30 Best Summer Movies for Kids to Watch When It's Too Hot Outside

Mei Lee, a confident but quirky teenager in Toronto, discovers she transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited. Set during an eventful summer, this charming Pixar film captures the chaos (and comedy!) of growing up.

Your kids will love the music, and you'll find yourself humming it for weeks (trust us). It's about a girl named Mirabel who's part of this magically gifted family—but she's the only one without powers. It's colorful, warm, and has such a great message.

This one's great for a family movie night. To put it simply, a family road trip gets totally sidetracked by a robot apocalypse. It's laugh-out-loud funny but also surprisingly sweet about family dynamics. Your kids will crack up the whole time!

In the fantastical land of Kumandra, warrior Raya embarks on a summer-long journey to find the legendary last dragon and restore peace to her divided world. This adventurous tale beautifully explores friendship and trust.

An upbeat kinkajou named Vivo sets off on a summery adventure from Havana to Miami to deliver a special love song. Infused with joyful tunes by Lin-Manuel Miranda, it’s a musical journey perfect for family movie night.

In a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, fiery Ember and easygoing Wade form an unlikely friendship over one life-changing summer. It has a really nice lesson about accepting others who seem totally different from you!

Two brothers find themselves at odds when they end up on competing teams at a summer camp. Will their seasonal rivalry overpower their brotherly bond? Only time can tell...

Over in Minnesota, a scarce macaw bird named Blu lives happily with his humans. Thinking he's the only one left in his species, he becomes bummed. That is, until, he finds out there is one more bird just like him all the way over in Rio de Janeiro. This animated movie follows Blu on his journey as he travels overseas to find his long lost friend!

A pair of cousins usually don't get along with one another. Though they're forced to set their differences aside one summer when it's revealed they may lose their family ranch in Montana. This is a story about familial love and overcoming tough obstacles!

A crew of rather unruly kids are tired of being sent away to a summer camp they hate by their parents. So, they decide to devise a plan and make up their own summer camp that has no adults whatsoever. In order to convince their parents, they hire a fake counselor who just happens to be an ex-drama teacher.

Over in Hawaii, there's a gal named Lilo who adopts a strange-looking "dog" named Stitch. Except, Stitch isn't a dog at all, and instead an experiment created from an alien planet in space. That doesn't really matter, though, because Lilo and Stitch form a bond like no other!

It feels like any Kate DiCamillo novel was destined to be a feel-good movie, especially ones like Because of Winn-Dixie. It tells the story of a young and lonely girl in the countryside, and how her newfound friendship with an adorable dog named Winn-Dixie helps her come out of her shell a bit. The world can be a beautiful place, and sometimes it just takes one friend to show you that!

Pro tip: don't ever try to tear down a local playground, especially during summertime. You may just run into a determined and passionate group of kids who happen to have a lot of time on their hands!

The Baker family is a fun (sometimes unruly) bunch! They've proven to have each other's back no matter what, which is especially important one summer vacation on the lake. Why? Well, there's a new family across the water who think they're better than everyone else—and the Bakers need to prove that that's not true!

Stanley is a young boy who never seems to have any luck—and he can probably blame that on the "family curse." So when he's wrongfully sent to as brutal summer camp, he's not necessarily surprised. Still, he's not happy about it, and neither are the kids that are sent there. For some reason, the warden keeps having the kids dig these holes in the dessert, and it's weirding them out!

There's no camp like Camp Rock, that's for sure! It's where the most talented and musically inclined teens go for a summer full of fun and competition! Can Mitchie, a first time camper, handle the heat of it all? (Literally and figuratively.)

Speaking of camps, watch as two fathers set up their own Daddy Day Camp! It's exactly what it sounds like, a summer babysitting company run by dads who seem to think they have what it takes. They immediately regret that decision when the pool of stubborn and adventurous kids role in, making for one stressful summer.

Family vacays should be fun, but when your distant and spunky relatives decide to crash unannounced, the excitement quickly dissipates. That's especially true when outdoor dangers prove to be too much for some family members to bear!

Preteen Walter is sent to live in the country with his two uncles, Hub and Garth—two men who would rather be left alone! Things are off to a rocky start, but they all eventually learn to get a long, which makes for a heartwarming story after all.

Vada is an 11-year-old girl who is unfortunately deemed the weird girl in town. Her best friend (a boy named Thomas) doesn't seem to care, and is always at her side. Yes, even when she devises a plan to wreck her father's chance at love!