I can't remember who posted yesterday about how hard it is to find films suitable for the entire family, but tying in to today's TOD I'm gonna suggest Babe, screenplay by George Miller and Chris Noonan (adapted from a novel by Dick King-Smith) as one that fits the bill.
Racing Stripes, which I have now seen twice, isn't as well written, but it's a fairly good film. It has good characters, with lessons learned (how to be a good parent, how to pursue goals, the evils of prejudice), all levened by good humor. Well, there's a few fart and poop jokes, but they're mostly given to the horseflies, principally to David Spade.
Good family films are out there; the better ones seem to be produced by independent filmmakers. They're made on smaller budgets, and get much smaller press, but the word of mouth among the kids is remarkably strong: we took the older grandlad to see Racing Stripes last week, and had to go again because the younger grandlad was hearing about nothing else from his schoolmates and was bitterly disappointed that he didn't see it the first time. (Luckily, Alex wanted to see it again.)
Included in the trailers for Racing Stripes is a film called Because of Winn-Dixie, about a motherless girl and her smiling dog. The cast includes Jeff Daniels, Cecily Tyson and Eva-Marie Saint. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
