Films to watch as a family on HBO Max
23 films worth watching on HBO Max right now, with audience ratings and exactly where to watch them. Updated September 25, 2026
Spirited Away leads with 8,5 out of 10, ahead of Wolf Children (8,2). Ratings range from 6,5 to 8,5. The oldest, Castle in the Sky, goes back to 1986. The selection leans toward films from the 2010s, 12 of 23.
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Despicable Me
Determined to prove he's the world's greatest supervillain, Gru hatches an audacious plan to steal the Moon. To pull it off, he adopts three orphaned girls—Margo, Edith, and Agnes—intending to use them as pawns in his scheme. But the unexpected bond they form forces him to question the criminal life he's always known.
Spirited Away
A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Animal pals Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria are still trying to make it back to New York's Central Park Zoo. They are forced to take a detour to Europe to find the penguins and chimps who broke the bank at a Monte Carlo casino. When French animal-control officer Capitaine Chantel DuBois picks up their scent, Alex and company are forced to hide out in a traveling circus.
Puss in Boots
Long before he even met Shrek, the notorious fighter, lover and outlaw Puss in Boots becomes a hero when he sets off on an adventure with the tough and street smart Kitty Softpaws and the mastermind Humpty Dumpty to save his town. This is the true story of The Cat, The Myth, The Legend... The Boots.
My Neighbor Totoro
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
Horton Hears a Who!
An imaginative elephant named Horton hears a faint cry for help coming from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Horton suspects there may be life on that speck and despite a surrounding community, who thinks he has lost his mind, he is determined to save the tiny particle.
The Lego Batman Movie
A cooler-than-ever Batman must face the usual villains as the Joker plots a takeover of Gotham City. But when Bruce Wayne accidentally adopts a teenage orphan who wishes to become his sidekick, he’s forced to give up his lone-vigilante ways and learn to work with others.
Whisper of the Heart
Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: "Seiji Amasawa."
Kiki's Delivery Service
A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.
Epic
A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world—and ours.
DC League of Super-Pets
When Superman and the rest of the Justice League are kidnapped, Krypto the Super-Dog must convince a rag-tag shelter pack - Ace the hound, PB the potbellied pig, Merton the turtle and Chip the squirrel - to master their own newfound powers and help him rescue the superheroes.
Ponyo
When Sosuke, a young boy who lives on a clifftop overlooking the sea, rescues a stranded goldfish named Ponyo, he discovers more than he bargained for. Ponyo is a curious, energetic young creature who yearns to be human, but even as she causes chaos around the house, her father, a powerful sorcerer, schemes to return Ponyo to the sea.
Castle in the Sky
A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
Ferdinand
Ferdinand, a little bull, prefers sitting quietly under a cork tree just smelling the flowers versus jumping around, snorting, and butting heads with other bulls. As Ferdinand grows big and strong, his temperament remains mellow. But one day five men come to choose the "biggest, fastest, roughest bull" for the bullfights in Madrid— and Ferdinand is mistakenly chosen.
Arrietty
14-year-old Arrietty and the rest of the Clock family live in peaceful anonymity as they make their own home from items "borrowed" from the house's human inhabitants. However, life changes for the Clocks when a human boy discovers Arrietty.
Scoob!
In Scooby-Doo’s greatest adventure yet, see the never-before told story of how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined forces with young detectives Fred, Velma, and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now, with hundreds of cases solved, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, toughest mystery ever: an evil plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global “dogpocalypse,” the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone ever imagined.
When Marnie Was There
Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.
The Cat Returns
Young Haru rescues a cat from being run over, but soon learns it's no ordinary feline; it happens to be the Prince of the Cats.
Wolf Children
After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.
Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans
The comedic modern-day quintet takes on their 2003 counterparts when villains from each of their worlds join forces to pit the two Titan teams against each other. They'll need to set aside their differences and work together to combat Trigon, Hexagon, Santa Claus (that's right, Santa!) and time itself in order to save the multiverse.
The Boy and the Beast
Kyuta, a boy living in Shibuya, and Kumatetsu, a lonesome beast from Jutengai, an imaginary world. One day, Kyuta forays into the imaginary world and, as he's looking for his way back, meets Kumatetsu who becomes his spirit guide. That encounter leads them to many adventures.
Children Who Chase Lost Voices
The film centers on Asuna, a young girl who spends her solitary days listening to the mysterious music emanating from the crystal radio she received from her late father as a memento. One day while walking home she is attacked by a fearsome monster and saved by a mysterious boy named Shun. However, Shun disappears and Asuna embarks on a journey of adventure to the land of Agartha with her teacher Mr. Morisaki to meet a Shun again. Through her journey she comes to know the cruelty and beauty of the world, as well as loss.
My Neighbors the Yamadas
The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.
What to know before choosing
Watching as a family is the hardest case of all, because very different attention spans have to be satisfied at once. The criterion that works is not "what age" but "how long before the youngest checks out". This list sorts on popularity rather than rating: a film everyone already knows has passed that test in thousands of living rooms.
HBO Max carries two catalogs with nothing in common: the Warner library, very wide and very old, and the in-house productions, few and much noticed. A by-genre list almost always leans to the Warner side, which gives an unusually spread-out distribution across decades. It is one of the rare catalogs where looking for a 1970s film genuinely makes sense.
Frequently asked questions
How were these 23 films chosen?
They come from the TMDB catalog, filtered on audience rating and on a minimum number of votes — without that second filter, a film rated 9 out of 10 by eleven people would outrank a classic. No place is for sale: no platform, distributor or studio can enter this list other than by being well rated.
Which film in this list is rated highest?
Spirited Away (2001), with 8,5 out of 10 from 18,934 audience votes.
Are these films really available on HBO Max in the US?
Yes, as of the day the page was built. Availability comes from TMDB and JustWatch for the catalog in the US, and the list is rebuilt daily. Streaming catalogs move constantly: a title can leave between two passes, which is why the page carries its date.
How often does this list change?
It is recomputed every day. Ratings move slowly, catalogs move fast: availability is what mostly pushes titles in and out.
Do I need an account?
No. Taro eira is free, asks for no account and no subscription, and the two-or-three-question flow works without installing anything.
See also
- Films to watch as a family
- HBO Max
- Films to watch as a family on Netflix
- Films to watch as a family on Prime Video
- Films to watch as a family on Disney+
- Films to watch as a family on Apple TV+
- Films to watch as a family on Hulu
- Films to watch as a family on Paramount+
- Films to watch as a family on Peacock
- Films to make you laugh
- Films that scare you
- Films that make you cry
- Films that make you think
- Films to escape into
- Films to watch with friends
- Films full of adrenaline
How this list is built
Films come from the TMDB catalog, filtered on audience rating and vote count, then cross-checked against real availability in the country. No paid placement, no partnerships. How we choose the films.
Film data and posters: TMDB. This app uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.