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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Welcome to the movies, wait and see...

When you're very pregnant, you basically have absolutely no energy to do anything except for lay on the couch and watch movies.  My husband and I pretty much adopted our local Redbox as our own and rented a variety of movies.  We made a mental list of all of the movies (old/recently released) we had heard were really good but had never seen and slowly made our way through them.  This continued through the first few weeks of my maternity leave (when all you can do is stare blankly at a television anyway).

Do you know what we discovered?

We suck at picking movies.  S-U-C-K.

So, here's a list of some of the movies we have seen during that time up to now that have been completely inappropriate.  It's a cautionary tale I like to call...

Movies You Should Never Watch as a New Mom

Fatal Attraction


We actually watched a series of Michael Douglas movies (believe it or not neither of us had ever seen Disclosure or Basic Instinct either.)  However, after watching this one, I became frantic that I would have to counsel my young child after finding his beloved pet had met some gruesome and horrible demise.  Pregnancy hormones aside - that is a messed up movie.  Add me, a hormonal mess on my best days, to the mix?  Sobbing for hours about the poor bunny rabbit.  I also have now refused to see Wall Street or its sequel even though my husband assures me that no small animals are harmed as part of either plotline.

Seven


My husband had never seen this movie and it's probably one of my favorites.  Of course, I forgot that little surprise ending.  What's in the box, you ask Brad Pitt?  Oh, nothing.  Just a dead pregnant woman's head.  What the hell was I thinking?!

Revolutionary Road

Add this one to the "What the hell was I thinking?!" category.  If you haven't see it -  First, don't.  Secondly, DON'T.  Especially while pregnant.  Or if you have young children.  Or if you are a living, breathing, human being and like feel good movies or at least sad movies that have some sort of message.  This one?  Doesn't.

Riding in Cars with Boys


I'm cheating a bit on this one because I had seen this movie prior to becoming a mom.  But, watching it one week postpartum was a TERRIBLE idea.  You see this poor young girl attempt to raise a child who she was obviously unprepared for and he, in turn, ends up hating her for making the decision to leave his heroin-addicted father.  Watching movies about people struggling with raising children only made those first few weeks more overwhelming for me and made me feel even more like I was going to fail.  On the flip side?  Watching Teen Mom will make you feel great about every decision you make as a parent.


Thanks, Amber.



Life as We Know It


In truth, I watched this movie for the first time just this past weekend.  Cried. the. entire. time.  And no, it wasn't because it was the 80th movie where I've watched Katherine Heigl play the same character (herself.)  Basically the premise of the movie is that Heigl and Josh Duhamel become the legal guardians of their best friends' kid after said friends are killed.  In a horrific car accident.  Just days after their baby daughter's first birthday.   The thought of it all made me sick.  I kept saying to my husband, "This movie is making me so depressed.  I need to turn this off.  A romantic comedy should not make me this depressed."  Let me tell you, it was not worth the box and a half of Kleenex.


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So, there's a good list to get you started.  Does anyone have any movies to add?  I'd love to hear them.
And then I will avoid them like the plague.
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7 comments:

  1. AndreaAugust 16, 2011 at 10:54 PM

    Shutter Island. No mom should put herself through it. The premise of the movie is great and the telling is masterful. The details? *shudder*

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  2. TenaciousTAugust 17, 2011 at 12:16 AM

    I read The Time Traveler's Wife and Marley and Me while TTC, not knowing they include stories about miscarriage. Made me depressed and paranoid. Then, shortly after having my baby girl, I was foolish enough to read Jodi Picoult's The Pact and also The Lovely Bones which both focus on bad bad things that happened to little girls and I vowed to never let my girl out of my sight, ever ever ever. And of course, I read right before I go to sleep - so, hello, nightmares!!

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  3. The New Mom on the BlogAugust 17, 2011 at 6:53 AM

    @Andrea - OHMYGOSH! We actually DID watch that when I was pregnant come to think about it! I think I got so caught up in the ending and how the differing philosophies on medicating psychosis are still relevant in psych hospitals today that I COMPLETELY FORGOT about the whole triple homicide children thing. YES. VERY hard to watch when you're a parent. SAD. SAD. SAD.

    @TenaciousT - I've read 3/4 and pretty much know the whole Marley and Me story (which is exactly WHY I haven't read it) and I can say - YES. I know I read all of those before I even thought about kids, but I think I cried at some part during all of them. Especially Time Traveler's Wife. All four of those have been made into movies as well! So they could ALL sit on this list. I know someone who had to stop reading The Pact because they have a daughter named Emily and kept picturing her throughout the book. HORRIBLE!

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  4. AnonymousAugust 17, 2011 at 4:39 PM

    I was silly enough to watch a documentary of the tsunami in Thailand when I was 39 weeks pregnant.... "never before seen footage" actually meant watching families search the boards where pictures of corpses were posted and locating the picture that told their daughter/son was dead. OH.MY.WORD! I have never cried so hard in my entire life.

    Katie

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  5. Courtneytcu98August 17, 2011 at 11:09 PM

    Not a movie, but one of my fave shows is Law & Order: SVU. Big no-no when giantly preggers. Big no-no. Bad things happen to babies.

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  6. UnknownAugust 21, 2011 at 4:27 AM

    1. The movie UP. I watched it while TTC, nobody told me how sad the beginning is I cried the entire movie.
    2. The Omen, I was terrified I was going to have a demon child.
    3. Its Alive, really because it is overly cheesy and partially because its about a homicidal baby.

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  7. AllysonAugust 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM

    Do NOT watch Trainspotting while pregnant or while raising a newborn. In fact, you'd better just put it off til your child has hit puberty.

    But as an alternative, I find the documentary "Babies" to be preggo-crack. I've watched it like 3 times since I've gotten pregnant. The Mongolian baby rocks.

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