My Birthday Movie Marathon

This weekend we decided to do something totally different. It's my birthday on Monday (whoop) and to celebrate I requested a family movie marathon (with sleepover) featuring all my favourite flicks from the Eighties and Nineties. We dragged our giant mattress into the lounge, strung some bunting and Christmas lights and settled in to watch some movies full of big hair and big laughs...

[Photo by Scrag]

All the movies we watched were rated (PG), but in the twenty years since I saw them last my memory had erased the low-level curse-words and sexual innuendos. Mr G played Censor, sitting vigilant with the remote, ready to mute or fast-forward anything not family friendly.

(I've noticed that PG movies from the Eighties and Nineties use much coarser language than the ones coming out these days. Even the movies I remember as being sweet and clean.)
I had pre-ordered a bunch of movies from Fatso in readiness for our sleepover, and since Saturday dawned rainy and wet, we hunkered down and kept the movies coming, not emerging from our PJ's until lunchtime.

The Old Favourites we watched:

• Overboard (1987), a romantic comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. I remember watching this one repeatedly in the early nineties. It's funny. Lots and lots of great lines and revenge. Oh and love. But a few too many words needing to be bleeped. Sadly.
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), a comedy starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine. This one is a classic. Many many laugh-out-loud moments, as one dirty rotten scoundrel tries to run another dirty rotten scoundrel out of town. This movie hasn't lost any of it's coolness in the intervening years, and had far fewer bleeps than Overboard.
• Major Payne (1995), Starring Damon Wayans. Hahahahaha, this one is funny. I had memorised almost all of it. Again, a few bleeps necessary, but overall a very good family watch.

Some New-to-us Movies we also watched:

• Freaky Friday (2003) starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. This one was surprisingly good. And very clean. No fast-forwarding necessary or bleeping. See what I mean about the newer movies being cleaner?
• Arthur Christmas (2011) starring James Macavoy, Jim Broadbent (animated). Fantastic. A real surprise. I think we will have to review this one in depth. It came out last year and I think it will be added to our Christmas collection. A really really nice movie.

A Movie we ditched after ten boring minutes:

• Biggles (1986), starring lots of bad 80's acting and big hair. We gave it ten minutes and then all agreed to dump it. Just couldn't get past the bad acting. And the big hair. Yaaaawwwwwn.

(You can click on the titles to visit the full Movie descriptions and reviews on IMDB)

Here are the trailers for the all the Movies we watched (except for Biggles, cos really, why bother?)

Here's what our experts have to say about Our Movie Marathon:

Dash. B. Cool: "My favourite Movie was Major Payne. And I liked Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I laughed at Ruprecht the Monkey boy a lot."
Dash scores our movie marathon: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Foxy Fab: "I liked Overboard. I liked it when the girl wasn't a brat anymore. I liked Major Payne when the boys were in the dresses. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was cool too. I really liked Freaky friday too."
Foxy rates scores our movie marathon: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Super Scrag: "I liked Overboard the best. I liked the silly girl. I liked Arthur Christmas too. "
SuperScrag scores our movie marathon: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

As you can see our experts really really enjoyed our Movie marathon, and didn't think mummy's old faves too shabby neither.

Meet Our Expert Movie Critics:

Having a Family Sleepover (to Make Your Movie Marathon even more Super-Cool-Fab)

It's a different kind of birthday celebration. Instead of going out for dinner, requesting a family sleepover (with proper mattress) and my favourite cheesy comedy movies. But it was FUN. And memorable. End easy....

Here's what we did...

• we created a giant bed on the floor of the living room
• we made the effort to drag in the big mattress from our bedroom (so much more comfy than the thin camp mattress we used last time - which broke my back)
• the kids dragged in their duvets, blankets, pillows and cushions
• we created a cosy colourful nest for us all to watch the movies from
• we strung up some Christmas lights, lit some candles and hung bunting to create a festive atmosphere
• then we all hopped in our PJ's and snuggled down together for an awesome retro movie marathon (stopping occasionally for popcorn, icecream sodas, Chinese food, sleep, Breakfast and coffee)

What are your best Movie Night Ideas? Send me an email with your ideas (include a picture or link to a blog post if you can) so I can feature it here on Saturday Night at the Movies.

Have a great Saturday!
♥