to-air, subscription or streaming services, but will they suit your family?

CMA aims to help make those choices easier.

If you have a particular movie in mind:

• A good first step is to check the classification of the movie. Those classified G or PG will mostly be suitable for children under 15 years.
  However, not all those movies will suit children in younger age groups-say 4-5yrs or 8-9?

• Here’s where CMA’s child-development-based movie reviews are so useful. You can check out titles here. 
  CMA provides a recommended age and a rundown of content - if it’s scary, violent, has sexual or drug references, and more.

• If we haven’t reviewed that movie, CMA suggests you try this site which is also child-development-based. Or check through these lists (with age recommendations) for titles on Netflix, Disney+, Stan and SBS On Demand:

       

                                     

Here’s a service which can tell you where to find the movie you want to see:

Flicks website supplies locations for movies in cinema and on streaming services, trailers and more. Check out Flicks

If you are looking for movies that might suit but don’t have a title in mind:

• Use our reviews of Family Movies or School Holiday selections or special occasion guides, eg Australian, Musical, and more.
• Coming soon: the latest edition of our “selected movies for different age groups”.
• Here are our current top picks:
  Check out CMA’s reviews of the 2024 Golden Globes nominations and winner in the animation category:
  Best Animated Film
  

• • The Boy and The Heron (WINNER)
  • Elemental
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
  • Suzume
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie
  • Wish

     Also check out our review of Barbie, winner of the 2024 Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.

You can search for places to see these films using Flicks.

• And see below for CMA’s recent reviews of movies on streaming services.

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Our latest reviews on streaming services