Family Night--Darling Daughter's Choice...or WAS IT?

Shout out to Plano's Jasper High School administration for having "NOT Due Fridays." This thinly veiled admission that football games, which are on Thursday nights, are religion in Texas, is the perfect excuse for me to force our little gang of three to spend time with each other. I LOVE IT! Let's see, we've done ice cream, love notes, dinner and DVD, and now, Chili and Dollar Movie, which is really $1.50 after 6 p.m. IT'S A SCAM I TELL YOU...A SCAM!

Crockpot Turkey Chili was awesome and way easy. We threw it over cheese and Fritos to make it funner (YES, I am aware it's "more fun." I am quoting a teen). Here's the recipe: brown 2 pounds of ground turkey in olive oil. Drain and place the turkey in the crockpot with two cans of tomato sauce (not paste), 2 cans of mild enchilada sauce, , chili powder and a packet of McCormick's Chili seasoning. Easy peasy and yummy in the tummy!

Now a family of three can easily spend $100 going to the movies at the cinema. That's why we usually RedBox it for $1. However, Super 8 was on at the dollar theater and we thought its cinematography would be best admired on the big screen. Not really! Darby couldn't think of what to do again so Daddy Dearest suggested she see what was playing. Then she checked out the rotten tomatoes reviews. They texted me at work to let me know it was on and had pretty good reviews. I was in!

"Pretty good" and "Not bad" are puny ways to describe Super 8. I sat there the whole time just marveling at how J.J. Abrams had re-incarnated the beloved movies of my youth like Goonies, Stand By Me, and E.T. It was age appropriately sorta scary, and it never once lagged in story line, even with a little love story thrown in.

IMDB's synopsis: After witnessing a mysterious train crash, a group of friends in the summer of 1979 begin noticing strange happenings going around in their small town, and begin to investigate into the creepy phenomenon.

Tell me that is not a face every
mother would love! PHOTO SOURCE

Let me say, Joel Courtney as Joe Lamb, our hero, was what every mother of a teen aged daughter hopes she brings home to meet the parents so she can date him. I absolutely fell in love with his character and would adopt him in a heart beat! His rag tag gang of buddies had the requisite "Fat Kid", "Goof Ball", "Pyro/Bad Boy", "Dunce", and "Nerd". Those boys could hang out at our house any day. And look out Dakota, little sister Elle Fanning is going to give you a run for your money as a little starling! Joe's love interest Alice delivers heart tearing lines in the main movie as well as in the fake zombie movie the kids are making (BTW...stay for the credits to see their final product...it's HYSTERICAL!)

I am sure Super 8 gets its PG13 rating for the multiple stoner references and the jumping violence and spooky kidnap scenes. However, this is good campy fun scariness. It was a little tough to watch in places because little Joe's mother had been tragically killed in the beginning of the movie, and he and his dad were openly heartbroken. That kinda dug at some personal wounds but did not detract from my falling in love with the movie.

The funniest line of the movie is after the stoner store clerk who's driving the kids around town to save the day passes out from smoking too much pot, and Joe has to take the wheel but drives everyone into the war zone town. Bombs are going off, soldiers are running around shooting at what I am not sure, and tanks are shooting rounds at the kids. They can't get stoner to wake up and get out of the car. It's very intense. Martin says, "Drugs are bad!" We laughed so loud. Yes, they are, little one!

I think the best line of the movie was when Joe is grabbed by the creature. OH NO! Don't eat him! Joe screams at the alien, "We understand! Bad things happen...bad things happen...but you can still live." That really hit home. Bad things do happen. We survive them so that we can continue to live. I love that Family Night is quickly becoming a way for us as a family to keep living.