7 movies that legit make you cry now you’re a Dad

You may have noticed you tear up a bit more easily since becoming a dad. Good news: it's not your fault.

It's not your fault

Dads experience neural and hormonal changes when we have kids too. Changes science says help increase empathy and motivate human dads to stick around/care for their offspring – and not abandon them like 94% of mammals. Or eat them.

Which is why you may find yourself blubbering like a helpless baby every now and again. I know I do.

It’s usually when I imagine any sort of harm befalling my kids – triggered by sad stories about bad things happening to vulnerable children in the news.

Other times it’s a movie with some fatherhood/ family oriented theme (happy or sad) that just hits me right in the feels.

Here are 7 such movies guaranteed to reduce you to silent man tears – kept hidden until the last second, that boil your eye balls (and somehow cause your other balls to contract in sympathy) before tumbling down your rugged face.

WARNING: Spoilers! 

1. Dad fights for the right to party… and be a Dad — Real Steel

I pretty much weep during every sport-related movie if the underdog wins a world championship and someone’s heart. In Real Steel, Hugh Jackman’s ex-boxer/street brawler Dad reminds us of the deeply-hidden vulnerability of single fathers who might have left it late to get their shit together… plus it has fighting robots.

Cryingest scene: the final battle between the underdog fighting robot Atom and the almighty high-tech smashing machine Zeus, in which Hugh, at the controls of Atom, literally, metaphorically and epically fights for his son’s respect and a proper go at being a hero Dad. Legend.

2. Brother is a hero to his sister — Grave of the Fireflies

Studio Ghibli is famous as the ‘Disney’ of the East, though arguably cooler than Walt’s studio as Ghibli’s female characters are a lot more kick-arse.

Most of its hand drawn films focus on complex characters fighting the good fight, rather than waiting for a prince, so there’s more action and adventure and less moping about in castles.

Grave of the Fireflies is the Japanese studio’s darkest film. Based on a true story about the firebombing of Japan during World War 2, it follows Seita and Setsuko, a brother and sister who’ll never know the joys and innocence of a ‘regular’ childhood.

Cryingest scene: Just as the war ends, Seita is extra proud of himself when he finds a fresh watermelon. He lugs it to the shelter where his sister is sleeping so she can finally have some real food. Then… Oh. My. God.

3. Husband remembers his one true love —UP!

UP! is mostly a balloon-borne-slightly-rebellious-adventure story but before it lifts us into the clouds, it squeezes our hearts so hard they feel like they’re bleeding into our lungs.

Why? Because the creators want us to connect with the cantankerous old bloke Carl first so we will fully appreciate the history of his house and the man’s transformation.

Cryingest scene: The long opening minutes with Carl looking back on his wonderful life with his wife Ellie, from fighting about birds as kids to growing old (and sadly, childless) together, to the day she leaves forever.

4. Young man says goodbye to his childhood buddies: Toy Story 3

How many of the toys you hassled your relatives to buy you, or saved up months for ,do you still have around? How many are still played with, rather than kept out of child’s-way?

This flick has a decent crack at the toys-are-for-fun-not-storing-for-future-wealth debate that anyone whose childhood favourites have become collectables has had at least once with their kids.

Cryingest scene: Andy sits with an old box of long forgotten friends, I mean, toys, remembering more innocent and carefree days. Then he just… lets them go. WTF.

5. Dad’s rags to riches story — Pursuit of Happyness

True story about entrepeneur Chris Gardner (Will Smith) who had a shitty childhood with several years in foster homes and no real positive male role models. He struggled to build a career and his first marriage was already failing when he got a new girlfriend pregnant. Then she too left him, a single Dad with no job.

So far, so miserable.

Fatefully, Chris meets a stockbroker who promises to turn his life around by getting him an internship at a stockbroking firm. Once catch: the internship is unpaid. And only one of the twenty interns at the firm will eventually get a real job. Chris and his son then become homeless and he battles through it to ultimately build a better life for his son.

Cryingest scene: Chris is called into his boss’s office to be told his unpaid internship – that we’ve seen him slog his guts out for – is over. And he gets the job! Jesus wept.

6. Young boy gets lost and tries to find his way back home — Lion

A harrowing and disturbingly true story about a five year old boy named Saroo who gets separated from his older brother and trapped on a decommissioned train in India. It takes him thousands of miles from home, to a place where he cannot speak the local dialect to explain to anyone what has happened.

Alone and vulnerable, Saroo must learn to survive in a faraway, and seriously f____d up land where nobody gives a shit and there are multiple predators out to get him.

After a series of narrow escapes, his luck turns and he gets adopted by a family in Australia. (We are dubious at first, but slowly our faith in humanity is restored).

The movie then follows Sarroo as a young man years later, trying to locate his family back home.

Cryingest scene: A tired and hungry Saroo finds a spoon in the rubble, and sits outside a restaurant where he mimics a man eating soup through the window. 

7. A father says goodbye to his kids… FOREVER!!! — Interstellar

With the human race on the brink of extinction, researchers are looking for a new planet for Earth’s population to settle on. Former NASA pilot Cooper winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time – and is given the impossible choice of staying on Earth with his family, knowing that they’ll eventually die out, or going on a mission through a wormhole near Saturn that he may not survive.

Now for the the real kicker – even if he does live, because of the physics of Relativity, he will age more slowly, and while he’ll only be gone for 3 years, his children will be his age or older before he’s able to return.

He chooses to go on the mission, which devastates his 10-year-old daughter Murph to the point where she won’t even say goodbye to him when it’s time for him to go.

Cryingest scene: The epic launch scene, when Cooper leaves the family farm for the last time. He knows he’ll never see his family again – and his daughter misses out on the chance to say goodbye.

Got any others? Add them in the comments below.