All together now: five of the best kids' films that adults can enjoy

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Kidult superhero movies are nothing new, but this 2018 animated splinter off the Sony-Spidey combine does something really smart with the money-spinning multiverse concept. In Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey’s version, Spider-Man is reborn across the dimensions – as Gwen, as a private eye, as a pig – and the result is a fruitfully mind-bending recalibration of the entire mythos.

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The Amazing Mr Blunden

In 1972, director Lionel Jeffries followed up The Railway Children with another absorbing period melodrama about first world war school kids, though considerably darker and spookier. A family move to the country, where the children meet another set of kids, ghosts from a century earlier, and our heroes go back in time to save them from murderous adults.

The Iron Giant

An imaginative, sophisticated animation from an unlikely source: Ted Hughes’s children’s novel about a giant “metal man” who saves humanity. Brad Bird – later to go big with The Incredibles – created a landmark in sensitive, moving animation in 1999, a long way from DayGlo Disney and anticipating the likes of WALL-E and Up.

Corpse Bride

The most grown-up animation to come out of the Tim Burton stable, and undeniably the weirdest. A story of reanimated cadavers and marital vows from beyond the grave, this 2005 film has Burton’s then-partner Helena Bonham Carter as the zombified wedding-dress botherer of the title. Make of that what you will.

Babe

Despite being made back in 1995, this is still irresistibly cute: a modern nursery fable about a baby pig who conquers the world of competitive sheep-herding. Radical in its way (can you imagine a talking-animal film without moving mouths?) but at heart it’s just a great, emotional story.