Tonight we watched a fun little – yet emotional – movie about life, families and summer memories. The middle child in the movie, who is probably about 8, is so excited to write about what he did on his summer holiday. He doesn’t think that anyone, except maybe that one girl in his class will be able to top this story.

You know, the one you have to write to say what you did this summer…to prove somehow that you didn’t just sit at home and watch TV or YouTube and play Pokemon GO. (If only we could be kids again. Just one. More. Time.)

Anyway.

The movie is called “What We Did On Our Holiday” starring Rosamund Pike and David Tennant and is just one of those movies you might not have even heard of when it was out in 2014.  My husband and I find that the scores on IMDB are mostly reliable and anything rated below a 6 will be interesting to consider, yet impossible to watch.

Admittedly, the lower scores do not stop us from trying to watch and enjoy them together – you know, as husband and wife – even though I understand that it is quite common that the opposite sexes have clear differences in what they would watch if controlling the remote with zero repercussions.

Lucky for us there is a sizable center section of our Venn Diagram of movie genres.

I draw the line at senseless violence and bone crushing, blood spurting death (Game of Thrones comes to mind, but somehow I enjoyed both Fight Club and Pulp Fiction.) He can’t stand a tear-jerker, nor anything where a child gets sick and the parents have to just sit there and live with it…(and under no circumstances will he watch anything written by Nicholas Sparks).

So, as you can imagine, we have a seemingly never-ending search for movies. We seek those that are funny, comedies, quirky love-stories, most sci-fi, lots of action, thriller and happy-go-lucky, with a happy ending, resolution or even a good cliff hanger. Ideally, the kind of movies with a real story that you can lose your sense of being in the living room and immerse your self in the feelings and experiences of the characters. Or, the ones that just make you enjoy the movie without thinking too much on the plot, and there isn’t a preachy message to be learned.

It is a hit or miss, miss, miss, miss kind of search. (The odds are not quite in our favor – although we both liked the movies AND the books from The Hunger Games.)

In tonight’s movie pick, it was well above our IMDB threshold – holding a solid 6.9 position.

While a 6.9 is not quite what you would want from an Olympic gymnast it would be a decent diving score and would get you into the top 16 for the final, medal round.

This one, well, it was a win. A solid win.

Not to say there weren’t moments of crying, but that was mostly me with tears rolling down my face from laughing at the dialog from the three kids in this British pic. We had watched the trailer and looked at each with the same thought:

“I don’t think the actual movie will top this preview, but let’s try it anyway.” I am happy to say that it did. And then some. Oh, and since it is still early, we may try for another show tonight. Wish us luck finding another winner.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl

PS A fun read and will make more sense if you watch the movie and this scene in the movie is a memorable one.