8 Kids’ Movies From the 2000s That Still Beat the Disney Classics

It’s Saturday afternoon. You decide to sit down and watch a childhood classic with your kid.  One of your favorites as a youngster. But halfway through, you find yourself squinting at the screen. The pace is slow. Jokes are not as funny as you remember them. A character who was supposed to be charming comes off as cringeworthy to say the least. We love Disney movies because they’re classics, but looking back at them in today’s day and age, they can feel outdated to say the least 

Luckily, the 2000s produced some of the most subtle and profound children's movies ever made. These are films that didn't attempt to create something immortal in the way a fairy tale musical does, but that wound up achieving immortality all the same. Here are eight kid's movies that, watched today, will resonate more deeply than the classics we keep telling ourselves are untouchable.

Who would've thought that a children's film could star an aging superhero going through a midlife crisis? Brad Bird created something that has the ability to exist on two planes at once. For youngsters, superheroes save the day once again, and that's what matters. But for you, it's the story of what it feels like to be told to make yourself small, and what it takes to stop.

The action scenes look amazing for their time, which is something you definitely cannot say about a lot of films released during the 2000s. The characters feel real and have some real depth to them. Especially Bob Parr, whose desperation makes you feel uneasy, but only in a good way. It earns its ending.

More than twenty years later, this movie still resonates with kids and adults alike. Especially because the film does not shy away from subverting the typical expectations of the fairy tale genre. The princess who's been waiting to be rescued ends up choosing to stay an ogre, and that's the best ending we could ever get.

DreamWorks was betting against Disney with this one, and that competitive energy shows. The humor sharper than most of what came before it. Eddie Murphy's Donkey is one of the best voice-over performances in animation, but the film did not rely on it alone. It earned the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and it's not hard to see why.

This one definitely takes adult viewers by surprise. The stop-motion film by Aardman Studios is truly hilarious in ways that have nothing to do with slapstick comedy. The Great Escape plot structure is taken absolutely seriously, which makes every joke even funnier. The metaphor is obvious, but it still hits you the right way. Rocky is far from the hero he presents himself as. One of the best examples of "fake it 'til you make it" a kid can get. The animation has aged beautifully since clay doesn't become outdated the way early CGI does. Kids who watch this film today are given something to think about, and parents get to rediscover that Rocky's motivations are somewhat more complicated than they remembered.

Louis Sachar adapted his own novel, which is probably why nothing was lost in the process. The movie switches between three timelines and requires the audience to keep track of them all, something unheard of in any children's film. Somehow it works perfectly.

Holes succeeds because it takes its characters seriously. A kid is unjustly sent to a juvenile detention camp in the middle of the Texas desert, where he is required to dig holes without knowing why, alongside other children with their own emotional baggage and stories. The ending is earned by building up to it, not by a convenient twist. Shia LaBeouf did some great acting in this one.

Spirited Away is Hayao Miyazaki's magnum opus. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003 and held the record as Japan's highest-grossing film for 19 years. Ten-year-old Chihiro finds herself in a world of spirits where she is forced to work at a bathhouse while her parents, turned into pigs, wait for her to find a way back.

No stereotypical characters or antagonists are delivering predictable monologues. All there is, is a threat from a universe that is as vast as it is uncaring and weird. Every single image is hand-drawn, filled with amazing detail. It doesn't spoon-feed you anything, which is why it never gets old. You always find something new every time you rewatch it. That's something that can't be said of the Disney classics.

Adapted from the novella by Neil Gaiman, this one can be a bit frightening without overdoing it. Coraline discovers a parallel version of her life behind a secret door, one where her parents are seemingly perfect. The Other Mother, the "perfect version" of her original mother, is attentive, creative, and enthusiastic. That's what makes her dangerous: she gives Coraline everything she wants, and nothing she actually needs.

Henry Selick's stop-motion is truly outstanding. There's a perfect balance between the beauty and the ugliness of the Other World. It's visually appealing and it has some real depth to it. For parents viewing it with their children, the contrast between what a child needs and what they think they want hits especially hard.

Spy Kids is what you get when children are portrayed as being competent rather than accidentally useful. Carmen and Juni aren't sidekicks in their own story, and the movie does not undercut them in any way by having an adult swoop in to save the day.

The special effects haven't aged wonderfully, but it's still more amusing and eccentric than most people give it credit for. It has it all: funny gadgets, an eccentric and unique villain, and family dynamics that actually make sense. Spy Kids launched a franchise, but the original is something special. Robert Rodriguez knew what he was doing.

Po is the last character you would expect to become a warrior, much less a legendary one. He's overweight, clumsy, and obsessed with noodles. That's the point. The movie explores the gap between what a "chosen one" is supposed to look like and what Po is. Everything that comes with feeling like you're not enough comes naturally.

What makes it work is that Po doesn't become someone else. He doesn't get a makeover or a six-pack. He becomes great without becoming a different person. The greatness was always within him. The fight choreography is some of the best that DreamWorks has ever done, and the "secret ingredient" reveal near the end is the kind of detail that works even better for adults than it does for kids.