2025’s Top 7 Streaming Family Films & TV Shows (So Far)

As streaming TV matures, parents have to navigate not just content concerns but also technology and a flood of options. We're here to help.

Here's What People Are Streaming

Lately, we’ve all noticed one downside: the aggregate cost of these on-demand services for many users has started to rival cable-TV bills. No wonder free and ad-supported services like YouTube, Tubi, and Pluto are about the only streamers growing, Nielsen reports.

Despite some households being priced out of streaming, others are showing Hollywood that the family market matters. Dominating Nielsen’s Top 20 lists of the most streamed TV series and especially films are titles targeted at families.

NIELSEN-LIST-2025

Being labeled as “family fare” certainly doesn’t mean they’re all good. Here are seven standouts, with caveats/analysis for each one.

Bluey (animated shorts for preschool and up, Disney+)

Bursting with color, creativity and based on a celebration of family life, Bluey is leaps and bounds above everything else in kids' TV. Each seven-minute episode centers on a game of two siblings or a simple daily routine, like getting takeout or a garage sale. Things go awry; hilarity ensues.

The groundbreaking series completed its third season last year with a half-hour special. Then series creator Joe Brumm announced that Bluey: The Movie (coming in 2027) will conclude his storytelling for the Heelers.

Moana 2 (animated musical film for ages five and up, Disney+)

Disney hit the zeitgeist in 2016 with its Pacific island-set princess musical Moana, which combined enjoyable characters and classic hero tropes with top-tier Lin-Manuel Miranda songs.

Whereas the first film affirmed family, learning, and tradition across generations, with a light pro-ecology theme and pagan myths thrown in, it’s unclear what Moana 2 is aiming for. The songs are forgettable and plot even more so, but it benefits from the original film’s halo effect.

Writes Catholic movie reviewer John Mulderig:

The film contains potentially scary scenes of action and peril, nonscriptural religious ideas and practices as well as a few childish gross-out visuals. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

The Wild Robot (animated family sci-fi film for ages five and up, Netflix/Peacock)

With a hulking android (voiced by Lupita N’yongo) as the main character and significant peril on-screen -- from forest wildlife and a post-apocalyptic setting -- you might not think The Wild Robot is for your family. But give it a chance, and it might win you over.

This gorgeously animated feature may initially remind you of The Iron Giant, WALL-E, and Fly Away Home, but its deeper truths about parenting, friendship, the nature of heroism, and even peacemaking, will surprise you.

SpongeBob SquarePants (animated comedy series, Paramount+)

Considered a fever dream by now multiple generations of parents, the absorbent, yellow, porous, pineapple-dwelling simpleton SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) recently marked 25 years on TV. Much of the series has nothing original or moral to say –- not since the show creator left.

Stephen Hillenburg, who started out as a marine-science educator, put so much detail, wit, imagination, and science in-jokes into his character designs and the conflict set-ups of the show’s first three seasons.

Those first 60 episodes -- Hillenburg’s enduring legacy following his passing at age 57 from Lou Gehrig’s disease -- are clever, usually very funny, and often carry some thoughtful moral messages, with parental guidance recommended.

Despicable Me 4 (Netflix/Peacock)

Speaking of obnoxious fever-dream franchises, Illumination’s Minions have replaced SpongeBob as many kids’ go-to for toilet jokes and gross-out humor. Since 2010, the Chris Melandri-headed studio has churned out six movies in this franchise, including two Minions solo movies -- all of them earning huge at the box office.

To be fair, the original film relates a sweet story of three little girls changing the heart of scheming super-villain Gru (Steve Carell). He gets married in the second movie to Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and they have a baby in the fourth, so some meaningful themes emerge.

But, for our family, the bawdy and broad humor keeps this franchise from getting a hearty recommendation.

Lilo & Stitch (animated fantasy sci-fi, Disney+)

Once again, by mining its past animated library, Disney struck gold this summer with Lilo & Stitch, which works only when it closely mimics the animated comedy. That 2002 film is an outlandish hodge-podge of sci-fi, Hawaiian culture, and wall-to-wall Elvis tunes, with big-hearted themes of family and belonging.

Credit where it’s due: director Dean Fleischer Camp’s storytelling choices, and Chris Sanders as Stich, make the live-action blockbuster worth a watch. But it’s the animated original that will stick with you for its artistry and overall appeal.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (animated video-game adaptation, Netflix/Peacock)

Sure, this big-budget collaboration between Illumination-Nintendo is a bit paint-by-numbers, going through the paces of a basic hero-villain plot that's been seen on video-game consoles for 40 years.

But the secret sauce here is how lovingly animators translated the Mario characters -- Toad, Princess Peach, Bowser, the whole lot -- and fantastic worlds to a feature film, with iconic music cues and gameplay as part of the action.

Count on this franchise to be around for years to come, with sequels centered on Yoshi and Donkey Kong already in the works.

Image: Adobe Stock

Freelance journalist Josh Shepherd writes on faith and culture for several media outlets. He and his family live in central Florida.