The children each received a few new DVDs for Christmas so on Christmas night we decided to do a family movie night, complete with Chinese delivery and popcorn. (What? We were supposed to go caroling??)
The movie we decided to watch was Back to the Future, with Michael J. Fox. I loved loved loved Back to the Future when I was a teenager. I recorded it on a VHS tape from cable and played it repeatedly one summer. My routine was to set up a lawn chair sticking out of our front door and then turn the TV set a bit so I could watch it while I lay on the chair sunbathing. Since we lived in southern Louisiana and I didn’t bother to switch off the AC while pursuing my tan, it’s not an activity that I think my mother would have approved of (sorry, Mom!) The point is, I have very fond memories of that movie and probably could have quoted it at one time.
It seemed an obvious choice when it came to shopping for my daughter, but when it came to sitting down and watching it I started to have my doubts. Would it have aged well? Having had my memories of old favorites like My Fair Lady and The Thorn Birds totally ruined by watching them again recently, it was entirely possible that the same thing would happen here. You just can’t always trust Amazon reviews (how do you think I ended up buying The Thorn Birds? We have only ever watched the first episode it was so horrendously bad)
I am happy to say that we all enjoyed the movie very much – even my husband who somehow had never seen it the first time around. It starts in “present day” 1985, but since it very quickly switches back to 1955 it didn’t seem too dated at all – the children certainly didn’t notice. It held the childrens’ attention throughout (my husband too and he’s a tough audience) and it was very cute to see how anxious my daughter was toward the end, worrying whether everything was really going to work out or not. All in all a success on all fronts. What a relief!
(I have a strange compulsion to watch it again when everyone is out for the day, only this time I will quilt instead of sunbathe)
For the New Year holiday I think we’ll do another family movie night with her other new movie: The Karate Kid, yet another classic from my youth. Fingers crossed we’ll have another hit!
I really like Back to the Future and catch it on TV occasionally. I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Karate Kid though. We’ve been watching a lot of movies recently. We watched The Mummy a couple of nights ago on TV. I really like Brendan Fraser in that movie. I’m not sure that they filmed it in Egypt though. There seemed to be a lot of rolling sand hills that I don’t recall.
by Shelley Munro December 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pmWax on, wax off! I recently watched Footloose with my girls and although it has a rather simple plot, I still enjoyed the music
by Shellie December 29th, 2009 at 6:47 pmShellie – I made my husband watch Footloose several years ago because I couldn’t believe he’d never watched it. He wasn’t impressed and it wasn’t *quite* as good as I remembered it, but I still like to look at Kevin Bacon and LOVE the music
by Jenyfer December 30th, 2009 at 2:40 amShelley – I liked The Mummy well enough when I saw it – and no, I don’t think it was filmed in Egypt. I think they do a lot of that sort of filming either in the American southwest or in Morocco. It was a fun movie, but I remember thinking that Brendan Frasier wasn’t as expressive as I would have liked for the romance they were trying to include in the storyline. (I know – picky, picky!)
by Jenyfer December 30th, 2009 at 2:42 am