10 Animal Movies That Will Make You Cry Like A Little Girl

Among the evil artifice filmmakers can unleash on an audience, none are as calculated (or as potent) as the weepy animal flick. It's a cruel ploy that exploits our emotions, but we're helpless to its inherent effectiveness.

Steven Spielberg, never one to miss an opportunity to use nostalgia against us (see: The Adventures of TinTin), has now resorted to manipulating moviegoers with sentimentally-driven animal movies. In fact we have reason to believe his Christmas release, War Horse, which sources its dramatic undertones from the connection between a child (Jeremy Irvine) and his horse as much as from the hard-hitting WWI imagery, was created to do nothing more than remind of our sad inability to be strong in the presence of an animal's pain.

Spielberg isn't the first to bring us to tears in a dark room full of strangers, though. Directors have been using our animal-empathy as means of inflicting emotional torture on us for years, and we're embarrassed by how grossly effective it is. Just let it all out and weep with us as we count down the 10 Animal Movie That Will Make You Cry Like A Little Girl.

Written by Shanté Cosme (@ShanteCosme)

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We can't blame Kong for attempting to woo movie star Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). Personally, we'd want to do more than woo her. When Kong falls hard for Ann's juggling act (everyone has their thing I guess) he pulls all the chivalrous gorilla-ropes, making it his M.O. to keep Ann safe from rambunctious humans and natives alike.

But the heart-strings go into full-on tug-mode when movie-makers looking to exploit Kong capture him and put him in on stage beside an Ann look-alike. When he realizes he's the victim of a wifey-swap, he isn't pleased. He escapes and scoops up the real Ann, and takes her for a romantic climb up the Empire State Building, where he is mercilessly shot down for pursuing their unlikely relationship. CGI gorilla or not, you will bawl like a bitch when Kong shields Ann from the assault before tumbling to his death off the top of the building.

Hachi is the saddest premise in the history of sad movie premises. College Professor Parker (Richard Gere) finds an adorable Akita puppy at the train station. The dog, who he names Hachi, is lovably dysfunctional and unable to master the simplest tricks, but he makes up for it by being fiercely loyal.

Loyal as in, waiting for Parker every day when he gets off the train so they can walk home together. Loyal as in, waiting for Parker for hours in the snow when he doesn't return one day. Loyal as in, waiting for Parker for 10 years, every day, at the same time, just hoping he'll step off that god-damned train again just one more time.

Even the trailer will make you shed a tear, even if only for the sad dichotomy between Hachi and your not-nearly-as-loyal ex girlfriend. Whatever the reason, trust us, the tears will inevitaby flow.

For whatever it's worth, Turner & Hooch is by far the best cop-and-his-canine-partner movie out there. The premise is admittedly goofy: An uptight police investigator (Tom Hanks) teams up with a slobbering, disobedient Dogue de Bordeaux, a doggy witness to its owner’s murder, to apprehend an unidentified criminal. The humor mainly comes from slapstick animal gags, such as Hooch tearing up the inside of Hanks’ car, or Hooch drooling all over Hanks’ CD collection and home entertainment center.

Somehow, though, within the flick’s rampant “That dog is crazy!” scenes, Turner & Hooch establishes a believably loving bond between owner and pooch. And when director Roger Spottiswoode’s action-comedy reaches its shoot-’em-up climax, Hooch gets hit by a fatal bullet and dies in Hanks’ arms.

How about some more hyperbole: Beasley the dog (Hooch) is one of the great canine thespians of our time.

Let us get this straight. You introduce us to adorable Old Yeller and show young Travis becoming reluctanty attached to him, then you prove Old Yeller's awesomeness by having him save Travis and his family from a disease-infested wolf, only to have have our newly minted hero catch rabies and force the child to shoot his companion? It's a shameless attempt at conjuring tears, Disney. And we hate you because it worked so well.

Bambi is the movie that laid the misery-laden tracks for all future, Kleenex-soaking animated movies like The Lion King and The Land Before Time. From then on, Disney's formula for film success was simple: Kill off the young, impressionable animal's parent. That will hook 'em!

Not only does Disney murder the mother of the wobbly-legged deer in the first 15 minutes of the movie, it also leaves Bambi with no one to care for him but his douchey father, who informs him of his mother's death-by-hunter by stoically saying "Your mother can't be with you anymore." Bambi got a raw deal, and our eyes moisten with empathy for him.

The irony in this movie is a painful metaphor for all of history. A disillusioned Kevin Costner manages to turn a wild animal into a loyal companion, and a pack of evil white men shoot his loyal wolf Two Socks down for entertainment.

Pocahontas totally called it: White men are the wild savages, and they can't be trusted. Take our tears, and the number five spot on our list as an apology, Two Socks.

Marley & Me was pure sentimental genius. We're introduced to two struggling reporters, John (Owen Wilson) and Jenny (Jennifer Aniston), who are attempting to build a family together despite many setbacks, when Marley is brought in as the first member of the family. Only he's not a blessing, he's a complete asshole incapabale of being discipline.

But somehow, Marley does turn out to be a blessing, albeit one in disguise. His antics act as a source of inspiration for John's newspaper column, and despite his frequent misbehaving, he becomes a source of hard-to-find happiness for the Grogans. It's then, after watching Marley act as the glue for this crumbling family, that he kicks the bucket. WHEN WE GOT SO ATTACHED. We cried. A lot. We're crying as we write this.

Dogs get all the tears, but Willy was a whale that left us whining something awful. An injured Orca whale, Willy is taken in at a Sea-World-esque theme park, where juvenile deliquent/orphan Jesse becomes the only human he can spend time with without wanting to eat them alive.

Unfortunatley, Jesse's new BFF is in high demand (ie: gets kidnapped for his big bucks insurance policy), so Jesse enlists the help of his foster father to free Will. After coaching Willy into an Evel Knievel jump over an impossibly large rockwall, the two share an emotional goodbye that had us wishing Willy has been a Moby Dick so we wouldn't be left cursing the disgustingly effective ploy for tears the whole plot was.

Being the last living man in New York is just as difficult as it sounds, especially when you're surrounded by flesh-eating former humans, and you're the last prime rib walking the streets. Luckily for Robert (Will Smith) he's kept company by Sam, a German Shepherd and the only living thing in Manhattan that does not want to eat him alive.

But during an altercation with the infected cannibals, Sam contracts the virus and Robert is forced to kill his only friend (unless you count the mannequins he sometimes chats up at the video store). We were beyond heartbroken.

This '80s fantasy flick was set in the appropriately named Fantasia, which was home to many a fictional creature, among them a speedy snail, a narcoleptic bat, and a giant flying puppy thing known as Falcor the luckdragon. Instead of doing away with one of these completely implausible pets, the movie takes Atreyu's beautiful white horse Artax (the one animal we always wanted as a child) down in quicksand-like mud (the Sea of Sadness for god's sake!) in painfully slow motion.

NOT THE HORSE! Anything but the horse! We feel a tearful tantrum coming on just thinking about it.