What to Watch: Fun Family Movies for 4th of July Weekend

CARS, Pixar and Disney's new computer-animated movie, tells the fantasy tale of Lightning McQueen, a selfish racecar who learns how to slow down, care for others and find himself when he becomes stranded in an isolated, small desert town off Route 66. CARS is a feast for the eyes and the heart. It celebrates the values that made small-town America great.

AN AMERICAN TAIL is a classic animated adventure movie from 1986 about a lost young immigrant mouse trying to reunite with his family in 1800s America. AN AMERICAN TAIL is beautifully made with a strong moral worldview celebrating family and the American Dream, but it has some scary violence and perilous scenes, so MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger children.

NATIONAL TREASURE is a rollicking, witty adventure mystery starring Nicolas Cage as a contemporary Indiana Jones hero hunting clues to a treasure hidden for hundreds of years. Although it shows a couple Masonic symbols that help locate the treasure, the movie is not occult or anti-Christian, but is a family-friendly entertainment that honors early American history, the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and ideals such as liberty, traditional family values, bravery, honor, patriotism, loyalty, and justice.

In THE SANDLOT, a young boy becomes friends with eight boys who are devoted to playing sandlot baseball and has some exciting adventures with them as they try to recover a cherished baseball from a mysterious, dangerous building that adjoins their lot. Although THE SANDLOT lags in a few places, overall, it builds suspense and intrigue, and humorously depicts the trials of growing up. The film contains some mild obscenities and, regrettably, some exclamatory profanities. In all, THE SANDLOT is wholesome family entertainment which will cause its viewers to laugh and to rejoice.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR has Captain America resisting Iron Man, the government and the United Nations and becoming an outlaw fighting for liberty, because they want to place the Avengers team under the jurisdiction of the U.N. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is superbly crafted and enthralling, with positive moral, redemptive messages about law and liberty, and against revenge, but too much foul language and some intense action violence warrant strong caution.

MIRACLE is a splendid, inspirational re-telling of the U.S. hockey team’s hard-earned road to victory play at the 1980 Olympic games in Lake Placid, New York. Though it contains some light obscenities, it is a fine, entertaining, and positive movie which shows that the success of the 1980 hockey team was not just some fluke or happy coincidence, but was the result of hard work, persistence, and detailed preparation.