One family activity we try to do at least once a month is family movie night. Since my son has finally reached a stage where he enjoys non-animated movies (though he does still love animated movies and shows), we’ve been selecting classic family movies to watch. Now I use the word classic and many of the movies I’m thinking of are from the 80s, 90s (those that I enjoyed as a kid) and early 2000s, so I don’t know if classic is the correct word but you get what I mean – I’m not that old, am I???
We started with Back to the Future and it was a huge hit with my son. Back to the Future II and III are high on the list for future movie nights.
Now without traditional television and no longer any local video stores it can be harder to find the classics. We love Red Box but it only has the latest movies. We own some, borrow some and a few you can find on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime (with new streaming services always popping up). Libraries are also a great source but you often need to plan ahead and reserve the movie. For those you can’t find for free, you can often find them for a small fee on Apple TV or Amazon. We watch both old and new.
Classic Movies to Watch with Pre-Teens and Teens
- Back to the Future (I, II, III)
- Ghost Busters (I, II, III)
- Home Alone (I and II)
- Wizard of Oz
- Indiana Jones
- Star Wars (all of them of course)
- All the Marvel Movies
- Harry Potter
- E.T.
- Superman
- Jaws
- Beetle Juice
- Jurassic Park (all 3)
- The Goonies
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
- The Princess Bride
- Big
- The Sandlot
- Highschool Musical
- Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
- Jumanji
- Rudy
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- A League of their Own
- Legally Blonde
Now some movies we tried to watch my son wasn’t quite ready for as a tween and he enjoyed more when he was a teen. Karate Kid (the original) was too slow for my son because at the time he didn’t care for the romance parts. I thought Grease would be great with the singing and dancing but I forgot about all the adult content (he got bored and didn’t understand a lot,,,that’s good) so that will wait until the later teen years for that one – because he liked the singing and dancing, we watched High School Musical which he really enjoyed. Movies like The Bad News Bears is not very PC especially for today’s standards so definitely great to have a conversation about the movie.
Looking for a few more movie recommendations – check out a few of our favorite movie posts:
Dora and the Lost City of Gold interview with Eugenio Derbez
10 Best 80s Movies to watch with Teens