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Family time is truly precious. That’s why unwinding with a great family-friendly movie can be such a cherished experience for families. The classics are filled with memorable characters overcoming relevant challenges, hilarious escapades, and valuable lessons learned. There’s a reason they never get old!
For Amazon Prime members, Prime Video offers a number of great family-friendly movies. To save you some time, we’ve combed through the streaming giant’s library and pulled out what we consider to be the best family movies currently available on the platform.
Looking for even more family films? Check out our favorite family movies currently streaming on Netflix.
Instant Family (2018)
It may not be great for families with very young kids (note the PG-13), but Instant Family will be a hit for families with tweens and teens. When Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care. Hoping to take in one small child, they instead wind up with a trio of siblings, going from zero kids to three overnight. Instantly, they’ve got a new family and must learn the ropes of parenthood in hopes of becoming a family.
Rotten Tomatoes: 81%
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Octavia Spencer
Director: Sean Anders
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 119 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
The popular Dora the Explorer cartoon comes to life in this action-packed adventure! Dora (Isabela Merced) has spent most of her life exploring the jungle, but it’s nothing compared to high school. But when her parents disappear, Dora embarks on a quest to save them while trying to solve the mystery behind a lost Incan civilization.
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Stars: Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez, Michael Peña
Director: James Bobin
Rating: PG
Runtime: 102 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Mouse Hunt (1997)
Who would have thought watching two bumbling fools hunting a mouse for an hour and a half could be so fun? The Gore Verbinski-directed Mouse Hunt stars Nathan Lane and Lee Evans as two greedy brothers who move into their recently deceased magnate father’s decrepit mansion. Trying to keep a promise to not sell their father’s factory, they decide instead to restore the house and sell it for a big windfall. Unfortunately, there’s an extremely malicious mouse on the loose that is determined to keep its home intact.
Rotten Tomatoes: 42%
Stars: Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Vicki Lewis
Director: Gore Verbinski
Rating: PG
Runtime: 97 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Benji (1974)
Benji is a stray dog that doesn’t need an owner. He likes to roam freely in his friendly Texas town where people give him treats and he can hector the local cat as much as he wants. But when two children that Benji loves are kidnapped and held for ransom, Benji takes it upon himself to save the day. Who needs Lassie when Benji is around?
Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
Stars: Frances Bavier, Edgar Buchanan, Peter Breck
Directors: Joe Camp
Rating: G
Runtime: 86 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Zookeeper (2011)
Griffin Keyes (Kevin James) is one of the most beloved caretakers at the Franklin Park Zoo outside Boston, but his love life is lacking. After all, he’s much more comfortable with the animals than the ladies. When Griffin decides he’ll have to move on to a new career if he’s going to have any hope at finding love, the animals panic. To keep him around, they reveal a secret ability to talk, coaching him up to find love.
Rotten Tomatoes: 14%
Stars: Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb
Director: Frank Coraci
Rating: PG
Runtime: 101 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Belle and Sebastian (2015)
Adapted from the 1965 novel Belle et Sébastien by Cécile Aubry, our story follows Sebastian (Félix Bosseut), an orphan boy living with an adoptive grandfather and his niece in the 1943 German-occupied French Alps. With dreams of reuniting with his mother, who he believes is just beyond the mighty mountain range, Sebastian spends his days in the shadows of the vistas. Returning home from one such excursion, he encounters a towering stray dog who he names Belle. The two take to each other right away, but just as trouble strikes. A Nazi patrol strolls into Sebastian’s villa, with intentions of cutting off the local French Resistance that has been transporting Jews into Switzerland. Nicolas Vanier’s film weaves a beautiful tale of companionship, humanity, and authentic depiction of a hardship-laced era.
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Stars: Félix Bosseut, Tchéky Karyo, Margaux Châtelier
Directors: Nicholas Varnier
Rating: G
Runtime: 99 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Heidi (2017)
Alain Gsponer’s Heidi is the most recent adaptation of Johanna Spyri’s 1881 Swiss novel about an orphaned girl named Heidi that spends her days roaming the valleys of the Swiss Alps with her grandfather. The child’s way of life is totally uprooted when she’s forced into the care of a bourgeoisie Frankfurt family, where she pines for her days of carefree country living. This is perhaps the closest to the original text as an adaptation has ever neared, with Anuk Steffen delivering an earnest and emotional portrayal of the titular character. Rounding out the talented cast are a host of other great German actors, including the late Bruno Ganz and Anna Schinz. If you and the little ones are OK with subtitles, this is an incredible foreign language entry for the entire family.
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Stars: Anuk Steffen, Bruno Ganz, Anna Schinz
Directors: Alain Gsponer
Rating: G
Runtime: 111 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
The Addams Family (2019)
The macabre clan is back in this visceral 2019 animated reimagining. After Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) are run out of their own town for their ghoulish deeds, the infamous Addams clan relocates to a condemned asylum in New Jersey. Over a decade later, the Addams children, Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard), are each faced with unique coming-of-age experiences. Wednesday wants to be a part of the world outside her family’s gloomy estate, while Pugsley is forced to prepare for his Mazurka, a rite of passage for every member of the Addams clan. Then, a reality TV host named Margaux Needler (Allison Janney) pledges to force the family out of town once more. We’ve seen the Addams Family in everything from New Yorker serials to TV to live-action films. It’s only fitting that an animated feature would come about. In fact, co-directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan made such a splash with this 2019 iteration that a sequel is already in the works.
Rotten Tomatoes: 44%
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloë Grace Moretz, Finn Wolfhard
Directors: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan
Rating: PG
Runtime: 87 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Explorers (1985)
Ben Crandall (Ethan Hawke), a San Francisco youth, keeps having dreams about flying through the sky on some kind of manufactured spacecraft that resembles a circuit board. Ben eventually reports his dream-visions to wunderkind school-friend Wolfgang (River Phoenix). With the help of a third friend, Darren (Jason Presson), the three boys actually construct the circuit board, using the device to create an electromagnetic field around an old Tilt-a-Whirl car that they’ve fashioned for their flight vehicle. Science meets theme-park attraction, and the boys take to the stars in search of extraterrestrial life.
Explorers is a fun film that was quickly relegated to cult-status upon its release. According to director Joe Dante, the production was infamously rushed by studio executives and released only a week after Back to the Future, the year’s mega box-office hit. But now that the dust has settled, Explorers serves as an imaginative little time capsule, one that would introduce the world to the powerful talents of Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix, and further highlight the stunning visual effects capabilities of Industrial Light and Magic (the VFX team behind Star Wars).
Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
Stars: Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Jason Presson
Director: Joe Dante
Rating: PG
Runtime: 109 minutes
Watch on Amazon Prime
Editors’ Recommendations
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