Ahem – interrupting our normal broadcasting – I mean blogging- service to bring you this community service announcement for your Sunday.
Go and rent ‘The Martian’ movie with Matt Damon stat. It is terrific.
Ok – I should preface this by saying that our family is a bit of a nerdy family. We aim for balance and love our sport too, but if I’m honest – we’re mostly nerdy. I love to read and blog. Matt loves all things science and maths, so really, there was no hope for our kids. Jacko is a self-confessed nerd – his nickname is ‘JT nerdzillia’ and he reads at least three books a week. All of our kids do pretty well at school.
So it’s no wonder we all loved a movie filled with chemists, biologists, physicists, astrodynamics engineers, astronaughts and NASA mission control employees.
You know what though? It was just a great family movie and there are so few of them around these days.
So, the basic gist of the movie via IMDb;
“During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.”
Our kids are getting to the age where they are old enough to stay up a little bit later – especially on weekends – so that leaves us looking for a good family movie to watch together on a Friday or Saturday night. Gone are the days were we could put them to bed by 7pm, pour the wine and break out the chocolate (for me), ice-cream for Matt, put on a movie and still get to bed by 9.30pm! My Dad had read the book ‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir and really enjoyed it and recommended we check it out. The movie was rated PG and we were a little concerned that it might be too much for the kids – especially Toby who is a bit sensitive, but aside from a little gory scene in the beginning where astronaught Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to perform emergency surgery on himself and a few ‘F’ bombs (about three in total and all completely understandable given the circumstances!) – the movie was totally ok for our kiddos – aged 10, 8, 6.
So last night, we made pizza for tea, poured the wine (for Matt and I – milk for the kids ;-)) and all settled around the coffee table in the lounge room to eat and kick the movie off around 7pm – not wanting it to be too late a night. We hit ‘rent’ in the iTunes store (for the grand total of $6 – no drive to the DVD store) on our Apple TV and in just a few seconds we had the movie up and running (gotta love technology – told ya – we’re total nerds). Kipp was a little annoying for the first half an hour as he wandered around lying on everyone and trying to kiss us all, or ask for ‘pony’ rides on our legs, but after we put him to bed we settled in for a really enjoyable movie watching experience.
We loved the the underlying message of the whole movie which was really that when presented with a problem – never give up. Instead, start with the first problem – solve that and move on to the next, and the next, and the next – just keep going and you’ll make it home – get through it.
Such a good lesson for life.
In the movie – things were life or death for astronaught, Mark Watney. There was no opportunity for him to throw his hands in the air and say its all too hard – he just had to start somewhere and keep going. And, there was humour – actually funny stuff – not silly/stupid humour – hallelujah!
Not only that – the portrayal of some of the amazing careers that are available in the astro sciences industry was fantastic. It made me want to go out and become a scientist or astronaught and I am hopeful that the kids were inspired too. The cinematography of the space equipment, Mars and the spaceships was so realistic and super interesting/captivating. We all didn’t want the movie to end.
I also loved that the commander of the space ship was a female – go girl power!
Anyway – this is not meant to be a long post – I just thought if there were other families out there like us, looking for a good family movie on a Saturday night, then definitely give ‘The Martian’ a go.
9 out of 10 in our book!
Hope you all had a good weekend and have an even better week ahead!
Love The Fealy Family xoxoxo
I agree Jess – this was a great movie! I was a bit uncertain as to whether I could show it to the girls but once I saw it, I’m going to show them as well – means I get to watch it again!
You had me at Matt Damon!! Will put this on the list.
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It’s still a toss up for me between this and Interstellar as my favorite “space movie in recent history”.