Movie · Netflix · 2021

Yes Day

A family that is still a family. The gag is the yes. The useful part is the no that returns.

Yes Day will tempt a child to want the day and a parent to feel guilty for every no. The film's own ending disagrees with the poster: a house that says yes to everything loses the children it was trying to delight. Watch it if you can bear the middle, and do not agree to the experiment just because the movie was funny. The good scene is the one where a parent is a parent again.

The eight

Industry
4/10
The parents have ordinary jobs and ordinary fatigue.
Household
7/10
A mother, a father, and children in one house, trying to like each other again.
Piety
3/10
No creed. A rule, and then the breaking of it.
Courage
4/10
The brave thing for the parents is to be disliked for an afternoon and then to be parents again.
Republic
4/10
One household.
Temperance
4/10
The day is an advertisement for appetite, and the ending walks it back.
Truth
5/10
It admits the parents had become only a wall. It also admits a house cannot live on yes.
Stewardship
5/10
What they hand back is a limit, which a child actually needs.

Live historicallyDo not import the game. Keep one no that protects the house, and explain it.

Movie · Prime Video · 2015

Hotel Transylvania 2

A noisy family argument about a grandchild. The love is real. The volume is exhausting.

The first joke is that classic monsters run a resort. The joke that matters is an old man who wants his grandson to repeat him. Families recognize that without the fangs. The film is too loud and too long for what it has to say, and it does say it: the child is not a second draft of the grandfather.

Fine for a family movie night if the youngest can take the noise. Ask the grandparents in the room, kindly, what they are hoping the child repeats.

The eight

Industry
3/10
The hotel is a business, played as a backdrop.
Household
7/10
A grandfather, a daughter, a son-in-law, a baby. The conflict is about who the child is allowed to be.
Piety
2/10
Monsters as the in-group. No reverence.
Courage
5/10
People cross a line for the boy.
Republic
5/10
An extended clan that has to share one child.
Temperance
4/10
Slapstick and a lot of it.
Truth
4/10
The grandfather is wrong and has to know it.
Stewardship
6/10
The question is what you hand a child: your kind, or his own life.

Live historicallyTell a grandchild one story of the family, and then let him play something that is only his.