The 2000s saw the rise of kids’ movies, including some groundbreaking animated films that remain beloved to this day. This was the decade that saw Pixar explode with movies like The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E. DreamWorks was also taking off with Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, while the live-action world saw Harry Potter become the most beloved kids’ franchise of all time.
However, while there are several good kids’ movies that remain considered masterpieces and seminal films, there are many others that remain mostly forgotten today and deserve a lot more respect than they receive. These 2000s kids’ movies are mostly animated, but that does not mean there were not more live-action movies that deserve more love. For fans of a certain age, these are even childhood favorites.
These movies offer kids a fantastic story, with a good moral lesson, and a lot of humor, making them films that should never have been overlooked. In the decade after Pixar made its triumphant debut and the decade before, when animation began to morph into something much more sophisticated, there are plenty of movies that deserve a lot more love.
Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron (2002)
DreamWorks changed everything in the 2000s when Shrek became the first movie to win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. With Shrek and Kung Fu Panda setting the world on fire, not enough people talk about how memorable Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is. Unlike most of DreamWorks’ animated releases, which pushed the limits of CGI, Spirit is a throwback movie, featuring hand-drawn animation.
That might explain its omission when looking at DreamWorks animated movies from the past, but it is a solid film about a wild stallion who faces a colonel who tries to break his spirit and a kind Lakota man who befriends the horse. Spirit doesn’t speak, which is unusual for animated movies, but Matt Damon provides his inner monologue. It is very different from anything else DreamWorks was doing at the time.
Hoodwinked! (2005)
Hoodwinked! is not a movie that received good reviews when it was released, but it is a movie that is much better than its reputation might suggest. This is a low-budget indie CG feature that actually uses a classic Japanese masterpiece as the basis for its story. The movie takes the classic fairy tale characters from Little Red Riding Hood and then puts them in a mystery story based on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.
Rashomon is a Japanese masterpiece where a detective is investigating a murder, and he hears each person’s story, which offers up differences as he tries to discover the truth. This movie does the same, with detectives trying to solve a recipe-stealing scheme involving Red, Grandma, the Woodsman, and the Big Bad Wolf. The biggest complaint is that the animation looks cheaply made, but the story is fantastic.
Meet The Robinsons (2007)
Meet the Robinsons is a 2007 Disney animated movie that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for its creative story and impressive visuals. The film follows Lewis, an orphaned boy inventor, who meets the mysterious Wilbur Robinson, another young boy who whisks him into the future in a time machine.
The story is a fun futuristic tale, as Lewis meets Wilbur’s eccentric family, where he then discovers the secret of his own future. It came out during the post-Renaissance slump, but before movies like Frozen helped revitalize the animated studio again. Its hopeful themes, adoption, and found family make it a deeper movie than critics at the time suggested.
Over The Hedge (2006)
Over the Hedge is another DreamWorks Animation release that was overlooked during a decade when Shrek and Kung Fu Panda dominated. The movie is about a family of woodland animals that emerge from hibernation who are manipulated by a scheming raccoon named RJ to raid the food supplies of a suburb that is slowly pushing the animals out of their natural habitat.
The voice cast is impressive, with Bruce Willis voicing RJ, and names like Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, and Wanda Sykes as the rest of the main voice cast. It was a success commercially and critically, and it had a lot to say about overconsumption and the idea of society pushing animals out of their homes to create more housing developments. It is rarely mentioned today, but it remains a solid animated kids’ release.
Bolt (2008)
Bolt is another Disney animated kids’ movie from the 2000s that was mostly dismissed, as it was during what is known as the post-Renaissance slump. However, this movie is a highly entertaining kids’ film about a White Swiss Shepherd television star named Bolt, voiced by John Travolta, who believes that the superpowers he uses in his movies exist.
The story then has Bolt shipped across the country, and when he has to find his way back home, he realizes he has no powers and has to figure out what this means for his life. It was highly overlooked when it came out since it was going up against WALL-E that year, and nothing was going to touch that Pixar masterpiece. Bolt is the movie that kickstarted the Disney Revival, but it didn’t receive the same recognition as Frozen and Tangled.
Flushed Away (2006)
Aardman Animations has always been one of the most beloved animation studios in existence, thanks to its stop-motion movies like Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the Shaun the Sheep series. However, more people need to be talking about Flushed Away, which remains underrated since it is Aardman’s debut in the computer animation format.
Hugh Jackman voices Roddy St. James, a pampered pet mouse who ends up flushed down the toilet, where he then has to learn how to survive under the London streets. He then realizes Toad (Ian McKellen) plans to wipe out the sewer’s residents, and he has to fight to save everyone. It was a box office flop, but it has the same heart that all Aardman releases possess.
Sky High (2005)
Sky High is the one live-action 2000s kids’ movie that more people should talk about today. With superhero movies such a big deal today, this is an original superhero film that came out a few years before Iron Man kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The movie is about a floating high school for superpowered teens, although the main character is Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano), a young man who fears he might have no powers.
The story here is impressive, as Will’s dad is the world’s best superhero, Steve Stronghold (Kurt Russell), and his mother is a beloved hero named Jetstream (Kelly Preston). As a result, this is a film about a young man who has to prove he belongs and prove himself before he finally unlocks his superhero powers. This could have been huge years later, but remains an obscurity today that deserves more love.
Chicken Run (2000)
Chicken Run is another Aardman Animations release, and unlike Flushed Away, this is a stop-motion movie that is just as good as the Wallace and Gromit features. This movie, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, is made using claymation and features chickens who are trying to escape from their coop before they end up cooked.
Julia Sawalha voices Ginger, while Mel Gibson is Rocky, a rooster whom the hens think can fly. This movie is based on classic prison-break films like The Great Escape, and it even has some scenes that were pulled straight out of that classic movie. It has a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and is one of the best-reviewed films of the 2000s, which is a big reason that more people need to be talking about it today alongside the Wallace and Gromit films.
Monster House (2006)
Monster House is a horror movie from 2006 that is a scary movie and a wonderful example of a 2000s kids’ movie. Directed by Gil Kenan in his debut with performance-capture animation, it tells the story of a boy who discovers that the house across the street is alive, and it is eating things from the neighborhood, including people who venture too close.
This young boy has to convince his two friends that the house is alive, and then they have to figure out a way to save the neighborhood from the house. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and remains overlooked because of its truly scary storyline and its creepy animation style.
The Princess And The Frog (2009)
The Princess and the Frog is one of the best Disney Princess movies ever made, and it is important because it is the first to feature an African American princess. It also brought Disney back to traditional hand-drawn animation after its move into computer-animated graphics. By this time, 2009 rolled around, audiences were used to computer graphics, and it was hard to get anyone back to traditional animation.
However, the story of the prince who turns into a frog, and then the young woman who also turns into a frog when she kisses him, is a subversion of the story. It came out around the same era as Frozen and Tangled, and it was quickly forgotten. That is unfortunate because this is a brilliant story that matches up to both of those critically acclaimed movies.
