Most of the time my family is about the outdoors. But come rainy days -- or Texas summer days hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk, we’ll settle for the great indoors. Among our favorite indoor venues -- a movie theater. With the right movie, the boys are spellbound, grownups rest and laugh at jokes over the kids’ heads, and everybody’s cool and dry -- at least for a couple of hours.
Big spenders that we aren’t, for family movie days or evenings, we look for bargains. We’re lucky enough to live close to a couple of discount movie houses, but other family-friendly deals abound, especially in summer.
High on our list of bargains is Studio Movie Grill’s Children’s Summer series, at several locations in the Dallas area. Monday - Friday, we can catch movies for $1 per kid, $2 per adult, starting at 11 a.m. Yes, you can buy a meal there, too, but you don’t have to. This week’s movie is Despicable Me; next week’s is How to Train Your Dragon. This deal is only good at the box office. Get there early -- it often sells out. For the full schedule, click on “family” at www.studiomoviegrill.com/.
(Studio Movie Grill also shows $2 cartoons weekends year round. And for evening movies at $1, often mild enough for older kids, click on the “alternate programming” link. )
Or, combine movies with the outdoors, as in “dive-in” movies at selected Dallas swimming pools. Tonight, June 21, it’s Hotel Transylvania at the Walnut Hill Pool, free with cost of pool admission. Gates open at 8:30 p.m. Dive-in movies later this summer are Madagascar 3, July 12; Wreck-it Ralph, July 26, and Pirates: Band of Misfits, August 16. For locations, see
www.dallasaquatics.org/news-events/.
Also tonight, you can catch Moonrise Kingdom as part of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s ‘til Midnight programming each third Friday. Admission to the museum, music and movie is free from 6 p.m. to midnight. The film screens at 9 p.m., but hey, tomorrow’s not a school day! July’s film is Cars, August’s is Three Amigos. And yes, it continues in the fall. For details, see
www.nashersculpturecenter.org/.
Also free, and not too late for little ones, are the family movie nights at the Dallas Public Library’s Central Branch. Films screen every Thursday during the summer, beginning at 6 p.m. at the second floor Children’s Center. When I called, I was told licensing agreements prevent the library from publishing the line-up online, so give the librarians a call at 214-670-1671 for each week’s movie. For directions and other library events, see www.dallaslibrary/.
For later this summer, I’ve already put the Dallas Museum of Art’s film series, Love, War and Myth in Ancient Greece, on my calendar. Sound too heavy? Think -- Jason and the Argonauts, with mythical monsters by the late Ray Harryhausen. Thursdays this August at 7 p.m. Tickets are a tad more expensive than others listed here -- $5. But when was the last time you saw the skeleton warriors on the big screen? For the full schedule, see
www.dma.org/Events/Films/indes.htm.
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