Title: The G-rated Disney movies for kids with the least G-rated themes - Polygon
Headings: The G-rated Disney movies with the least G-rated themes
The G-rated Disney movies with the least G-rated themes
A look back at what the ratings board thought kids could and couldn’t handle
The Lion King (1994)
Pocahontas (1995)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Mulan (1998)
Tarzan (1999)
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Hulu/Disney Plus bundle

Content: To put things in perspective, PG-rated Disney movies include Tangled, Frozen, and Finding Dory (though not Finding Nemo ). While those movies contain their share of fantasy peril (Flynn dying in Rapunzel’s arms!), thematic action (Dory and Hank hijack a truck), and slightly crude humor (Princess Anna’s mild innuendo “Shoe size doesn’t matter!” in Frozen ), there are pieces of the Disney and Pixar animated canon that touch on war, genocide, and sexual desire, but still slide away with a G rating. Dark themes in G-rated movies aren’t unheard of. Both the original 1968 Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey are rated G, though that’s less about those films being aimed at children, and more about the fact that the PG and PG-13 ratings didn’t exist when those movies came out. ( The ratings system was first introduced in 1968, which also means we don’t know how the ratings board would have handled things like Bambi’s mother dying in 1942’s Bambi .) Ratings are contentious, blurry creatures — a couple of F-bombs can put an otherwise family-friendly movie like Erin Brockovich in the same category as the bloody Kill Bill, while the ratings board was kinder to Daryl Hannah’s naked butt back in 1984 than the Disney Plus censors were in 2020. It’s not that children can’t process mature themes.