As far as family traditions go, movie nights with the kids is one that seems as old as time (well if by old we mean at a point in the 20th century when televisions and video recorders were widely accessible).
Growing up in an immigrant family in the 90s, we didn’t really have this tradition, but we did come together to watch the latest episode of Seinfeld and Friends. And if my parents were feeling very generous, we would go to Video Ezy or Blockbuster on occasion and rent out a VHS of a film that was only available on a nightly rental. (If you are too young to know what Video Ezy or VHS mean, or why nightly rentals cost more, please ask your parents).
Family movie nights were something I’d been looking forward to with my own kids ever since they were young. I imagined introducing them to a whole array of films. There would be E.T. of course, but also the Back to the Future films (except for the third one because let’s face it, it sucked), Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Neverending Story, The Parent Trap (with Lindsay Lohan), Beethoven, Casper, The Addams Family (in fact, anything with a young Christina Ricci in it), Hook, Jumanji (actually anything with Robin Williams when he was going through his family film phase). The list goes on. Except the reality was that life got in the way. Our lives were busy, my kids had a number of activities, by the time it got to putting on a film, it seemed too late and we had to sit there working out the maths of how long a film would take and whether that would eat into bedtime.
And even after my kids got older, their tastes differed to what I imagined watching with them. My older son got into Marvel films at the age of eight, and we tried to work out which ones were appropriate enough for him to watch. And when my husband and I spoke to our children about watching films from the 80s and 90s they turned their noses up. To be honest, when I revisited films that I saw as a child I was surprised that these were considered appropriate for kids. Go back and watch Big starring Tom Hanks as an adult and you’ll see what I mean. (It’s weird for a 12-year-old to have a relationship with an adult woman even if he’s in an adult male body, right?)
Going into lockdown in Sydney, however, meant that we could finally slow down, even if we didn’t want to. Gone were the days of hustle and bustle - we faced hours, days, weeks of time to fill. But with everything there is a silver lining. We , including introducing our children to the tradition of family movie night.
Unlike how I imagined, we aren’t watching the films I saw growing up. Instead we are turning to streaming services for the latest family films. Gone are the days me and my brother spent ages agonising over which video to rent from Blockbuster, negotiating and bribing one another till we got our choice. Now we have all options available at the flick of a button.
And we’ve found some great films to watch. There are the latest Disney films of course but there have been others of note. To our surprise, the Dora the Explorer movie – ‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’ was one we all enjoyed. And then there was Enola Holmes, The Mitchells vs The Machines, The Sleepover and others.
They aren’t the films I watched growing up, but perhaps my kids will feel nostalgic about these movies when they are adults. And while streaming a film is not quite the same as selecting video rentals at Video Ezy, watching movies as a family, no matter how we access them, enhances the feeling of connectedness between us and helps us find light in times that may seem troubled.
