Family Movie - Blog Posts

Best movie to watch in quarantine

Everybody just pretend to be normal.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE 2006, dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

Review: Inside Out (2015)

Rating: 8.5 of 10

Have you ever wondered what’s going on in a person’s mind? Why do they feel sad, or happy, or bored, or elated? In the case of Inside Out, you don’t need to wonder anymore.

In Inside Out, our protagonists are the tiny workers inside Riley’s head. We have Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger all work alongside each other, each representing one emotion that Riley feels, depending on who’s taking the lead.  It’s a pretty simple premise--and one that allows for a pretty powerful emotional impact.

An emotional movie about emotions? It’s almost a given, if you ask me, but Inside Out wrapped it all tightly with Riley’s journey. In that delicate age of 11, Riley’s loving-but-busy father had to move his family to another town. Away from the town that she loves, she has to move to a less-than-perfect home and go to a new school without her old friends. It’s a coming of age story that feels so real and intimate, because it’s the one that many of us had to live through at some point in our lives--and it hit us hard. My favorite moment is the scene in which Riley’s mother had a talk with her when she tucked her in, and I imagine it’s also the hardest hitting moment for parents and children alike.

But Inside Out isn’t as novel as some reviews led me to believe, mainly because I think Wreck-It Ralph did it first. Inside Out visualizes the workings of the human brain, just like Wreck-It Ralph did it with arcade games. Inside Out has Imagination Land and Dream Production Company, while Wreck-It Ralph had Sugar Rush and Hero’s Duty. Even the end lesson is basically the same; Joy can’t be meaningful without Sadness, in the same way heroes need villains. But both are great films, and it’s great we get to see such nuanced themes discussed in family movies.

TL;DR It’s not Pixar’s best (Wall-E, Up, Toy Story, and The Incredibles still take the cake), but it’s still a pretty powerful movie that may leave you needing for tissue.

Review: Freaky Friday (2003)

Rating: 8.0 of 10

Today, we’ll talk about modern day classic, Freaky Friday (and ain’t nobody going to convince me that it’s not!) which I happened to rewatch on a lazy day. I was surprised, and I realized I shouldn’t have been, at how well it held up. Okay, it’s not groundbreaking by any means. I gave it a score of 8, which means it’s firmly in the “good” category but not particularly great--but that doesn’t mean it’s not awesome or entertaining, especially for a family-friendly comedy that it is.

The story was about mother (Tess, played by Jamie Lee Curtis) and daughter (Anna, played by Lindsay Lohan) who had their bodies swapped for a day because of a spell. So on a fated Friday before Tess’ wedding, Anna literally walked in her mother’s shoes and vice versa. Naturally, all interesting things happen.

The charm of Freaky Friday was a nebulous one: basic premise is novel but simple and plot is predictable, but the execution is top-notch and it’s funny as hell. Most of it, I think, boils down to great casting. Jamie Lee Curtis had a hint of rebelliousness in her that it didn’t seem jarring when Anna (in Tess’ body) had her ears pierced and then rolls off with a motorcycle; and Lindsay Lohan actually acted reliably as an overly-responsible mother.

Freaky Friday, I think, was also great at treating its characters like a human being. The movie, as with most family movies, showed to great lengths at how the fight between Tess and Anna was basically because of misunderstanding, and there’s a scene that I really, really like. It was when Jake (Chad Michael Murray), that Anna had a huge crush on, actually offered Anna (while being herself) a ride home on his motorcycle, and she refused. It was established that she’s a rebel and she even considered not going to her mother’s rehearsal dinner for a band audition, but that scene alone showed us that she loved her mother and actually cared about what she thinks. The little brother was cute as the comic-relief type, but in a way that didn’t diminish his intelligence as a character. Ryan (Mark Harmon) was also a great, albeit under-appreciated, character as the considerate future-stepfather.

If there’s anything I’m not completely on board with, is the Jake/Anna-as-Tess subplot. Not so much about how it looks and the apparent age difference (I couldn’t care less), but about how fast he moved-on from apparent-Tess to actual-Anna that maybe happened in less than 12 hours. Apart from that, it was all great.

TL;DR Freaky Friday is an infinitely watchable family movie that worked better than the sum of its parts.

JUMANJI!

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