One of the new traditions we began during the pandemic is "family movie nights" on Fridays and Saturdays. Our kids look forward to these nights and quickly fall into their routine of pouring a glass of milk and filling a plate with homemade desserts and grabbing a blanket as they run to claim their spots. It's always a struggle for us to find movies that appeal to all three of our kids which are also appropriate for their age levels. Our almost 14-year-old thinks he is old enough to watch most movies. We disagree. However, we will watch movies like "Platoon" with him when the younger two are already in bed. At this point, we have succumbed to movies with bad language but even with this exception, it is extremely difficult to find great movies that don't have sex scenes. I often wonder WHY the decision is made to even throw in these scenes when they have nothing to do with the movie! For example, my husband and I really liked "Come Hell or High Water". Our oldest could have totally watched it except that the three-second, pointless sex scene in the movie killed any hope for him to watch this film. Are we too prude? In seventh grade, he had friends who watched Game of Thrones. Personally, I thought that was ridiculous. Do some parents really not monitor what their kids watch? Are we too strict? I don't know... and I honestly don't really care what choices others make for their kids' viewing pleasures but we will stick to our guidelines for now. I am sure there are parents out there who won't agree with our allowance of movie screenings with bad language for a ten-year-old and that is ok too! We use Common Sense Media as a guide to our decision makings and often hold the remote control closely to quickly skip over scenes we don't want them to be exposed to yet. For example, our kids absolutely love Jim Carey movies but unfortunately, they are ridden with sex. "Cable Guy" is pretty harmless except for a couple of scenes where the sexy talk is a bit overwhelming for our taste but we just skipped over them and still got to enjoy a funny flick. In fact, they loved this movie so much we watched it twice! I hope the list below helps some of you who are looking for some good movies that are appropriate for younger kids albeit the bad language and some violence. I highly recommend reading the Common Sense Media reviews closely so that you are well prepared to hit fast forward on that remote!
· Green Book
· Trolls World Tour
· Scoob
· The Upside
· Father of the Bride
· Hunger Games, all of them
· Dark Waters
· Contagion
· Zoolander
· JoJo Rabbit
· Dumb and Dumber
· Tropic Thunder
· Stand By Me
· Encounters of the Third Kind
· Mrs. Doubtfire
· Monty Python and the Holy Grail
· Indiana Jones 1-3
· The Dark Night
· Knives Out
· Clue
· The Matrix
· Gravity
· Three Amigos
· Captain Phillips
· The Pursuit of Happyness
· Cinderella Man
· The Imitation Games
· Onward
· Big Daddy
· That Thing You Do
· School of Rock
· Rockaway
· Napolean Dynamite
· Concussion
· Unbreakable
· War of the Worlds
· Signs
· Dead Poet Society (did not complete)
· Cable Guy
· Shaun of the Dead
· The Big Year
· Blinded by the Light
· Rise of the Planet of the Apes
· Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
· Titanic
· Dodge Ball: A True Underdog Story
· The Wizard of Lies
· Field of Dreams
· Good Morning Vietnam
· Free Solo
· What Dreams May Come
· Ford v Ferrari
· Captain Marvel
· Planes, Trains & Automobiles
· A Beautiful Mind
· 127 Hours
· Interstellar
· Oceans 11
· Twilight
· Tenet
· Lincoln (only made it through half)
· The Phenomenon
· Soul
· WW84
·Hamilton
·Fire in the Sky
If you have any films that your family has really enjoyed, please share them. We have several months ahead of where it is just the five of us and need as much entertainment as we can get!
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