The Top 10 Movies On Disney Plus For Adults

When you think of Disney movies, you probably think of animated movies meant for young audiences ... and you wouldn't exactly be wrong. For decades upon decades, the House of Mouse has been making family-friendly content, from its beloved animated movies like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Beauty and the Beast" to popular modern flicks like "Frozen," and "Moana," just to name a few. All of those movies — and many more — can be found on Disney+, the studio's proprietary streaming service, but you might not know there are plenty of movies there that also cater to a slightly older, more mature audience.

To be clear, some of these movies could probably provide fun for the whole family, but a couple of these selections will go over a typical kid's head for the most part (and one, frankly, is too gross and scary for pretty much any kid). From movies based on real events to a joyful story about a girl falling in love with soccer to a high school romantic comedy to one of the best science fiction movies ever made, here are ten movies that adults will definitely enjoy on Disney+.

Shortly before she joined the cast of "E.R." as a young doctor, Parminder Nagra endeared herself to audiences across the world in the coming-of-age comedy "Bend It Like Beckham," directed by Gurinder Chadha (who also wrote the film alongside Paul Mayeda Berges and Guljit Bindra). In the film, Nagra plays Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra, a young first-generation British girl who lives with her strict Indian parents in London and dreams of playing soccer, or "football" (like her hero David Beckham). Jess is, as it happens, pretty good, and when she attracts the attention of a local girls' amateur football team called the Hounslow Harriers, she joins — hiding the entire arrangement from her family by telling them that she's working at a summer job — and quickly becomes best friends with her fellow player Jules Paxton (Keira Knightley). This all happens against the backdrop of Jess' sister Pinky's (Archie Panjabi) wedding, and when Jess' secret is revealed in her family's community, it threatens to derail everything ... and it doesn't help that Jess has developed serious feelings for her coach Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).

"Bend It Like Beckham" is one of the most endearing movies out there, and even when it seems like Jess might lose her family or the sport (and community) she loves so much, the film finds a perfect way to resolve everything that doesn't feel cheesy. (Plus, Juliet Stevenson as Jules' mother Paula is particularly hilarious.) "Bend It Like Beckham" is available on Disney+, and while it's not totally inappropriate for young ones, they just might not get it.

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, a ton of modernized literary adaptations hit Hollywood, from "Clueless" to "Bridget Jones' Diary" to "She's the Man," but Gil Junger's "10 Things I Hate About You" still stands out from the pack thanks to its undeniably talented cast and its sharp, funny script (by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith) that manages to turn a Shakespeare comedy into a romantic comedy. Based on the Bard's enemies-to-lovers play "The Taming of the Shrew," the film introduces audiences to Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), an acerbic high schooler who, unlike her younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), shows zero interest in dating or the social hierarchy at Padua High School. When a few new students arrive at Padua, including Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), things get a little more interesting; Cameron immediately falls for Bianca, but unfortunately for him, so does the school's token popular jerk Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan). When all the boys find out that Kat and Bianca's overprotective father Walter (Larry Miller) has decreed that Bianca can only date if Kat does, Joey, unbeknowst to Kat, pays Patrick to ask out Kat while Cameron continues to pine for Bianca ... all of which culminates in a particularly dramatic scene at the high school prom.

The teenage cast is perfection, especially Ledger — if nothing else, you probably remember the scene where he croons "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" while he woos a stubborn Kat — and this breezy, funny, unexpectedly emotional movie has remained a staple of the teen genre for a reason. As with "Bend It Like Beckham," it probably wouldn't appeal to most kids ... and some of its jokes might be a little too advanced for young ears.

It's sort of crazy that anyone has to say this, but young kids should probably not watch "Deadpool." The 2016 origin story — directed by Tim Miller and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick — serves as a spin-off of the "X-Men" franchise but turns its focus to a beloved Marvel Comics character, the titular Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), who's also known as the "merc with a mouth." When we first meet Wade Wilson, he's a perfectly normal mercenary with a hot girlfriend — Vanessa Carlysle, played by Morena Baccarin — but tragedy strikes when Wade finds out he has terminal cancer. A mysterious man named Ajax (Ed Skrein) offers Wade the chance to "cure" his cancer, and Wade accepts; after days of harrowing experiments involving super-serum and a hypobaric chamber, Wade is left seriously disfigured ... but cancer-free. Devastated by his new fully scarred face and body, Wade transforms himself into a vigilante named Deadpool and searches for Ajax, teaming up with everyone from a cab driver named Dopinder (Karan Soni) to X-Men like Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapičić) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand).

"Deadpool" is, to be blunt once again, deeply inappropriate for kids, from a particularly explicit holiday sequence involving Wade and Vanessa at the beginning of the movie to all of the profanities that fly out of Deadpool's mouth. If you're the right age, though, it's a great time — and it's on Disney+. (Plus, it spawned two massively successful sequels: "Deadpool 2" and "Deadpool & Wolverine" in 2018 and 2024, respectively).

It's unfair to say "The Sound of Music" isn't appropriate for kids — it absolutely is. It's still a perfect movie for adults, though, because some of the film's darker plot elements — namely, the ones surrounding the spread of fascism and Nazi ideologies throughout Austria as the narrative unfolds — will definitely go over any particularly little heads. Robert Wise's seminal 1965 movie musical, which is adapted from the stage musical writter by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, stars Julie Andrews as Maria, a wayward nun who is sent from her convent to work as a governess for retired naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) and his seven children. Though the von Trapp children are defiant at first — having run through many, many governesses since their mother passed away — Maria bonds with them during a thunderstorm one night and is eventually able to persuade Georg to be a little warmer with his children. Despite Georg's involvement with the wealthy social butterfly Baroness von Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), he and Maria fall in love, and as she becomes the adoptive mother of the von Trapp family, Nazism spreads across Austria ... and many S.S. officials set their sights on Georg, hoping to enlist him to their cause.

Yes, "The Sound of Music" has beautiful, memorable songs the whole family will love, but it's also based on the very real story of the von Trapp family, who were forced to flee Austria under the looming threat of a full Nazi invasion. Kids can and should watch it, but only older audiences will understand the film's strong political message.

The second movie on this list to feature a very unconventional convent girl came decades after "The Sound of Music" — "Sister Act," Emile Ardolino's 1992 comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg as Deloris Wilson, a Catholic schoolteacher turned Las Vegas lounge singer who ends up in witness protection after she sees her mob boyfriend Vince (Harvey Keitel) commit a murder. Upon entering St. Katherine's Parish in Los Angeles, Deloris doesn't really fit in with the strict sisters — and frankly, the cops offer a decent sum of money to the Reverend Mother (Dame Maggie Smith) to keep Deloris under their protection — but when Deloris introduces the convent's choir to a more modern sound, adding gospel and rock and roll into their repertoire, they realize that she might have what it takes to help revitalize their church and their community. That's why, when Vince kidnaps Deloris, the other nuns band together to save her life.

"Sister Act" is, like "The Sound of Music," more or less appropriate for kids, but the entire plot of the movie might go over their heads (it's safe to say most young children don't really understand the concept of "witness protection," for example). Plus, "Sister Act" is a staple for a certain generation, so this is a Disney+ pick for the grownups. 

Movie musicals have had their ups and downs as a genre, but with people praising new entries like the first half of "Wicked," it feels like the world should be reminded that Stephen freaking Spielberg remade "West Side Story" in 2021 — and it's incredible. With the show's original music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and a new script by "Angels in America" writer Tony Kushner (a frequent Spielberg collaborator), Spielberg pays homage to Robert Wise's 1961 film — and Jerome Robbins' 1957 Broadway musical — Spielberg casts newcomer Rachel Zegler as María, a young Puerto Rican woman who inadvertently falls in love with Tony (Ansel Elgort), only to find out that he's a Jet (a mostly white gang) and the mortal enemy of the Puerto Rican Sharks, run by María's brother Bernardo (David Alvarez). ("West Side Story" is based on William Shakespeare's doomed romance "Romeo and Juliet," so you can guess how the whole thing turns out.)

Spielberg assembled an extraordinary cast of skilled singers and dancers for his take on this American classic — with, frankly, the exception of Elgort, who really struggles to keep up with cast members like Zegler and Mike Faist (the future "Challengers" star who beautifully plays Tony's doomed best friend Riff) — so it's not surprising that Ariana DeBose won an Oscar for best supporting actress thanks to her scene-stealing role as Bernardo's girlfriend Anita. Still, the film deserved more flowers, and you can see why on Disney+ ... though it might be a little serious for little kids.

Do not watch "Alien" with young children!!! Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi classic, which stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, is an incredible movie — but it would probably scar a typical small child for life if they watched it on Disney+. In Weaver's breakout role as a warrant officer aboard a commercial spaceship called the Nostromo, she and her fellow crew members receive a message from the ship's computer Mother (voiced by Helen Horton) indicating that there's a transmission coming from a nearby planet. When the Nostromo lands there, they find a bunch of alien eggs ... and that's when all hell basically breaks loose. After several crew members are attacked by the rapidly growing alien that makes its way onto the Nostromo (through the body of John Hurt's Kane, actually), Ripley is left in charge and hunts down the alien to destroy it once and for all, and she encounters some seriously unpleasant surprises along the way (though she does have an animal companion in the form of Jones, the ship's trusty cat).

If you're at all familiar with "Alien," you know about the scene where an alien bursts out of someone's chest as a jumpscare which actually frightened cast members who didn't know it was going to happen; that's why little kids shouldn't be watching "Alien." Older sci-fi fans can check it out on Disney+, though ... unless you're also a relatively frightened adult, in which case you should just skip this spooky space movie.

The 1995 romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping" — which stars Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, and Peter Gallagher — might be a staple of the genre, but it's also a really messed up movie. We first meet Lucy Eleanor Moderatz (Bullock), a lonely transit worker in Chicago, as she pines after Peter Callaghan (Gallagher) during his daily commute to work — and when muggers push him onto the train tracks, she saves his life while muttering "I was going to marry him" as she accompanies him to the hospital. Thanks to this incredibly weird sentence she keeps saying, the Callaghan family think that Lucy is actually Peter's fiancée ... and because Peter is comatose, he can't exactly set the record straight. Lucy doesn't bother to do that, largely because she really loves the Callaghans, although Peter's brother Jack (Pullman) has his suspicions about whether or not Lucy and Peter are actually engaged.

The truth is that, if a little kid watched "While You Were Sleeping," they probably wouldn't have any idea that this movie is actually super-creepy — so not only would they not be particularly entertained, but the film simply isn't meant for younger audiences. This one's for adults, so if you can handle the idea that the Callaghans don't immediately report Lucy to the cops over her absolutely unhinged lie, check out "While You Were Sleeping" on Disney+.

Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the 2018 documentary "Free Solo" is a fascinating — and award-winning — look at a real-life rock climber attempting a dangerous and ambitious climb, but it might feel a little boring for little kids. The documentary centers on Alex Honnold, a famous rock climber known for "free solo" climbs, which means that the climbers don't use ropes or other equipment as they scale mountains; instead, "free solo" climbers rely on shoes and chalk to scale massive surfaces, which is incredibly audacious and potentially dangerous (for obvious reasons). So what does Honnold climb in "Free Solo?" He decides to scale El Capitan, a massive vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, which measures about 3,000 feet from the bottom to the top.

"Free Solo" chronicles the first-ever free solo climb of this particular rock wall — specifically, a route called "Freerider" created by another famous climber named Alexander Huber — and Honnold's struggles to successfully pull it off after repeatedly scaling El Capitan with equipment. Unless you know any kids who are specifically fascinated by rock climbing (in which case this would actually be a perfect watch), "Free Solo," which is on Disney+, is a stunning look at a seemingly impossible feat and the internal life of the man who manages to make history with this climb.

Another movie that's probably suitable for kids but that might not hold their interest, Theodore Melfi's 2016 biopic "Hidden Figures" tells the story of three women — specifically, three Black female mathematicians — who help NASA during the "Space Race" in the 1960s. With Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Goble Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson — all of whom were real math mavens who really did work at NASA — the film introduces us to Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary while they're still doing grunt work as "computers," solving complex mathematical equations without even knowing what the equations are for. All three women face racism and sexism as they fight for actual positions within NASA, but thanks to their sheer brilliance, they eventually do make inroads at NASA, even as they're made aware that actual computers will eventually replace them as workers.

"Hidden Figures" is a phenomenal movie led by three incredibly talented performers — Henson, Spencer, and Monáe work against each other beautifully — and it's definitely worth watching to learn more about Johnson, Vaughan, and Jackson, all of whom eventually got recognition for their work at NASA (the real Johnson even received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 from President Barack Obama). Still, this film might be a bit much for a young kid; adults looking for something to watch on Disney+ should absolutely check this one out if they haven't seen it before.