Great Old Movies To Watch With Your Kids
Written By Ty Burr
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Top Movies for Kids Ages 5-6
Top pick:
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Hide the shish kebab skewers: After seeing this glowing Technicolor classic, your children will be staging sword fights all over the house. Errol Flynn remains the only Robin Hood that matters, and this fast-paced, hugely enjoyable romp plays like a picture book unstuck in time.
The plot is easy enough for a kid to figure out: Good king gone away on business, bad brother (Claude Rains as Prince John) running the country into the ground. If your child has a sibling, it'll make perfect sense. But it's the ripe performances that make this movie stick: a young and winsome Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, Basil Rathbone as villainous Sir Guy. Leading the charge is devil-may-care Flynn, a Saxon superhero whose powers are merely wit, intelligence, and athleticism. Beats The Rock as an action hero any day.
Runners-up:Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
If you want to introduce kids to Judy Garland without freaking them out with flying monkeys and wicked witches, start with this homespun musical about a family in the Midwest, 1903. Garland sings the catchy "Trolley Song," but Margaret O'Brien steals the show as 5-year-old Tootie.
The Court Jester (1955)
Goofy Danny Kaye and a young Angela Lansbury star in a fast-paced knights-in-shining-armor comedy, shot in fairy-tale color. Remember: The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle.
