Awkward Family Movie Night

Posted on | by TheAwkwardMan

As a parent, one of the activities I enjoy the most is when we have “Family Movie Night”.

Movie Night is everyone in their PJs piled into mom and dad’s bed or all snuggled up on the couch.

Movie Night is a time for loading up on our favorite snacks and filling up tubs of popcorn covered with way too much salt and butter.

Movie Night is a chance to press pause on the endless hustle of work, shopping, house-cleaning, practices, games, etc.

Movie Night is listening to your little ones giggle and eventually falling asleep in your arms as you hold them close.

Movie Night is often one of those perfect Facebook moments to show off your wonderful life and kids… #lovinglife #movienight

Sounds wonderful right?

Never mind the fact that just moments before you posted your “perfect” family moment to the world you had likely just threatened everyone in the room, “If everyone doesn’t shut their mouths and stop touching each other I’m turning the movie off and you are going straight to bed!”

You know it’s true.

Movie Night evolves as your family grows up and the plethora of Disney and Pixar animations eventually gives way to films like Jumanji or Star Wars.

Some of you have probably even tried to share the classics from your own childhood or try to throw in the original Jumani or Star Wars trilogy just to show them what the “real” movie was like and how it was so much better (or not).

As the kids enter their teens, the movie selections expand immensely and you have to start making decisions about which movies are appropriate or not. You have to start asking questions such as is this movie too violent, too sexy, too boring, or too crude?

COVID-19 Overload

As I sit here writing this, I can’t help but thinking that family movie night has changed from what it was in the “pre-COVID” days. What was once an occasional indulgence, for many quite possibly turned into a full-on movie marathon.

We consumed everything on Netflix from “Stranger Things” all the way down to the “Tiger King”. CBS even brought back Sunday night movies.

Over the course of the past 9 months, the novelty of huddling the family up together and watching a movie has been traded in for each of us sneaking off to our own little corners of the house either reading, playing video games, streaming YouTube, scrolling social networks, or creating the latest TikTok.

True 2020 quality family time means just stay out of each other’s way!

High Hopes

Well, this is a story about one particular movie night where things didn’t go quite as planned. A night filled with good intentions and high hopes that ultimately missed the mark and fell flat on its face.

The ironic part is that the imperfection of this night is what has secured it in the archives of our memories. Well, at least mine.

My daughter has tried her best to erase it from her memory.

My wife has just written me off as having terrible judgment in what a good movie is and is trying to ban me from ever picking the family movie ever again.

Meanwhile, I continue to try to justify my thought process over and over in my head to give myself some peace. I’ve done this so many times that I have decided to share the story with you because I think you might find it entertaining.

Good Intentions…

Occasionally my job requires that I travel to Europe. On these trips, the in-flight movies are essential to surviving the endless hours of confinement to my seat.

This provides me a rare opportunity to watch movies that I know my wife would prefer not to watch with me. That usually means anything like action, sci-fi, and one of my weaknesses, the dramatic comedy.

On this particular return flight, I came across the trailer for a movie titled “Lady Bird”.

This movie looked to be right in my wheelhouse. It was about an awkward teenager who struggles to fit in at high school and who is fighting for acceptance from her parents, especially her mother, and who is trying to find her path forward in life as she nears the end of her high school journey.

Given that we also have a teenage daughter who loves to test our boundaries at times, I was immediately interested. I thought “you know what… I think this would be a good move to watch with my wife and daughter”.

Take a look for yourself. I have linked the trailer below as evidence of my good intentions. Make sure to come back and see how the story ends up.

Seem’s ok, right? Or is it just me that likes these types of movies? Did you catch any red flags that I should have looked into a bit deeper? I see them now…

Here is what I took from the trailer…

The role of the mother is played by Laurie Metcalf who you may know from “Rosanne” or now “The Connors”. We are regular viewers of “The Connors” where she cracks us up in her role as the nutty aunt.

Seeing her in a dramatic role yet still appearing to have the opportunity to be funny looked like a good selling point for me.

… my wife is the rock from which our foundation of tough-love is built on. Without her, I’d be in big trouble.

As I watched the interactions between the strong-willed mother and daughter I was reminded a bit of home and how our 15-year old daughter pushes us to the limits of our boundaries and how my wife is the rock from which our foundation of tough-love is built on. Without her, I’d be in big trouble.

In the scene where they are shopping for a dress, again I could almost picture the exact scenario with my girls. I’ve witnessed dress shopping in all its glory and sometimes it can get plain ugly. I have also seen the joy and closeness that can come from these shopping experiences.

Maybe I was just a tad homesick or a little sleep-deprived (or most likely both) but I really thought I had discovered a home-run of a movie to watch with my wife and teenage daughter. We were going to have ourselves a classic movie night!

The Big Night!

As we settle into bed, my daughter sandwiched between my wife and me, a bit of nostalgia settles in as I am so happy that at 15 my daughter has agreed to hang out with mom and dad for the evening. Who knows how many more chances we will have before we are simply just too uncool to hang with.

Spoiler Warning!!!

I will do my best not to tell too much, but I can’t really convey the events of our evening without getting into a bit of detail. I will be as modest as I can but keep in mind this was an R-rated movie (which should have been a clue to do some homework). How’s that for a bit of foreshadowing about where this story is headed?

A good start.

The movie begins innocently enough and establishes the complicated relationship dynamic between Lady Bird and her mother. “Lady Bird” is the name our 17-year old protagonist has given herself and is what she prefers to be called.

We see that Lady Bird and her mother have been road-tripping together on a college visit and to occupy their time on this long journey they have been listening to “The Grapes of Wrath” audiobook.

At the conclusion of the book, both are quite emotional and there is a sense of closeness between the two as they share this moment.

This happy moment is short-lived as the scene quickly transitions into an argument regarding their widely differing views on which type of college Lady Bird should attend. The argument escalates and ultimately Lady Bird bails out of the moving car and breaks her arm.

After this scene, we are given an introduction to Lady Bird’s home life. We get a view of their modest home and the private high-school she attends because her parents feel that the public school is too dangerous. We also meet her father, rebellious brother, and her best friend.

So far so good…

Bump in the road.

We move on to see Lady Bird and her best girlfriend chatting in what looks like a “typical” high-school girl sort of conversation.

Having not been a high school girl myself, I can’t really say I know what is “typical” of these conversations. My blanket assumption is that there is goofiness, giggling, boy talk, and probably things that daughters would not say when their dads are within earshot.

The conversation shared with us definitely gets into the latter.

In this conversation, Lady Bird is describing to her friend an experience she had sitting in a hot tub when the water jet accidentally led her to discover a particularly sensitive area. This apparently was her first discovery of what can happen… down there.

To add to the awkwardness of the scene for us at home having a family movie night, the friend then goes on to tell about her own discovery experience.

I’ll leave it at that.

Ok, there’s more than just one bump on this road…

After we pretend to ignore what the girls had just discussed, we move on to watch as Lady Bird discovers Drama club. At Drama club, she meets a boy who is particularly good at theater and she is immediately interested in him.

It appears this is her first real boyfriend and we see their relationship blossom at the school dance where they have their first kiss. Nothing too bad here, maybe we are back on track.

Wrong!

Soon after the dance, Lady Bird and her boyfriend escape to a lawn where they are lying down looking up at the stars. In this scene, there is an awkward encounter that transpires as Lady Bird lets the boy know that he is welcome to go to 2nd base with her.

She obviously doesn’t say it that way but I think that conveys enough of what was suggested for those of you that know your baseball situations.

The boyfriend surprisingly declines the offer because he “respects her too much”. Now, while every dad in the world would love to believe that is what any respectable teenage boy would do in this situation with their own daughter, I can tell you that is not the case here. This and some other clues I haven’t mentioned are just a bit of foreshadowing that this guy just isn’t really all that into girls.

For those keeping score here, we are only about 30 minutes into this movie.

My audience is definitely beginning to get a bit restless and I’m sitting there wondering what the heck is going on.

Are we even on a road?

Over the next 30-minutes, the situation continues to decline. I’ll just provide the bullet points to spare us all the details.

  • Lady Bird walks in on her boyfriend kissing someone else… and it was not a girl. That pretty much ends their relationship.
  • More girl talk… a larger group of “popular” girls at school talking about their romantic encounters. Just plain awkward.
  • Conversation ensues with her mom about when is the appropriate time for a girl to have – you know what – for the first time. Again, not something you want to discuss with dad around.

At this point, my wife and daughter have their iPhones out and are clearly hoping for this movie to be over soon. I’m essentially frozen and not making eye contact with anyone and just hoping beyond hope that the worst is over.

As I’m sure you can guess, it’s not.

Wheels are off the bus… four-alarm dumpster fire!

Somewhere in between all of the previous awkward moments, Lady Bird met a new boy. This boy is in a band and part of the “cool” crowd of kids, which was not Lady Bird’s typical crowd.

It’s at this point Lady Bird takes a turn towards doing things that make her fit in with her new “popular” friends.

It’s also at this point where the director tosses any opportunity for modesty aside (that went out the window a while ago) and seems to think that we need a detailed depiction of Lady Bird’s “first experience” with a boy.

For the baseball fans, we are talking about rounding third and heading home…

Needless to say at this point my daughter has covered her face with a pillow and everyone is looking away from the TV waiting for some sort of audible clue that the scene is over.

It literally felt like time stood still at that point.

We go ahead and finish out the movie but I’m pretty sure no one is really paying attention to the plot anymore and we are just riding it out.

This Family Movie Night is officially a bust.

Reflection

I think we’ve all experienced a movie where the trailer was a bit misleading. Oftentimes it will be a comedy where you will see all these great hilarious moments only to find out that you didn’t actually need to watch the movie to see all the laughs.

This movie is a bit like that.

Based on the trailer, I was expecting to see a lot more Laurie Metcalf and see the story evolve around the mother-daughter relationship.

Instead, the film explores Lady Bird’s journey through her senior year in high school in graphic detail and weaves these experiences around the mother-daughter relationship theme.

It feels to me like an opportunity was missed here where the film could have told the story in a way that was a bit more creative and modest and made it more of a family film but that does not appear to have been the writer’s intent. It seems the intention was to present a raw depiction of Lady Bird’s experiences rather than trying to sugar-coat reality.

I ultimately do like the movie as I’m a sucker for movies that chronicle the struggles of the awkward. “Lady Bird” definitely fits that mold. Having watched this in a different situation I could have focused more on the depth of the emotional struggles Lady Bird was going through as she was trying to find her way from adolescence to becoming an adult.

There are good messages to be taken from the film about understanding who your true friends are, wanting to be accepted, and defining who you are. The movie is centered around a highly confusing time in a young person’s life and I felt it did achieve telling that story.

“Real life” means imperfections are going to be part of it.

So we live and we learn.

Some people learn that “Awkward Dad” shouldn’t pick movies for Family Movie Night.

Some people learn to use the IMDB parents guide before watching R-rated movies with their children.

I’ve learned that life would actually be a bit mundane if every moment was a picture-perfect Facebook post.

“Real life” means imperfections are going to be part of it. Rather than hiding from our imperfections or imperfect moments, embrace them as the memory milestone markers that they are.

You might have an interesting story to tell.

Yours Truly,

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