Audiences 63% more likely to cry over film scenes with animals than with humans

You might not admit it to your friends, but everyone has that one film that makes them cry like there's no tomorrow. Previous research into what makes movie audiences cry has revealed a range of factors that lead to us shedding tears during a film, including animal scenes, character break-ups, tearful reunions, and sudden goodbyes.

While there are a vast array of movie moments that tug at our heartstrings, have you ever wondered which movies and actors make audiences cry the most?  To find out, Replay Poker has put together a seed list of 400 films known to make people cry dating back to the 1930s and analyzed a random sample of up to 1,000 audience reviews per film (300,000 reviews in total) on RottenTomatoes.com to find mentions of the reviewer crying.

Are audiences more likely to cry over animals or humans in films?

• As it turns out, we're all animal lovers at the movies: animals on the silver screen tug at our heartstrings much more often than films centred around humans. On average, for every 1,000 online reviews of animal movies, 52 mentioned the reviewer crying. In comparison, the same was true for 32 reviews of human-based movies per 1,000.

The saddest animal movies, according to audience reviews

• The saddest animal-based movie is Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009). For every 1,000 reviews of this Richard Gere drama, 176.5 mentioned the reviewer crying. 

• My Dog Skip (2000) starring Frankie Muniz and a lovable Jack Russell terrier is the second saddest, followed by the dog-based classics Where The Red Fern Grows (1974), Old Yeller (1957), and Marley & Me (2008).

Methodology: 

• We put together a seed list of 400 films dating back to the 1930s selected from a wide array of sources, citing how often they make audiences cry (both tears of sadness and tears of joy).
• For each film, we analyzed up to 1,000 of the most recent audience reviews on RottenTomatoes.com for instances of the audience mentioning that they cried. A total of 300,000 reviews were analyzed.
• Our analysis contained a seed list of synonyms and variations on the verb 'to cry' in phrases and sentence structures that indicate it was the reviewer referring to themselves crying. We also counted any examples where a character name or actor name was mentioned within the same sentence as a mention of the reviewer crying.
• After finding all instances of mentioning where a reviewer cried, we measured films on having the highest number of reviewers (aka audiences) that cried for every 1,000 reviews written about the film.
• Animal movies in our analysis are classed as movies that are animal-based or where the main character is an animal.