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 2026 - 98th Academy Awards' nominations and overall winner in the animation category:
  Best Animated Feature Film
  • KPop Demon Hunters (WINNER  - plus also WINNER of Best Original Song for 'Golden')
  • Arco
  • Elio
  • Little Amélie or The Character of Rain
  • Zootopia 2

Also check out our review of Avatar: Fire and Ash, Winner of the 2026 Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

And Winner of Best Sound and nominated for various other awards - F1 The Movie.

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