Family Movie Nights! "Easy A" Family Review

We love movies.  LOVE THEM.  Before the housing market crashed, my husband had a full-time Custom Home Theater business.  Now, it has to squeeze between home and his "part time" 40 hour a week post office job.

However, because of that business, we ended up with some pretty nice home theater equipment.  We don't have it properly installed yet, but we couldn't wait any longer.  We had to try it out for our first family movie night since moving into our new house!

I love love love having a nice big living room where we can all fit to watch a movie and we even have room for guests!  Not that we've had any for a movie night yet, but we'll get there someday.

Temporary and hokey, and yes, barely set up without duct tape, but it works for now!  Look at that nice big picture!  We have a theater at home:)

Easy A Review

Anyway, for our first movie night, we watched "Easy A" with Emma Stone.  I had already told my aspiring actress daughter Paris that she reminds me a lot of Emma Stone when she's playing a quirky, goofy type character, because that is SO Paris' personality.  So, we chose this movie to watch so that I could illustrate my point.  Which I did.  Very well:)

The movie was a hit.  I'll be the first to say that we let our kids watch movies that most may not.  We watch them together, and honestly, I've found that it brings up a lot of conversations that we otherwise wouldn't have.  I find it comforting to know that our kids feel like they can talk with us about things, that they can see problems and issues with people on the screen... and they know it is just a movie.  The girls have both been on several movie sets, so maybe they have an even better perspective of that.

Anyway, Emma Stone's character is outcast as a "slut" after a lie she tells her friend gets out of hand.  It actually came up from our public school Junior that this particular plot twist seems ridiculous, as in high school, every seems to find it 'normal' to be sexually active.  Granted, he only has one year of public school under his belt (he was homeschooled up until last fall, then went to Public school at his request), but that was my memory of high school, too, that no one cared and pretty much the only people who stood out were the ones that were very vocal about NOT having sex.  That brings up an opportunity to talk about our thoughts, our values and even our mistakes in our own past.

I find that the conversations come up often over the following days and weeks, even, sometimes when the kids are one on one with me, sometimes at the dinner table, but it opens discussions.

The stereotypical Christian goodie-two-shoes in the movie was incredibly off putting.  I know she was supposed to be, but there are far too many of the type out there, the "let me put myself on this pedestal and pray for you as I berate you behind your back" types.  I don't even think its JUST Christians that do this, not in the least, but I find it incredibly off putting when people hide their actions behind a label of Christianity that in my opinion is decidedly UN-Christ-like.  Again, it was good for conversation.

I like the movie.  I find Emma Stone to be entertaining.  I found her family in the movie to be highly entertaining.  I love it when a non-typical family and teen are portrayed in a movie in a good light.  I get sick of the "all teens are rebels and hate their parents" and "all parents have given up and just know their teens are horrible rebellious people" attitude that I see in a lot of television shows especially.

I think if your children are younger, this probably isn't a movie for your family.  If you have teens and you are a pretty open minded family, you'll probably love it.  If you're pretty conservative and don't want your children exposed to the concept of sexually active/partying/foul mouthed teens, definitely steer VERY clear of this movie.  For us, we've always said that we're happy to watch most movies with our kids, as long as they continue to behave by our family's standards and not by mimicking imaginary characters in a movie.

Anyway... fun movie, fun characters, some of my favorite actors, I give it a thumbs up!

*Since my kids then watched it again the next night, I say they must have enjoyed it as well.

Next Family Movie Review:  DodgeBall

Picky Cheapskate Family Movie Review: What to Expect When You're Expecting

For the record, our kids are 11, 14, 16 & 17.  We're pretty lax about what our kids watch with us when it comes to TV & movies (especially now that they're older), mainly because we have yet to see any negative impact on their behavior/language/respect, etc and in part because we find that it often leads to great conversations.  HOWEVER, just because I let my kids watch certain movies, does not in any way mean that I'm saying that it would be fine for your children.  You can get some pretty detailed reviews at Screen It and Parent Reviews, if you are leery of letting your children watch something in particular.

Anyway, family friendly?  I thought it was okay.  There wasn't anything horrible that I noticed, other than a couple making out on the hood of a car, a couple coming out of the woods with their clothes undone and JLo makes an offer to her husband that my girls probably didn't get and the boys probably did, but they cut from that scene pretty much instantly after she made the comment.  My daughter pretty much hides her eyes, anyway, even if people are just getting close to the point of kissing:)

We saw What to Expect When You're Expecting last night.  It seemed poorly edited, although not as bad and dragging as I found Bridesmaids (don't burn me at the stake, but I really didn't care for that movie).  It was kind of slow in parts when I think it could have clipped along a little bit.

DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER IF YOU'RE LIKE ME!

This was another movie that I would have enjoyed FAR more if I hadn't already seen the trailer several times.  A lot of the "funny" is spoiled by watching the trailers in my opinion.


I enjoyed the female characters and the mostly realistic portrayal of pregnancy.  I liked it a lot that they were varied and... relatable (I can not get that word to look right, hopefully you know what I mean:), I guess is the word I'm looking for.

Although I LOVED the fact that the dads were involved with their kids on a regular basis (especially Awwww at the baby carriers on the dads!), some of the male actors were distracting OR maybe they just had such poor characters to portray, what's your take on that?  I wonder if the scriptwriter just doesn't know many married men/fathers because the male characters seemed, for the most part, INCREDIBLY one dimensional and just... awkward, stilted and not believable.

The births weren't as bad as some I've seen portrayed.  I know that my experience is probably different from a lot of people, but I hate it in movies when EVERY SINGLE BIRTH has to be a woman SCREAMING bloody murder the entire labor.  I do wish they'd have shown a home birth or even just a water birth, but I'm not at all surprised that they didn't.  One of the birthing results surprised me a lot for several reasons... but since it involves a SPOILER, you'll have to select the white text to read it!

I was very surprised when one of the moms who had a birth plan and said she didn't want an epidural begged for one and got it (that wasn't the part that surprised me, I know that people can change their minds in labor), it really shocked me when she was the only one of the laboring moms who then had complications and had to have a c-section.  I wonder if they got a lot of flack from that because at least to me, it implied that using the epidural can cause problems (which, I think, it can... but I was surprised to see it portrayed that way in the movie.)  

Oh, and ANOTHER SPOILER:
When the woman had her miscarriage, it was a slightly funny moment when my 11 year old daughter said, "What does it mean if you're bleeding when you're pregnant?"  And I said, "Well, it means that something might be wrong with the baby."  Then she said, all in awe, "What?  You mean you can't BLEED when you're pregnant???" and I said, "Just like period bleeding, not ALL bleeding."  She was so disappointed!  She thought for a second that you got some sort of superpowers of not being able to bleed when you were pregnant. 

I liked the way it dealt with some of the relationships and that everything wasn't all perfectly planned and instead some of them were really unexpected and caused strain just like in real life.  I love that one of the couples were adopting and even that someone lost their job... because that is reality.  I like just a touch of reality in my comedies:)

Verdict:All in all, it was a good movie, worth seeing in the cheap theater, but definitely not worth shelling out the big bucks for a top theater.  I'd wait to rent it until its on the cheap rack, personally, but then again, I am really cheap when it comes to movies.  As it is, our family of 6 had a night out in the A/C with a big popcorn (with a free refill) and a large soda for a total of $16.00.  Not too shabby.

The kids and my husband kind of thought "eh", but they enjoy a night out, and honestly, I don't think any of them are half as picky about movies as I am:)

It also led to some interesting conversations on the way home with the kids asking if that was "really how being pregnant/giving birth is?"  Something that you generally don't just have brought up... well, we kind of do sometimes, but not quite in the same way.  It was also good to discuss different ways to go about having children that they've not encountered before (adoption, how hard it is for some people to conceive, etc)

So there is that.  My first movie review.  Have you seen What to Expect When You're Expecting?  What did you think?