Movies All Children Should Grow Up With

These are the movies I watched as a young 'un that I still love to this day.  I believe all good parents should get their kids the family friendly ones, then turn a blind eye for the not so family friendly ones as they'll ensure your kid is cool growing up.  So take away their mediocre Call of Duty and cigarettes and present them with these movies so, as Bruce Buffer would say, let's get ready to RUUUUUMMMBBBLLLLEEEEEEE!!!

When I was a kid, video games weren't as popular as they are now.  I mean, we had the Playstation when I was 7 and enjoyed Nintendo and Sega, but my friends and I used to like climbing trees, playing  characters from the games and movies we loved and all round, being awesome.  Monster Squad is the film that represents all my childhood fantasies - saving my town from monsters.  I grew up with this after begging my mother to rent it for me, and she did.  I watched it over and over.  As a kid it's great because it blows your mind, and adults can enjoy it because it blows your mind but your mature years mean you understand the naughty words and hot sister.

I love Monster Squad to this day.  I even proudly own a ''Wolfman's Got Nards'' t-shirt.  I wear it as much as I can without my hygiene becoming a cause for concern and ladies want to get with me and men want to be me (they don't tell me this but I see it in their eyes).

Clowns are a breed of monster that scare a lot of people, so maybe this isn't for everyone.  I've always loved clowns, especially the murderous type, and this movie is the best clown movie, and one of the best movies in the history of cinema.  My friends brother showed my friend and I this when we were younger as an attempt to scare us, but it was quite the opposite.  We were sick kids and we dug it.

Sure, it's not a children's movie, but I'd show it to my kids and some day, I will if I ever have any.  It's hilarious, it's fun and it's cartoony.  What's not to love?  I treasure this movie so much.  If anyone tried to steal my DVD I would kill them.  That's how much I love it.  Everything about it is great.  The clowns look awesome.  The atmosphere is all 80's and circus-y.  It's just the perfect film.  Bring on the sequel.

Halloween was never about trick or treating for me.  I loved Halloween because of all the awesome TV, the belief I had in the supernatural and the eerie feeling in the air as a result of my beliefs.  However, what I loved most was Hocus Pocus being on television.  It's a movie about witches, starring a real life witch disguised as an actress called Sarah Jessica Parker.  The concept of this is horror at its purest, but the execution is friendly enough for the whole family.  It's a fun movie that's hard not to enjoy, even now as I type this as a 22 year old adult.  I watch this around Halloween time every year to this day.

Amazing movie accompanied by an amazing video game.  Small Soldiers is quite twisted at times, but overall it's friendly enough for children.  Maybe they won't look at their toys the same way again, but hey, at least it's not Puppetmaster vs Demonic Toys, right?  Or  Child's Play.  Although I watched Child's Play as a child and it had a positive affect on me... all those people I killed deserved it.

The ultimate rainy day movie, the ultimate ''treehouse'' movie and the ultimate adventure movie.  The Goonies, I hope, is discovered by generation after generation because it really is wonderful.  This is the type of movie that you can watch thousands of times in your life time and never get tired of.  It was already a cult classic when I discovered it and I hope it's a cult classic for new generations of warts.

Now this is a TV show, and it's a great TV show.  Unfortunately it's hard to find as it's never had a DVD release but it's a classic and you should go out your way to view it.  Every Sunday morning, in the year 1999, I would wake up just to watch this.  The story was about the adventures of school stud and werewolf Tommy Dawkins, along with his gothic weird sidekick, Merton, as they defended their town from monsters, bullies and other unusual phenomena.

The show might have appealed to kids, but its influences were steeped in horror, sci-fi and pop culture that children probably wouldn't understand.  Usually they dealt with monsters by referring to movies and defeating them the same way the movies did.  There was tributes to The Lost Boys including cameos from Haim and Feldman, as well as tributes to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and much much more.  It was a show that fondly paid homage to a lot of things.  Why not watch the pilot for yourself?

I'll leave it there, ending with the pilot of one of the funnest shows ever to grace television.  However, I'll include a small list of other applicable movies:

E.T.
Super 8
The Witches
It
The Little Vampire
Casper & Casper: A Spirited Beginning
Ghostbusters 1 & 2
Mortal Kombat
Little Rascals
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut