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Cinema Soirée

While I'm on the subject of movies...

I was flipping through this month's issue of Bon Appétit last night (my new favorite magazine, by the way) and found an ad for Triscuit crackers/Turner Classic Movies. I don't care about the crackers so much, but Turner Classic Movies makes life lovely. The ad suggested a specific film scheduled to air this month on TCM as the backdrop for a special evening. For example, you can create a bohemian evening by watching Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire and snacking on Triscuits dipped in cheese fondue.

I'm not sure how bohemian that set-up situation would actually be, but the ad got it right by suggesting The Parent Trap with a camping theme for a family fun evening complete with s'mores using Triscuits instead of graham crackers. I'd like to suggest you skip the cheesy Haley Mills version and watch the cheesy Lindsey Lohan version instead.

When our girls were younger, we had a motorhome we called the Big Ass Motorhome because it seemed so large and lumbering when we drove it down the highway or backed it into a camp site. It was loaded with an oven, a microwave, air conditioning, and a TV with a VCR. The girls gathered their favorite movies before each trip, and somehow the remake of The Parent Trap became an essential element of every camping excursion.

We watched that movie so many times, sometimes more than once a day, that we all had the thing memorized and could recite the lines ahead of the characters. And the sound track became the soundtrack to camping. To this day if we hear Nat King Cole's version of "L-O-V-E," we can't help but be transported to the various scenes of The Parent Trap—the rich kids' summer camp, the streets of London, the vineyards of Napa Valley. The same is true for "There She Goes" and "Here Comes the Sun" or "This Will Be An Everlasting Love."

The storyline to The Parent Trap is ludicrous. What kind of people separate twins at birth because they can't stand to live in the same house? They don't tell either child the other one exists and never let them meet the other parent. The girls only discover each other by accident while attending summer camp, and they set out plotting to get their parents back together after twelve years of separation. Those people barely deserve children much less a happily-ever-after plot line, but it's still a fun film.

It's so unbelievable, you can't help but let yourself be sucked into the story, especially when you're parked in a campsite with sticky s'mores, frogs chirping in the bushes, and a fire in the fire ring. If my girls were to come home for an evening, I might suggest a Family Fun Soirée with the warn-out video, but trying to recreate events rarely works. Just like when the twins tried to recreate the cruise ship where their parents met. Let's get together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe instead, I could try the movie night with The King and I while nibbling Triscuits served with a "Thai-inspired combination of hot and sweet peppers." Or maybe I'll just watch the film.

Comments

dive said…
Hee hee. I remember The Parent Trap, Robyn.
At least I remember the original; I didn't know it had been re-made.
Goodness what an awful movie, but I enjoyed it when I was little.
What on earth are Triscuits?
This comment has been removed by the author.
But isn't Dennis Quaid just brilliant in the newer version of parent trap??? Huh???

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