The fallacy of 'oh this kids flick was really made for adults' argument.

This is something I touched on in my Where the Wild Things Are review, but kids films in general get a bum rap. In that, if you make a bad family film (such as The Flintstones), everyone says 'oh, it's just for kids'. But if you make a good one (anything by Henry Sellick, Hayao Myazaki, and Pixar), the conventional wisdom becomes 'it was really made for adults'. I'd argue that would-be family classics such as Babe, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or The Iron Giant were intended to entertain children as a primary motive. That they turned out so good, and so entertaining to older kids and adults is perhaps simply the by-product of them being high-quality films, not films secretly made for adults. Heck, I'd argue that most of the very worst kids films (think G-Force, Scooby Doo, or A Shark Tale) failed partially because they felt the need to pander to would-be adult sensibilities, with topical pop-culture references, immature 'adult humor', and narratives that would theoretically be more interesting to older kids and adults than the very young audiences allegedly being targeted.

Just my thoughts...