Lionsgate

Films To Watch WIth Your Daughter

9 Films Every Father Should Watch With His Daughter

December 2, 2016

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Obviously there is no such thing as a ‘girl film’ or a ‘boy film’ – either gender is going to get a kick out of E.T. or Toy Story – but when you’re watching with a child, they often want to see someone onscreen who they can project themselves onto, and probably dress up as at the next fancy dress opportunity.

For young girls, the list of options is shorter than it should be, unless she dreams of being a princess. Cinema is waking up to the fact that, hey, girls are just people who can do all the things that boys can do and don’t need a love interest to be interesting themselves. Upcoming Disney movie Moana (out December 2nd) doesn’t give the heroine a man to moon over, just The Rock to pal around with, which is much better.

Here are nine other films with great leading ladies that you should show your daughter now. Then as soon as they’re old enough, show them Alien and Aliens, because Ripley is the biggest badass in all of cinema.

Inside Out

There are only two Pixar movies with female protagonists. Brave is good, with a story about mother-daughter relationships, but Inside Out is mind-expandingly clever. There are two heroines. There’s Riley, an 11-year-old girl who is figuring out who she is and where she belongs, and then there’s 'joy', one of five emotions who lives in Riley’s head and wants her host to be the happiest she can be. It’s a movie about learning the heart and mind are complex things and that being scared about growing up is fine. If you’ve got a daughter, or a son, on the edge of puberty then show them this and it will do the groundwork on at least one awkward conversation. Also, it’s extremely funny. And you’ll probably cry.

The Hunger Games

Arguably one of the most important films of the last decade, both because it helped change industry perceptions of female-led movies and because it made a fortune. There’s a romantic element to it, but it’s no Twilight, and very few of the people who helped make it a multi-billion dollar franchise were coming back to find out if Katniss chose Peeta or Gale. You watch because the story of a lone girl fighting against a crazed regime in a post-apocalyptic world is compellingly told and the action is superb.

Zootopia

OK, it doesn’t feature any human ladies, but its protagonist is female and she rules. In a fabulous film-noir, Judy Hopps is a bunny who believes she can be a cop, even if the rest of the animal kingdom thinks she should be farming carrots. The message about stereotypes and fighting gender norms may go over your kid’s head, but you’ll both enjoy a whipsmart comedy script and all the subtext will sink in later.

Mulan

Based on an ancient Chinese story about a girl who disguised herself as a man in order to fight in the army and save her ailing father from certain death, this is a minor Disney that’s worn well. As the dragon sidekick, Eddie Murphy is nearly as funny as Robin Williams’ Genie from Aladdin, and while it gets a little disappointing at the end, with Mulan at least partly returning to being a ‘respectable’ girl, overall it’s about not letting anyone tell you what your limits are.

Spirited Away

Kids go nuts for Studio Ghibli movies because the fantasy worlds and dream logic of their plots make a special kind of sense to minds that still believe in Father Christmas and are confident they might one day grow up to become a rocket ship. In Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, a young girl mislays her parents and tries to find them in a world in which everything is bizarre, but oddly beautiful. Warning: they will want to ride a Catbus after, so you may have to explain some difficult realities.

Frozen

Chances are that if you have a daughter you’re already being forced to watch this constantly and you’d probably rather lose all your extremities to frostbite than ever hear that song again, but if your daughter loves this then she’s on to a good thing. The story of Anna and Elsa involves precisely one prince, and he’s both a secondary character and not used as you’d expect. The point is about the importance of sisterly relationships. If your daughter doesn’t have a sister, she’ll still get the message if she has a female best friend.

My Neighbour Totoro

Another Ghibli, in which two sisters move to a new house and encounter a magical monster living in the woods. Even if you haven’t seen the film you’ll probably recognise Totoro from a huge raft of merchandise. He looks like someone tried to cross an owl and a polar bear, but made it extra cute. It’s a gorgeous fantasy and will spur any tiny imagination. Some would argue this, not Spirited Away, is Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, but there’s very little between them. Both are pure joy.

Coraline

She may want to hold your hand through the stop-motion animation, which is really a horror movie for children. At times it is genuinely frightening, as it should be, as it’s an adaptation of the work of supremely, wonderfully weird Neil Gaiman. Dakota Fanning voices a young girl who hates her parents, but changes her mind about them when she travels into a parallel world and meets her Other Mother. Every frame is magical.

Lilo & Stitch

There’s a whole other conversation to be had about the lack of children of colour as the leads in any movies, animated or otherwise, but Disney has been better than most. There’ll soon be Moana, of course, and there’s Mulan, the adorable Princess and the Frog, and the very poor Pocahontas. Then there’s Lilo & Stitch, which no child could fail to enjoy. It sees a cute Hawaiian girl makes friends with an alien who has all the decorum of a toddler (if you have a toddler then welcome to their new favourite movie). It’s a minor Disney, without songs or much scale, but it’s packed with enjoyably bizarre characters and a strong, non-corny message of friendship.