Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Off Topic - Crib Notes - Movie Night in Peril!


This is next in our Netflix rotation. A true sign of desperate times.


Friday movie night is in big trouble.

With an eight year old, a twelve year old, and a pair of late 40 somethings, it’s getting pretty challenging to find a movie we can all endure… er, enjoy.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, we are somewhere between Stuart Little and the Lovely Bones. It’s vast movie wasteland, populated by Home Alone and a few classics, like the Sound of Music. And after a while, the hills are not so alive with the sound of music.

It’s not just the age difference either. It’s tough to find a movie with some action for Dad, nothing too scary for third grader Mireya, some innocent romance for tweenager Sierra, and some caliber of production quality for me. As in dialogue that has multi-syllable words.

We are the ultimate tough room.

Movie night is a tradition we started some years ago and our resident traditionalist, Mireya, insists it take place so matter what the circumstances. There were many times we had “Rerun Movie night” since not every week delivers something worth watching.

Now that we are in the Bermuda triangle of family movie watching, I’m considering a replacement for movie night. Among the options are:

Family Game Night – We have tried this before, but due to wildly different interpretations of the concept of “rules” I hesitate to try again. Marriage is fragile enough without having to google the rules for collecting $200 in bookopoly. And here too the age and interest differences don’t help. There is no middle ground between Pretty Pretty Princess and Black Jack.

Craft Night - Once a craft queen, I considered reviving our crafty ways. But given that I have a house filled with flower pens, dioramas, and dried out clay sculptures of... something, I don’t think I can find the shelving for the results. Of course, if we focused our efforts on paper mache we might open up a miniature pinata shop this summer.

Cooking Night - We’ve entered a stage with Mireya that I recognize from years with her older sister - she is unwilling to eat anything outside three favorite items. But there’s no such thing as a skinny chef! Maybe we could explore new worlds of food! We could watch the food network and cook just one thing that wasn’t chicken!

Fortunately the days are getting longer, the weather nice and warm, the canker worms have left the trees to become moths. Maybe we can just sit outside on Fridays and roast hot dogs (those are one of the three favorite foods), sing songs, and count stars.

Maybe the ultimate solution to a tough room is getting out of it.

7 comments:

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Fun post. We have Netflix, too and the only videos I find that we can all enjoy together are Anime movies by Hayao Myzaki. The kids get the fabulous animation and subtle positive life lessons and we adults get the exciting story lines, talented story plots, and fascinating art and culture, too.

Growing up I had game night and I enjoyed it. Maybe I should start that with our kids, too.
Our favorite things to do together now are hiking, letterboxing and camping. We have a very busy summer planned.

~Lisa

Mikey said...

Your post made me totally laugh. We're in this too. Having kids, it's amazingly HARD to find movies or even TV shows that we can all watch. I was reading your replacement ideas, and thought cooking night was good, but you're right. Time to get out. We're planning day trips this summer (educational ones NOT involving horses) so maybe you could go out for the evening, do something totally different. I think getting out is the key.

Stephanie said...

Maybe you could do a book night instead of movie night. One or two people could be the designated readers and actors/actresses and you could pick a short story that you read and act out at the same time. Or just read out loud..or do a play..something along those lines.

OR

Show and Tell night. Everyone picks something from their week (could be a book, happening, new trick, craft, etc) and you take turns showing and telling your various..whatever it is. Educate each other at the same time that you share parts of your week.

I also like the craft idea. And the hotdogs.

Or when you're really at a standstill on movies take turns making your own movies and watching them. Incorporate puppets, animation, animals, random people...whatever you want.

Once Upon an Equine said...

That is a tough situation. We try to have a family night also, but now that the youngest is 16, it is rare for everyone to be home at the same time for a family night.

Cooking night sounds fun, even if it is always grilled hot dogs. Maybe ice cream sundae night would be fun. Good luck.

Wolfie said...

I used to have the same problem when my niece came for a visit. There doesn't seem to be movies for the 10-14 year old group - stuff is either too immature or too sexy. My niece and I always watch movies for our Friday and Saturday night entertainment when she comes for weekends. When she was 4-8 years of age, cartoon movies were it. But when she hit the 9 year mark, it became way more difficult to find something that entertained her without promoting stuff that made ME feel uncomfortable. :-) One day in the movie rental store, she picked Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas and became hooked on Tim Burton. We have seen Corpse Bride, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands to name a few. I actually liked all of them. Would these be appropriate for your crowd? Good luck!!

Susan said...

It sounds like here, and there's only two of us.

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Family Night?

What is that?

Just once in a while, I would like to actually be able to sit down at the table for supper together. Now that would be an accomplishment in this household. LOL