AnimeWorld: family comedy films from 1950 to today, from The Parent Trap, The Apple Dumpling Gang and Dennis the Menace to Cheaper by the Dozen, Mr. Bean's Holiday, Daddy Day Care and Yes Day, and where to watch them

How AnimeWorld looks

AnimeWorld takes its look from the Italian anime site whose name it shares, in that site's original light theme. The page rests on a soft grey-blue background. A clean white header carries the AnimeWorld globe and wordmark on the left and a slim search field beside it, and beneath it runs a strong blue menu bar with white capitals: Home, Archive, Families, School, Christmas and My List. Pointing at a link lifts it onto a slightly brighter tile with a thin pale blue line along its top.

A pale blue notice line sits above the content, which divides into a wide main column and a narrower sidebar. At the top of the main column, a slider shows a handful of featured comedies with a backdrop, a large white title, a short description and a small grey Watch button in the corner, with round blue page dots in the upper left. White panels follow, each with a soft shadow, a blue uppercase title, a More link and, on the first panel, a row of tabs with a blue underline.

Inside the panels, posters sit five across. Along the lower edge of each poster runs a narrow status strip borrowed from the original site: a blue tab with a slanted edge shows the year on the left, and a teal label on the right shows the running time. The title sits centred beneath in a neat grey type. In the sidebar, a Most popular panel opens with a large backdrop of the top film and a white number square, followed by nine more films with bordered number squares and small covers. The footer is a deep navy, with a darker bar of white letter tiles for the A to Z list and a column of pale blue links.

Finding your way around

The search field in the white header is the quickest way to a particular film. Type a few letters of a title or a character, such as Dennis, Brady, Sandlot, Ernest or Muppet, and the matching films appear as you type. Partial words work, so Nativity brings up all four of the British school-play comedies at once.

The Archive link in the menu bar opens all 254 films on a single page with the most popular first. The A to Z bar in the footer lets you browse alphabetically, one letter at a time, which is handy for finding a half-remembered title. The shelves group the films by theme or decade, each opening as a poster grid with a short introduction.

My List is your personal list of films to watch. Press the save button on any film page and it appears in My List, which lives in this browser and opens instantly. You can export the list to a small file and import it on another device, so a comedy night planned on the bus home is ready on the family television. The guides linked from the footer and the bottom of this page collect the best films on each theme.

The fifties: squirrels, chimps and a storyteller from Copenhagen

The catalogue begins in 1950 with two gentle comedies. Father Is a Bachelor stars William Holden as a carefree drifter who stumbles on five orphaned children, named after the months of the year, living alone in a woodland cabin and determined to keep their secret. The Great Rupert, produced by George Pal, gives Jimmy Durante a struggling vaudeville family and a stop-motion squirrel who, quite by accident, becomes their guardian angel at Christmas.

Bedtime for Bonzo follows a college professor who tries to raise a chimpanzee as a child to prove a point about upbringing, and Room for One More stars Cary Grant and his real-life wife Betsy Drake as a couple whose home keeps filling with foster children. Hans Christian Andersen casts Danny Kaye as the Danish cobbler with a gift for stories, singing Wonderful Copenhagen, Thumbelina and The Inch Worm in one of the most tuneful family films of its day.

From Britain came Trouble in Store, Norman Wisdom's first starring film, in which a hapless stockroom boy dreams of dressing the windows of a grand London department store, and John and Julie, about two children who run away to London to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I Love Lucy: The Movie is a curiosity: three early episodes of the famous television series joined together for cinemas in 1953, then set aside and only rediscovered decades later.

The sixties: twins, holidays and a chimpanzee harvest

The 1960s shelf is small but treasured. The Parent Trap gave Hayley Mills the role of two identical twins who meet by chance at summer camp, discover they were separated as babies, and swap places to bring their parents back together. Its clever split-screen effects and the song Let's Get Together have delighted families ever since, and the story has been told again many times.

James Stewart starred in two of the decade's warmest comedies: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, in which a banker's dream of a quiet beach holiday collapses under the weight of his grown children, grandchildren and a rickety seaside house, and Dear Brigitte, in which a poet's young son, a mathematical genius, writes fan letters to Brigitte Bardot. Doris Day starred in her final film, With Six You Get Eggroll, a sweet comedy about a widow and a widower blending their families.

Disney sent Fred MacMurray and Jane Wyman on a family tour of Europe in Bon Voyage!, and in Monkeys, Go Home! a young American inherits an olive farm in Provence and trains a troupe of chimpanzees to bring in the harvest, much to the dismay of the villagers. The decade closes with My Dog, the Thief, about a St. Bernard with a habit of borrowing other people's belongings.

The seventies: the Disney comedy factory

The 1970s were a golden age for Disney's live-action comedies, and the shelf is full of them. The Strongest Man in the World gave Kurt Russell a vitamin formula that turns an ordinary college student into a superhuman, completing a trilogy of comedies set at sleepy Medfield College. Russell also starred in The Barefoot Executive, about a mailroom clerk who discovers that a chimpanzee can pick hit television shows with uncanny accuracy.

Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan found a duck that lays golden eggs in The Million Dollar Duck, and Jones moved his family to a crumbling ski lodge in the Rockies in Snowball Express. The Boatniks cast Robert Morse as an accident-prone Coast Guard officer, and Gus introduced a mule who can kick a football further than any player in the league, transforming a hopeless professional team.

Don Knotts was everywhere in the decade. He stars as a bumbling bookkeeper in How to Frame a Figg, teams up with Tim Conway as two hopeless outlaws in The Apple Dumpling Gang, and plays opposite Jim Dale, who appears as twin brothers, in the western comedy Hot Lead & Cold Feet. Conway also leads The Billion Dollar Hobo, riding the rails to win an inheritance, and The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training takes a scrappy little league team all the way to the Houston Astrodome.

The eighties: Ernest, Pee-wee and the Muppets on Broadway

The 1980s shelf opens with Midnight Madness, an all-night scavenger hunt across Los Angeles that gave a teenage Michael J. Fox his first film role, and Fatty Finn, an Australian comedy set in the 1930s and based on a much-loved newspaper comic strip. Savannah Smiles follows a lonely little girl who runs away from home and hides in the car of two small-time crooks, who soon discover they would do anything for her.

The Muppets Take Manhattan sends Kermit and the gang to New York to put their college show on Broadway, and introduces the Muppet Babies in a dream sequence before ending with a wedding. One Crazy Summer stars John Cusack as an aspiring cartoonist on Nantucket, and Moving sends Richard Pryor and his family across the country to a new job in Idaho, with every possible mishap along the way.

Jim Varney's beloved Ernest P. Worrell arrived in this decade, first as a hopeless handyman in Ernest Goes to Camp and then as a taxi driver helping Santa find his successor in Ernest Saves Christmas, filmed in Orlando. Pee-wee Herman joined the circus in Big Top Pee-wee, and Hayley Mills returned to her famous twins once more in Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon.

The nineties: baseball miracles and a menace next door

The 50 films of the 1990s include many of the comedies that today's parents watched on video again and again. Dennis the Menace, written by John Hughes, pits a tousle-haired five-year-old against his long-suffering neighbour Mr. Wilson, played by Walter Matthau, and Rookie of the Year gives a twelve-year-old a broken arm that heals with a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball, earning him a place pitching for the Chicago Cubs. Little Big League goes one better, handing a boy the Minnesota Twins to manage.

Family chaos was the decade's favourite subject. It Takes Two lets Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen play look-alike girls from very different worlds who swap places, House Arrest has two children lock their squabbling parents in the basement until they make up, Man of the House follows a boy determined to scare off his mother's new fiancé, played by Chevy Chase, and Father of the Bride Part II gives Steve Martin two surprise babies to prepare for at once. The Brady Bunch Movie dropped the famous sunny seventies family into the nineties with very funny results.

The decade also brought MouseHunt, a beautifully designed slapstick comedy in which two brothers battle a single, very clever mouse for possession of a mansion; Larger Than Life, in which Bill Murray inherits an elephant; Heavyweights, set at a summer camp taken over by a fitness fanatic played by Ben Stiller; Blank Check, about a boy who cashes a cheque for a million dollars; and Good Burger, the cheerful fast-food comedy starring Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell.

The 2000s: dozens of children and dads at the daycare

The 2000s shelf holds 63 films and is dominated by big families and big stars. Cheaper by the Dozen stars Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt as the parents of twelve children who move to Chicago for a new job, and Yours, Mine & Ours blends a family of eighteen when a widowed admiral marries a free-spirited designer. Daddy Day Care has Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin open a daycare centre after losing their jobs, and The Pacifier hands Vin Diesel five children, a pet duck and a house full of secrets.

Sports comedies flourished: Kicking & Screaming, with Will Ferrell coaching his son's soccer team, Rebound, with Martin Lawrence coaching a junior high basketball team, The Game Plan, with Dwayne Johnson as a star quarterback who discovers he has an eight-year-old daughter, and the two Sandlot sequels. Mr. Bean's Holiday sent Rowan Atkinson by train, bicycle and borrowed car across France to the Cannes Film Festival, and The Lizzie McGuire Movie took Hilary Duff to Rome.

British audiences gained a new Christmas tradition with Nativity!, in which a primary school teacher in Coventry boasts that Hollywood is coming to film his school play, and must somehow make it true. Sleepover, Max Keeble's Big Move, How to Eat Fried Worms and Cadet Kelly follow young people through school life, and Old Dogs pairs John Travolta and Robin Williams as business partners suddenly caring for seven-year-old twins.

The 2010s: Wimpy Kids, penguins and a Christmas rescue

The 2010s are the largest decade on AnimeWorld, with 67 films. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days continued Jeff Kinney's hugely popular series, with Greg Heffley battling his older brother Rodrick and then trying to dodge a summer of father-son bonding. Ramona and Beezus brought Beverly Cleary's spirited Ramona Quimby to the screen with Joey King, and Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life mixes live action with animated daydreams.

Jim Carrey adopted six penguins in a New York apartment in Mr. Popper's Penguins, Jackie Chan found himself babysitting three suspicious children in The Spy Next Door, and in Get Santa a father fresh out of prison and his young son help Jim Broadbent's Santa escape from the police in time for Christmas. Playing with Fire gives a crew of tough smokejumpers led by John Cena three young children to look after, and Patrick follows a young teacher whose life is turned upside down when she inherits her grandmother's spoiled pug.

The Nativity series continued with Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger!, starring David Tennant, Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?! and Nativity Rocks!, and the Bruno and Boots films, Bruno & Boots: Go Jump in the Pool and Bruno & Boots: The Wizzle War, adapted Gordon Korman's boarding-school stories from Canada.

2020 to today: the newest comedies

The newest shelf holds 32 films. YES DAY follows parents played by Jennifer Garner and Édgar Ramírez who agree to say yes to every request from their children for one whole day, with a car wash, a water balloon battle and a giant ice cream sundae among the results. The War with Grandpa pits a boy against his grandfather, played by Robert De Niro, in a prank war over a bedroom, and the 2022 Cheaper by the Dozen gives the famous story to a large blended family running a breakfast restaurant.

Holiday favourites include A Christmas Story Christmas, in which Peter Billingsley returns as a grown-up Ralphie to give his own children a perfect Christmas, Falling for Christmas, with Lindsay Lohan as a hotel heiress who loses her memory on the slopes, and Christmas on Mistletoe Farm. The Main Event gives an eleven-year-old a magic wrestling mask, Good Burger 2 reunites Kenan and Kel, and The Breadwinner, the newest film in the catalogue, follows a father who becomes a stay-at-home dad when his wife's business takes off.

Big families

The big families shelf gathers 56 comedies about the joyful noise of a full household. The two versions of Cheaper by the Dozen and Yours, Mine & Ours are the most crowded, while The Brady Bunch Movie, A Very Brady Sequel and Leave It to Beaver revisit classic television families with affection and a wink. The Beverly Hillbillies moves the Clampetts to a Beverly Hills mansion.

Many films put a parent in an unfamiliar role. Daddy Day Care, Daddy Day Camp and Grand-Daddy Day Care follow fathers and grandfathers running children's centres, The Game Plan and Old Dogs surprise bachelors with children, and The Pacifier, The Spy Next Door and Mr. Nanny hand the babysitting to tough guys who soon discover that children are far harder than any mission. The Breadwinner and Carpool bring the story up to date for working families.

Twins and look-alikes are a theme of their own: The Parent Trap, Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon, It Takes Two, Model Behavior and Passport to Paris all depend on someone being mistaken for someone else. The Big families guide has a tour.

School days and summer camp

School and camp are where many of childhood's funniest moments happen, and this shelf holds 59 comedies set in classrooms, corridors, cabins and canoe docks. Max Keeble's Big Move follows a seventh-grader who takes revenge on every bully and tyrant in his school, believing he is about to move away, only to learn that the move has been cancelled. How to Eat Fried Worms turns a playground dare into a battle of wills, and Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life has a young artist try to break every rule in the school handbook.

Summer camp comedies are a favourite sub-genre. Heavyweights, Camp Nowhere, in which a group of children invent a fake camp to escape the real ones, Ernest Goes to Camp, Daddy Day Camp and Camp Hideout all head for the woods, and Sleepover packs an entire scavenger hunt into a single night.

Some films follow young people into new kinds of school: Cadet Kelly sends a free-spirited teenager to military academy, Bruno & Boots: Go Jump in the Pool to a Canadian boarding school, and To the Beat! Back 2 School to a performing arts academy. The Nativity films turn the school Christmas play into a national adventure. The School and camp guide picks a few favourites.

Sports underdogs

Few stories are as satisfying as a team of hopeless beginners who learn to win, and the sports shelf holds 46 of them. Baseball leads the way with Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, The Sandlot 2, The Sandlot: Heading Home and The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, all full of dusty diamonds, lucky caps and last-inning heroics.

American football gets Little Giants, in which two brothers coach rival peewee teams, The Game Plan and Fantasy Football, while soccer fans can choose The Big Green, Ladybugs, Kicking & Screaming, The Soccer Nanny and Just for Kicks. Basketball has Rebound, Thunderstruck and Slam Dunk Ernest, and hockey has a chimpanzee on skates in MVP: Most Valuable Primate.

Animals make surprising athletes in this catalogue: Gus the field-goal-kicking mule, Ed the baseball-playing chimp and the racing dachshunds of Wiener Dog Nationals. There are also go-karts in Down and Derby, a prize calf in Grand Champion and wrestling in The Main Event. Read the Sports underdogs guide for a tour.

Animal antics

Animals are natural comedians, and the animal shelf gathers 38 films in which a creature turns an ordinary household upside down. Mr. Popper's Penguins fills a smart Manhattan apartment with six penguins, MouseHunt sets two brothers against a single mouse, The Million Dollar Duck gives a family a bird that lays golden eggs, and Larger Than Life sends Bill Murray across the country with an elephant.

Chimpanzees appear again and again: Bedtime for Bonzo, The Barefoot Executive, Monkeys, Go Home!, Monkey Trouble, Ed, Funky Monkey and the MVP films. Dogs lead the rest, from Lady and the Tramp, a live-action telling of the classic romance, to Dog Days, Patrick, Pups Alone, Finn on the Fly, in which a dog becomes a teenage boy, and Gabe the Cupid Dog.

There are some genuine surprises too: a pig who burps in Arlo: The Burping Pig, an octopus who clings to a boy's head in The Boy & the Octopus, a tiger cub on the loose in A Tiger's Tail and a roller-skating alligator in Rollergator. The Animal antics guide picks the highlights.

Holidays and trips

Getting away from home is a recipe for comedy, and the travel shelf holds 31 films about holidays that rarely go to plan. Mr. Bean's Holiday is the gold standard, a nearly wordless journey across France full of mistaken identities and beautiful scenery. The Lizzie McGuire Movie sends a school trip to Rome, Passport to Paris takes twin sisters to their grandfather in France, and Bon Voyage! tours Europe with an American family from Indiana.

Road trips fill the rest of the shelf. Johnson Family Vacation drives a family from Los Angeles to a reunion in Missouri, California Dreaming plans a trip in a motorhome, Daddy Daughter Trip heads for spring break with only a handful of coins, and the second Alexander film sends its unlucky family to Mexico City. Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon head for the beach, and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas takes Fred and Wilma's courtship to a Stone Age casino town.

The Holidays and trips guide picks a few to begin with.

Mischief makers

Every family comedy needs a troublemaker, and the mischief shelf gathers 51 films led by some of comedy's most memorable characters. Dennis the Menace appears in three films, Dennis the Menace from 1987, Dennis the Menace from 1993 and Dennis the Menace Strikes Again!, each built around a boy whose good intentions cause enormous damage. Ri¢hie Ri¢h gives Macaulay Culkin unlimited wealth and a villain to outwit, and Blank Check imagines what a boy would do with a million dollars.

Grown-up innocents are just as much fun. Jim Varney's Ernest appears in Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest Rides Again, Ernest Goes to School, Slam Dunk Ernest and Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain, Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean takes his holiday in France, Leslie Nielsen plays the short-sighted millionaire Mr. Magoo, and Brendan Fraser plays the brave but dim Mountie Dudley Do-Right.

Children's book heroes complete the shelf: Greg Heffley in the Wimpy Kid films, Ramona Quimby, Ivy and Bean in Ivy + Bean: The Ghost That Had to Go and Ivy + Bean: Doomed to Dance, and the unlucky Alexander in two films, from the 2014 film with Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner to the 2025 road trip sequel. The Mischief makers guide picks a few favourites.

Christmas comedies

Christmas is the busiest season for family comedy, and the Christmas shelf holds 50 films. Some put Santa himself in a spot of bother: Ernest Saves Christmas, Get Santa, Santa's Little Helper, Santa with Muscles and Elf-Man all find Father Christmas in need of help. Others follow families trying to make the holidays perfect against all the odds, from A Christmas Story Christmas and Christmas on Mistletoe Farm to I'll Be Next Door for Christmas and A Loud House Christmas.

The Muppets celebrate in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, a playful version of It's a Wonderful Life in which a guardian angel shows Kermit how much his friends depend on him, and Dickens is retold as a farmyard pageant in My Dad Is Scrooge and as a pop star's lesson in A Diva's Christmas Carol. British viewers will recognise the four Nativity films, beloved in schools across the country.

There are gentle romances for grown-ups too, such as Falling for Christmas, A Match Made at Christmas and Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story, and animal Christmas comedies such as 12 Dogs of Christmas: Great Puppy Rescue, A Bulldog for Christmas and Pups Alone. The Christmas comedies guide suggests where to begin.

Choosing for every age

Family comedies cover a wide range of humour, from gentle chuckles to loud slapstick, and matching the film to the audience makes for a happier evening. For the youngest viewers, The Great Rupert, Ivy + Bean: Doomed to Dance, Arlo: The Burping Pig, It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie and the Disney comedies of the sixties and seventies are bright, friendly and easy to follow.

From about seven upward, children tend to love Rookie of the Year, Little Giants, MouseHunt, Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Game Plan and the Wimpy Kid films. Older children and teenagers often enjoy Max Keeble's Big Move, Sleepover, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Heavyweights and Mr. Bean's Holiday, whose humour works just as well for grown-ups.

A few comedies include some rude jokes or rowdy behaviour, and parents may like to watch these first: Jack and Jill, Old Dogs, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training are best for older children. Every film page shows the genres and the running time, and the official services list age ratings and offer kids profiles.

Planning a comedy night

A good comedy night can be built around almost any theme. For a twins evening, watch The Parent Trap and follow it with It Takes Two or Passport to Paris, then talk about which swap would be hardest to pull off. For a baseball double bill, pair Rookie of the Year with Little Big League, two films about boys who find themselves in the major leagues.

For a classic Disney night, line up The Apple Dumpling Gang, Gus and The Million Dollar Duck, with popcorn and plenty of cushions. For an evening of animal mayhem, choose MouseHunt, Mr. Popper's Penguins and Larger Than Life. For a camp-out in the living room, play Heavyweights and Camp Nowhere by torchlight.

In December, start the season with A Christmas Story Christmas, add Get Santa for a British flavour and Ernest Saves Christmas for pure silliness, and end on Christmas Eve with It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. Save your choices to My List and export the list to the family television, and the evening is ready.

How Watch now works

AnimeWorld is a guide, and every film page has a Watch now button that opens the film on JustWatch for the country you pick. JustWatch is a popular service that shows where a film can be streamed with a subscription, rented, bought, or watched free with advertising. The country menu covers fifteen countries, from the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy to Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil, and your choice is saved in this browser.

Streaming catalogues change from month to month, so the JustWatch page always shows the latest options. Many of the older Disney comedies live on the studio's own streaming service, several newer films were made for the large streaming platforms, and classic comedies are often found on free services with advertising and in public libraries.

Most of the catalogue was made in English, and the official services usually offer subtitles and dubbed tracks in many languages, including Italian. The Languages and versions guide explains how remakes are listed, and Where AnimeWorld films stream describes the services behind the button.

The help pages

Fifteen short guides are linked from the footer and from the bottom of the home page. How to watch with AnimeWorld follows a film from the poster grid to its official service, Finding a film offers search tips, and My List explains how to save films and move the list to another device.

The theme guides open the shelves one by one: Big families, School and camp, Sports underdogs, Animal antics, Holidays and trips, Mischief makers, Christmas comedies, Classic family comedy and New family comedies, each with a few recommendations and a link to the full shelf.

The practical pages cover Languages and versions, Where AnimeWorld films stream and The official AnimeWorld site, which describes how the real address looks.

British and Commonwealth comedy

Alongside the Hollywood favourites, AnimeWorld has a strong thread of comedy from Britain, Canada and Australia. Norman Wisdom's Trouble in Store and the children's adventure John and Julie represent the fifties, and the double act Cannon and Ball invent crimes to save their village police station in The Boys in Blue. Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, Jim Broadbent's Santa in Get Santa and the Nativity series by Debbie Isitt bring the story up to date, alongside Father Christmas Is Back, with Kelsey Grammer and Elizabeth Hurley, and Christmas at the Riviera.

From Canada come Corner Gas: The Movie, a big-screen outing for the much-loved prairie sitcom set in the town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, and the Bruno and Boots films. From Australia comes Fatty Finn, and from New Zealand Red, White & Brass, the true story of a Tongan rugby fan who promises a brass band he has yet to assemble for a World Cup match, a film full of warmth and music.

A short history of family comedy

Family comedy on film grew up alongside television. In the fifties, studios looked for gentle stories that a whole household could enjoy together, and found them in the everyday chaos of homes full of children, pets and well-meaning parents. Comedies such as Room for One More and Father Is a Bachelor drew their laughs from the simple business of raising children, while Hans Christian Andersen added songs and a storybook glow.

In the sixties and seventies, the Walt Disney studio turned family comedy into something close to an industry. Its films followed a recognisable recipe: a likeable hero, a small-town setting, a fantastic twist such as a flying car, a golden-egg duck or a football-kicking mule, and a bumbling villain who ends up covered in paint, flour or water. The formula worked brilliantly, and films such as The Parent Trap, The Strongest Man in the World and Gus remain cheerful viewing today.

The eighties brought broader characters and a new energy. Jim Varney's Ernest and Paul Reubens's Pee-wee Herman were born in advertising and children's television, and both carried their gleeful innocence into feature films. The Muppets moved to Broadway, and home video meant that a family could watch the same comedy dozens of times, learning every line by heart.

The nineties were a boom time. Studios adapted comic strips and television series such as Dennis the Menace, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, Leave It to Beaver and Mr. Magoo, and sports comedies about children in the big leagues became a genre of their own. The 2000s turned to big stars, with action heroes and comedians alike taking on babysitting, daycare centres and dozens of children, and the 2010s and 2020s added streaming premieres, book adaptations such as the Wimpy Kid series and a wave of Christmas comedies made for television and streaming.

Hidden gems

Beyond the famous titles, the catalogue is full of smaller films that reward a curious viewer. The Great Rupert mixes live action with charming stop-motion animation of a dancing squirrel, a rare treat from 1950. Monkeys, Go Home! is one of the most sun-drenched Disney comedies, filmed with Maurice Chevalier among the olive groves of Provence, and Savannah Smiles is a quietly moving comedy about two crooks who become unlikely father figures.

Fatty Finn recreates a 1930s Sydney neighbourhood with great affection, Red, White & Brass is a joyful true story about community and music, and The Boy & the Octopus is a short, sweet modern fable about a boy and his unusual eight-armed friend. Midnight Madness is a high-spirited scavenger hunt across Los Angeles, and Corner Gas: The Movie offers the gentle, deadpan humour of a small Canadian prairie town.

These films are easy to overlook in a busy streaming menu, which is exactly why they are worth a place on My List. Many of them are short, gentle and perfect for an early evening with younger children.

Comedy on location

Some of the most enjoyable comedies in the catalogue take their characters to beautiful places. Mr. Bean's Holiday travels from Paris through the French countryside to the beaches of Cannes, The Lizzie McGuire Movie tours the fountains and piazzas of Rome, and Bon Voyage! visits Paris and the French Riviera. Monkeys, Go Home! sets its story in the hills of Provence, and Passport to Paris wanders the boulevards of the French capital.

Closer to home, Snowball Express heads for the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation stays at a rambling house on the California coast, and One Crazy Summer spends its holidays on the island of Nantucket. Ernest Saves Christmas was filmed in sunny Orlando, giving its North Pole story a cheerful Florida setting, and Little Big League and Rookie of the Year were shot in real major league ballparks, which adds to the thrill for young baseball fans.

Watching these films is a little like taking a short holiday, and many families find a new destination for their own travels among them.

Songs and laughter

Music runs through many of these comedies. Hans Christian Andersen is a full musical with some of the most hummable songs of the fifties, The Muppets Take Manhattan is packed with Broadway numbers, and the Nativity films build towards spectacular school performances in which a class of nervous children becomes, for one night, the stars of the show. It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie and My Dad Is Scrooge add carols and holiday songs, and The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie follows a band of young brothers who really did make their own music.

Dance takes centre stage in To the Beat! Back 2 School and Breaking Legs, and Red, White & Brass builds its story around a brass band rehearsing against the clock. For a family that likes to sing along, these films make a lively change of pace from slapstick, and many of their songs stay in the head long after the credits roll.

Stars and storytellers

A handful of performers turn up again and again on the shelves, and following them is a fine way to explore. Dean Jones and Kurt Russell were the faces of Disney's live-action comedies for more than a decade, Don Knotts and Tim Conway made a perfect comic double act, and Hayley Mills charmed audiences in both the original Parent Trap and its later television sequels. In the nineties, Steve Guttenberg, Rick Moranis and Christopher Lloyd appeared in several family comedies each.

The 2000s brought a new generation of stars into family comedy: Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Ice Cube, Martin Lawrence, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson all took roles in which a confident grown-up is humbled by children. Hilary Duff appears in several films, including Cadet Kelly, The Lizzie McGuire Movie and Material Girls, and the Olsen twins in It Takes Two and Passport to Paris.

Behind the camera, writer John Hughes shaped Dennis the Menace, director Gore Verbinski made his first feature with MouseHunt, and Debbie Isitt built the Nativity films around improvisation, letting real children's reactions guide each scene.

What family comedies teach

Underneath the pratfalls and the pranks, family comedies carry gentle lessons. Many are about seeing the world through someone else's eyes: the twins of The Parent Trap, the father of Daddy Day Care and the reluctant hero of The Pacifier all discover that every role in a family is harder than it looks. Others are about belonging, from the misfit teams of Little Giants and The Big Green to the campers of Heavyweights.

Sports comedies celebrate effort and teamwork over talent alone, and the Christmas comedies return again and again to generosity and the importance of being together. Above all, these films show that laughter is something families can make together, and that a shared joke can mend a quarrel faster than any lecture.

Remakes and series

Several stories appear more than once. Cheaper by the Dozen has two versions, from 2003 and 2022, and Dennis the Menace has three films, all with their own pages and years. The Parent Trap story appears in the 1961 original and in Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon.

Series run throughout the catalogue: the Wimpy Kid, the Sandlot sequels, the Brady films, the Daddy Day Care trilogy, the four Nativity films, the Ernest films, the MVP chimpanzee comedies, the Good Burger films, the Ivy and Bean films and two Alexander films. Watching a series in order is one of the easiest ways to plan several weekends of laughter.

Comedies through the year

The catalogue has a comedy for every season. Summer belongs to camps, holidays and baseball, with Heavyweights, Camp Nowhere, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and The Sandlot 2. Autumn brings the new school year and football, with Max Keeble's Big Move, Little Giants and a ghost-hunting adventure in Ivy + Bean: The Ghost That Had to Go. Winter is the season of Christmas comedies and snowy escapades such as Snowball Express, and spring, with its sports seasons and spring breaks, suits Rookie of the Year and Daddy Daughter Trip.

Happy viewing

Family comedy is one of cinema's simplest pleasures: a room full of people laughing at the same moment, a line that becomes a family catchphrase, a film that children ask to watch again the very next day. AnimeWorld gathers 254 of them in one place, with a page for each and a button that leads to the official services, so the next round of laughter is only a few clicks away. Choose a film, gather the family and enjoy the show. Welcome to AnimeWorld.

Questions