21 Kids' Movies You Had No Idea Had Deeper Meanings Than What Was Portrayed

Movies like this help teach our kids to be on alert early on.

Maryjane

• Published in Film & TV
• June 3, 2022

Whenever the family is having a movie night, it becomes the most ideal time and the most gracious moment when everybody tends to yell at the same time. With all the age brackets and their different tastes to satisfy, it's never easy to find a movie that will give joy to everyone at once.

However, it's not an impossible task, especially in this jet age of animation where a movie can connect one to another. Obviously, not every animated movie is a hit, and the odd 'feel-great' flick can have a diverse effect on what you expected.

But then, your kids can turn that around with the way they watch and rewatch animated movies. At a point when you’ve fallen in love with a movie and then boom... you realize that the movie has a deeper meaning than we just saw.

Take Coraline, for instance, this is a movie that teaches you that monsters don't look like monsters at first. They look like the complete opposite.

What about Shrek? The movie showed how people have hatred for other people just because of the way they are or the way they look.

There’s so much to take home from a bunch of these movies, so we’ve gathered some kid’s movies that have deeper issues than we realized.

1. The movie, Lilo & Stitch

"Nani is 19, taking care of her little sister who has behavioral problems, while being investigated by CPS, on top of working and trying to pay for a whole house!"

—cowboyfairy

2. The Incredibles movie

"Attempted suicide, lots of unseen collateral damage and possible civilian deaths, and the systematic assassination of superheroes." 

—mc_squared_03

3. The movie, Home Alone

"Home Alone is about two adults trying to murder a child."

—maksmadonov

4. The Secret of NIMH movie

"The Secret of NIMH definitely haunted me as a child. The animation was so dark, including the whole storyline of the animal testing center. Timothy [almost] dying and the rats fighting to get the nest out of the mud in the end! So many things! It spoke to me on so many levels, though."

—Rexygirl20

5. The movie, Coraline

"This movie taught a generation the dangers of trusting strangers, and that appearances can often be incredibly deceiving. Monsters don't look like monsters at first. They look like the complete opposite."

—Reddit User

6. The Brave Little Toaster movie

"I had awful memories of many of the scenes for years: the terrifying radiator that got so angry he killed himself, the time when they almost fell off a cliff, the appliance Dr. Frankenstein guy, the massive electromagnet looming over the sad cars waiting to be crushed to death, and the toaster and its friends..."

—KagakuKo

7. The movie, All Dogs Go to Heaven

"I've always said All Dogs Go To Heaven is a mafia movie in disguise."

—shug_paladin

8. The movie, Snow White

"The stepmother wants to murder a 14-year-old girl because she is prettier than her. The 14-year-old finds a random house in the woods and decides to clean it. She lives as a servant of seven men in exchange for a place to stay. A random prince finds a corpse in the woods and decides to kiss it."

—MysteriousLobster1

9. The movie, Monsters, Inc.

"Waternoose was willing to kidnap children just to keep his company afloat. Instead of investing in alternative energy, he decides to go out and harm another world.

—XxsquirrelxX

"The twist in Monsters, Inc. is that the corporation is the monster."

—Animated_Astronaut

10. The movie, Shrek

"It shows how people have hatred for other people just because of the way they are — religion, looks, race, culture, poverty. It has a good lesson that we should love everybody regardless."

—JaCrispyMcNuggets

11. The Hunchback of Notre Dame movie

"The old guy was clearly a sexual predator."

—dobbyisfree0806

12. The movie, Zootopia

"If Zootopia was a movie with humans instead of animals, it would seem a LOT darker and probably inappropriate for kids because of characters literally going insane, and also the race war."

—PoekiepoesPudding

13. The Wizard of Oz movie

"Glinda the Good Witch pretty much used Dorothy and her friends to kill the Wicked Witch of the West so she could gain power. She may be a good witch but still. Wow."

—leatherwolf89

14. The Rugrats Movie

"Tommy almost murders his infant brother by covering him with mashed bananas and feeding him to hungry monkeys because he's crying. Shit's dark as f**k."

—First-Fantasy

15. The movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

"The fact that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a children’s movie is still baffling to me. There is a scene with a creepy older man who goes around the town kidnapping children because kids were suddenly illegal. He lured them with candy."

—merlin1707

16. The movie, Finding Nemo

"A dark movie? Maybe the one about the family where the serial killer killed the mother and all but one of the children. And the one left was left disabled until he's abducted, and his father has to find him with only the help of a developmentally disabled woman?"

—rainbowgrower1044

17. The movie, Frozen 2

"Elsa and Anna discover their direct paternal ancestors took advantage of an entire race of people for their own selfish gain. Kristoff struggles with loving someone who is emotionally unavailable due to current traumas. Anna loses her last living family member and, yet, is forced to carry on and reverse her family's tragic legacy, risking her own life to do so. Olaf is stuck in a position of a child dealing with the stresses adults around him are feeling and trying to understand it, all through a veil of innocence."

—dawndollygolden

19. The Fox and the Hound movie

"When you realize one of your favorite movies was about an orphan who's brutally hunted by his unlikely friend."

—lovasaurus

19. The Princess Bride movie

"The prince is trying to start a war with another country and planned to kill Buttercup to start it... They leave him alive at the end. Do you think he is going to rethink those evil plots just because his torture buddy is dead? He is still going to be king and one would assume he will find a new ill-fated wife to murder."

—ThePrincessInsomniac

—The_Fat_Controller

21. The movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

"It’s pretty dark. I read somewhere that he possibly suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. For example, he wears clothes that stand out so he is always the center of attention. He dismisses questions when they are asked because he can’t stand criticism. He placed all those kids in danger with not a care in the world. There’s a lot more examples. It’s weird when you look back on these children stories because you realize it goes a lot deeper."

—dahzzr1404

It’s nice to know that there are movies out there whose objective is to teach a good lesson to their viewers. It’s a cruel world out there, and movies like this help teach our kids to be on alert early on.

Drop your thoughts and opinions about this collection in the comments below.

Maryjane