The Best Family Friendly Halloween Movies and Where To Stream   + Movie Review: Hocus Pocus 2  (Disney+) + Trailer Park: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

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Speaker 1: Happy Halloween, everybody. Welcome to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I am your host, movie Mike. We are wrapping up Horror Movie Month today by talking about the best streamable, family friendly movies you can watch on Halloween. And then in the movie review along the same lines, we'll be talking about hocus Pocus Too, which is on Disney Plus, and in the trailer park a new Marvel movie to talk about coming out next year, we'll break down the ant Man and the Wasp Quantum Mania trailer. Thanks everybody for being subscribed, Thanks for listening on your Halloween shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking Audi MTV which glasses from the Nashville Podcast. Not more cases, Movie Mic Movie. We made it to the finale of Horror Movie Month. Thanks to everybody for indulging me this month because I know not everybody loves horror movies as much as I do, so today I wanted to talk about the most family friendly Halloween movies that you can watch today, because I know that sometimes you don't really want to sit down and watch something where you're completely scared. So I think this is where we can all agree on that these are just traditionally fun, family friendly movies, and I'll share where you can watch all of these, what some of these movies mean to me, my personal favorites, and you can take your pick depending on what streaming service you have. But before we get into this list, I didn't want to share with you some of my favorite Halloween traditions as a kid, I love trick or treating. I grew up in a trailer park, though, so none of the trailers would hand out Halloween candy. And also we didn't all have enough money really to spend buying candy to hand out. So my family and some other families in the trailer park are all about getting free things, so we would always go to the nicest neighborhoods. And it combined a lot of my favorite things candy, which I like a lot of people love chocolate. That is my number one go to when it comes to Halloween candy. It combined my love of horror and horror movies because I love seeing other people's costumes. Who will had money to actually spend on the costume, and my favorites were always the most traditional iconic Halloween characters like Freddy Krueger, Jason Michael Myers, anybody who could afford those masks I was always envious of. And three, it combined my love of seeing other people's houses and as a kid, one of my biggest dreams was always to live in a brick house, and I would see other kids with that and make me jealous of them. And just that moment where they opened their door and you can see into an entirely different life of somebody watching a big screen like above getting the candy. It's not that I was scoping out their houses to rob them later, but I just enjoyed seeing other people and like, man, it's not just on TV where will have nice houses. So that is what I enjoyed doing on Halloween. The only time I ever dressed up and got her legit costume was in kindergarten. My parents got me a woody costume from Toy Story and I love that thing, and as much as I begged them to get me other costumes later in grade school, could never just swing it. The only other costume my head was movie related. I did get the ghost face mask from Scream in fifth grade because I found it in the discount aisle at a grocery store. And I didn't have the full long ghost face costume, but I did have the mask and I thought that was pretty cool, so I just wore that with all black clothing and I would ghost face. Aside from that, my favorite Halloween traditions is hands down watching scary movies. And for some reason, my parents didn't really have any restrictions on me when it came to horror movies. They wouldn't let me watch anything that was too adult when it came to Jose dramas in comedy is, but when it came to horror movies, they were totally cool with it. So I was ten eleven years old watching all the Halloween movies on AMC would always run this marathon of showing every single Halloween movie, and I remember I would watch them from when the sun went down until as late as I could stay up on Halloween watching these movies, and this was like the first series of movies that I remember giving me nightmares. I remember watching all of them and then greatly regretting it as I went to sleep and woke up in a pit of sweat because I was dreaming that Michael Myers was coming for me. But I love that tradition of watching Halloween movies on AMC. And my other favorite tradition was watching them with my family because we would go and trick or treat and then come back later that night and throw all of our candy on the floor, sort through it, count all the good candy. We had, sometimes make some trades with my brother and my sister, and then in the background we would always have Halloween movies playing. And for some reason, even though I would watch the more adult horror movies as a kid, I think the ones that stuck with me the most the ones that we kind of watched together as a family the most. We're mostly family friendly Halloween movies, and I think it also has to do with the movies I was exposed to in school and leading up to Halloween. We would always watch movies in school, and of course they always had to be rated G or PG, So I think that's why in this list, I have a lot of these movies that are just associated with my childhood because they were safe enough for us to watch at school, and there were also just ways to watch things with my family that we all enjoyed. So let's get into this list what I think are the best family friendly movies that you can watch on Halloween and where to stream them. Starting first with probably one of the oldest movies on my list from night is Beetlejuice, which is rated PG in eight. P G was a little bit different as far as what we would rate something now. I think if you put Beetle Juice out now in two it would probably be PG thirteen, just because there's some swearing in this movie that you kind of forget about. There's an F bomb, there's some mild sexuality stuff in this movie, and it has some pretty legit scares that I think if you were a child, maybe not be the best for younger kids. But I think overall, compared to the other things that come along with Halloween movies, Beetlejuice is a classic. It's a horror slash comedy, but I think nowadays, compared to some of the movies that come out now geared towards kids, it's really not that bad. It has that blend of horror like elements mixed with comedy, and you have an iconic performance from Michael Keaton. So I would still say that this movie is pretty family friendly. And this was the first time as a kid that I was exposed to Tim Burton, and I greatly enjoyed his style in the eighties and nineties before he got a little bit too weird. But if you don't want to start there, how about we moved to nine in a movie that is rated PG, and you can watch it now on to Be with Ads or you can watch it on Peacock, depending on which one you have. And it is Casper from which is a family comedy, a little bit of fantasy, but one of my favorite Halloween movies. The movie stars Christina Ricci and it's about her moving into a new house with her dad. It's this giant mansion that is said to have all these wicked spirits living in it, but it turns out it's Casper, the friendly ghost. I very much love how nineties this movie feels with Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, you have the live version of Casper played by Devin Sawah. You have Brad Garrett as one of the voices of the ghost, and you even have a dan ackroid can meal in this who is in Ghostbusters. So this is a very fun, family friendly movie, and the movie is rated PG, but I still think they let a few minor curse words slip into this movie, which was a lot more acceptable even in the nineties. And I think it was also more acceptable in the nineties to work in some innuendo jokes. So it's no wonder we turned out the way we did watching all these movies growing up. And there's very minor cartoon violence in this movie. I think my favorite scene out of this is whenever they make Casper make them breakfast and they're all eating around this big, long table, and I just remember how delicious all that food look, from the donuts to the pancakes and the eggs you made and then eating everything and you're just seeing it fall completely out of them. That is one of my favorite visuals out of this movie. But there's a lot of great voice acting with all the ghosts, and it always made me want to live in a haunted mansion as a kid. And I also loved at this movie was set in Maine, and it kind of romanticized my thoughts of the Northeast in as a kid and growing up in Texas, we didn't experience seasons like this, so I love the cinematography capturing all of like the leaves changing and all of the landscape of Maine. And I've still never been there, so it also makes me want to go experience that around this time of year. So this one is definitely one of my favorites from is Casper. Moving on to the animated side, and again we have Tim Burton here, who I feel does a lot of family friendly horror comedies. I don't really love all of his live action movies aside from his work with Batman and Beatle Jews. I'm more leaned towards his animated movies, and I think my favorite out of all of his animated movies was frank and Weeney from twelve. It's an animated horror comedy. You can watch it on Disney Plus, and it's about this boy who his dog passes away suddenly and he attempts to bring his dog back through this powerful science experiment. So it's kind of like Frankenstein. He's a dog. You get the name frank and Weeny, so you have this young kid named Victor Frankenstein. He's kind of an outsider at his school except for his dog, Sparky, and he is heartbroken when Sparky passes away. And then from the help of his science teacher, he gets this idea on how to bring Sparky back to life. It goes well, and then he goes around resurrecting some of his other classmates dead animals. But then you find out there are some consequences from this. And I love the claymation animation style in this movie. I love the black and white. It gives it a very classic feel. And there's just so much work that goes into creating a stop motion movie like this. You have to animate every single movement. You have to take a picture, move the character a little bit, take another picture of move it just a little bit more. So. I just imagine how much work goes into making a movie like this, but it provides an utterly beautiful result in Frank and Weeney. So it's a great mix of beautiful animation style, a little bit of comedy with some horror like elements. But I think a movie that anybody can enjoy. So I'm going with Frank and Weeney. Checked that one out on Disney Plus. Next up on my list, I have a movie that at the time I loved that came out in two thousand and two. It's rated PG. It is a mystery on Netflix called Scooby Doo. And when this movie came out, I wasn't expecting to it to be anything great. I was, of course, eleven years old. I wasn't even the biggest Scooby Doo fan. But I think this is a movie. Looking back on it now, it's a lot more clever than it gets credit for. And this movie has a really great cast. Matthew Lillard as Shaggy is the ultimate casting is Shaggy. You also have Freddie Prince Jr. Sarah Michelle Geller, Linda hard of leaning in. The movie is about the Scooby Doo gang. After they all break up, they are individually brought to this island resort to investigate the strange things that are going on. And as a kid, I didn't realize this how significant this would be later in life. But James Gunn is the one who created this story for Scooby Doo. He went on to make movies like The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy. He just landed a really big role over on the DC world, so I'm excited to see how his vision carries over to restoring what is happening at d C. But I think this is a movie. Now looking back on it, I appreciate somebody making a movie like this for kids with that much thought into it, even though yes, some of the visual gags are dumb. The c g I is still very early two thousands, so it's not quite the best, but the writing is there, the story is there, and I still think it provides some pretty good entertainment on Halloween. That movie is rated PG, which it was falsely said to be rated ARE at one point, and I think that's because later on YouTube some deleted scenes got posted that were maybe more of an adult theme, So there was this whole theory going around that this movie was initially going to be a more adult telling of the Scooby Doo story that actually wasn't true. But I do like when movies are made like this and they don't really dump things down to kids, and I didn't realize that at the time, but now looking back on it, I have a bigger appreciation for Scooby Doo from two thousand and two. Next up on my list is another movie on Netflix. It came out in It is rated PG thirteen, It stars Adam Sandler, and it is called hub Halloween. I'm not going to feel the need to defend my pick for this movie, and I know now historically that Adam Sandler comedies are generally not that well received. I've recently been looking back on and how bizarre that year was of all the ups and downs, and one of the major highlights throughout that year was anytime we got a new movie to stream at home because theaters were shut down. So there aren't that many new movies that came out in the ones that did, even though they weren't the best movie, and if they came out now, I wouldn't really think that much about them. But there are individual movies that I just associate with different parts of that year and things they helped me with, and Huby Halloween did that for me in October of But the movie stars Adam Sandler. He plays a character named Hubi, and he is known as the Halloween Helper in this town, even though it's something that everybody kind of makes fun of him for, but he does it anyway. He's not really aware of what is going on with all the people around him, making him a mockery from kids and adults, but then he realizes that there is actually something scary happening one Halloween night and it's up to him to save the day, even though nobody believes him. You have all of the classic Adam Sandler cast of friends in this movie, like Kevin James, Julie Bowen, who it felt like a reunion from Happy Gilmore, and you also have Keenan Thompson and more so, basically anybody who's ever been in an Adam Sandler movie is in this one as well. The movie is rated PG thirteen, so I don't think this is a movie that adults will love, but if you have younger kids and want to expose them to Adam Sandler, I think they would find some enjoyment in this movie because the comedy is very low brow. But at the time that is what I needed. I just needed something to distract me. I needed something with Halloween costumes, and this movie at least delivered with that criteria. So so watch it on Netflix if that sounds fun to you. The movie is called Hubie Halloween. But my final suggestion and I think it is the best family friendly Halloween movie ever made. It is from nine, it's rated PG, and you can watch it Disney. Plus it is hocus Pocus. And going back to my favorite Halloween traditions, this is one that it was not a school year unless we watched hocus Pocus every year in elementary school. When we had our Halloween party in class, we would always watch hocus Pocus. So I know this movie from beginning to end. I can recite this movie probably without watching it. It really has all of the best elements to a Halloween movie takes place on Halloween. I love movies that take place entirely in one day. You have the Sanderson sisters, who are the spirits of these three seventeenth centuries Salem witches and then accidentally resurrected by this group of kids, and then they come back to terrorize the town and steal the souls of children. Which I guess that's a little darker for a Disney movie now than you may expect, But somehow the movie is still wholesome. So I think, out of this entire list, if you only had to watch one, it has to be hocus Pocus if you haven't watched it this Halloween season yet. And then You also now have the sequel on Disney Plus Hocus Pocus, to which I'll get to in the movie review and how those movies compare. But I have some honorable mentions here that you can watch on different streaming services if you have Disney Plus. There is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is another will is that a Halloween movie? Is it a Christmas movie? So I didn't put that in my normal list. You also have some Disney Channel movies, Halloween Town from nine or Twitches from two thousand and five. On HBO Max. There are a couple that aren't really Halloween movies, but hey, you could get away with watching these on Halloween. You have The Goonies, which is just the classic eighties movie but some minor scary elements if you have very very young kids, but a family friendly adventure movie that I don't think anybody would question if you decided to watch that one on Halloween. On HBO Max, you also have Gremlins, which is really more of a Christmas movie. There's no mention of Halloween and Gremlins, but the characters and the creatures and Gremlins are very much horror ResQue, so that's another one you could watch on Hulu. You have The Sixth Sense, which is a little borderline, but it is rated PG thirteen, So if you're wanting to go scary without going too scary, you could watch that on Hulu. But also on Hulu you have Ghostbusters, the original one from four that one. Especially if your kid has seen the Ghostbusters costume at Target or Walmart but has never seen that movie, sit them down and make them watch Ghostbusters. If you have the Roku app, you can watch Cora Line on Netflix. There's also a Labyrinth which kind of fits into the Halloween theme, and if you have Pluto, you can watch the Adams Family movie from n So Happy Halloween, everybody, come back and talk about hocus Pocus too. Let's get into our movie review this week now. I want to talk about hocus Pocus two, which has been out on Disney Plus for a aisle now, but I wanted to save it for this week to go along with the theme of the episode. And I didn't really have the highest expectations for Hocus Focus too, even though I'm such a big fan of the original, I was really only going into this with the expectation of having some nostalgia. I wanted to see all the three sisters back in this movie, and that was really it. I just can't put my heart into wanting Disney to do something great when it comes to making a sequel to such a beloved classic, but I was happy that it was a sequel instead of a remake. So I'll get into my full review and thoughts on this movie, but before we do that, here's just a smidge of the trailer. I have a gift from my favorite customers. Legend has it it's on the sixteenth birthday that a witch gets her powers. Yes, so what this movie is about. It's these three young girls who accidentally bring back the Sanderson sisters in modern day. The movie is set in two and now, just like they did in the original, they have to figure out how to stop these child hungry witches from taking over their town of Salem, and the original cast is back. As far as the three original Sanderson sisters, you have Bette Midler, Sarah, Jessica Parker, Catherine and Jemie all back in this movie. And I was pleasantly surprised that the movie didn't do just all the same old gags as the original movie, which is what I thought was going to happen from that trailer. When I first saw that trailer, I was thinking, they're just going to pretty much reenact everything that we love from the original one, and it'll be fine at that. So what I was pleasantly surprised was there was some actual advancement in the story. It starts out giving the origin story of the three Sanders and sisters, which I probably found that opening sequence the most entertaining out of the entire movie, which as a whole, I found this movie to be pretty entertaining, and I had the low expectations, but I did really like that opening sequence of seeing where the young girls came from and their story. I almost think that could be its own independent series on Disney Plus. Maybe if they don't make a hocus Pocus three, but if they stick with that original story of how they got their powers and their adventures as young teenage, which is I think there's a story there, So Disney Plus, if you need that script written, I'll get on that right now. And then it goes fast forward into two and you have some whole new cast of characters here, and they actually tried some advancements in the story. It focuses on this group of three friends and their struggles of friendship and how they would all go out and have this which day out in the woods. But look back at what made the original one work is the pacing in that movie is so great that right like right after another, one right after another. There's just things happening all the way throughout that movie, And at any point in the original there's never really a lull. There's always something happening that's moving the story along and keeping it going. And in hocus Pocus too, it almost has too much time to breathe and go out and try to flesh out these characters when I just needed a little bit more action. That's all this movie really needed to do to make it better, because once it gets to the actual adventure part, it's like thirty minutes into the movie, that's really when it starts to become more entertaining. And the other thing that I was kind of surprised about is this movie costs forty million dollars to make, which is below average for a normal Hollywood production. About average would be sixty five million dollars for just a normal movie like this. A superhero movie would run on the complete other spectrum of thing about two million dollars to make, so they didn't make this movie on the lower side, probably because it is a Disney Plus movie. They didn't have any expectations to put it out in theaters. But it looked like it was made for about forty million dollars and it was just interesting to see how I just watched the nineteen original before watching this one, and the special effects didn't get that much better. As far as when they are flying in this one, it's still very evident that they are sitting on brooms in front of a green screen, and it doesn't look that much better than the original one from nineteen. The only thing that didn't prove is the special effects when it comes to them using their powers and you know, throwing people around and those kind of battles. Aside from that, I don't think they made a whole lot of advancement in the special effects, So that was a little bit of a bummer. It was just look kind of weird to see that. And it wasn't that they paid the actresses a whole lot of money to return. Bett Middler made three million dollars to come back and do this movie. Kathy and the Jimie who plays Mary, reportedly took a salary of eight hundred thousand, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Sarah in the movie, reportedly made seven hundred thousand as well. So I thought that was a bit surprising that. I think, you know, getting them back for the original movie, they would have paid them a little bit more. The other thing that just kind of bothered me, again, it was very minor things, but that's what I do interviews, is that the movie takes place twenty nine years after the original I just feel like they should have waited until next year to put this movie out because they are referencing two in this movie. Original one came out in ninety three. It just feels like it would have been a little bit more significant to have been thirty years after the original one instead of twenty nine. That's just the weird numbers thing that bothers me. So I won't really hold that again to the film overall, but every time that came up in the movie, I was like, why is it twenty nine and not thirty? They should have just said it in regardless, And I'll be a critical fanboy here for a second. Again, I try not to over emphasize wanting a cameo because sometimes it's seen as cheesy. But I feel like a movie like this, where they didn't spend an entirely large amount getting back the original cast, I would have loved a cameo from the original cast, whether it had been Max or Danny or Allison, like those three characters from the original movie, or even Jason Marsden as Binks. None of those people came back in this movie. Disney has no loyalty. The actor who plays Max said he would have loved to have been a part of it, he wasn't asked to do it. His younger sister, Danny was reportedly attached to the movie at one point, but wasn't in this movie, and the actor who played Allison also said she would have loved to have been a part of this movie. I'll do this thing that's probably annoying, but if I were making this movie, I would have just had a loose little tie in. You have the three teenage girls who are the main characters in this movie. Be all they could have done was made their parents in the movie, Max and Allison like they got married, had a kid. The timing could have worked out for them to have a teenager. Their aunt would have been Danny, so there would have been this connection to that original family. Like in my head, in a perfect scenario, they are the ones who teach them how to defeat the Sanderson sisters. But really all they had to do was be their parents in the movie, and it would have kind of satisfied the fans of the original movie without giving a whole lot of without just making it feel like a reboot. I think it just needed that element to it. The only other cast member I saw who came back in this movie was the person who played the good zombie Billy Butcherson. Just funny that the one who is the less recognizable one because he's in full makeup and costume is the one who actually comes back in this But again I realized this movie wasn't made for me. I think younger kids and tweens will enjoy this movie much like I did when I saw the first hocus Pocus back in the nineties. I think they geared towards that it's anyway by adding more musical numbers, so it felt even more like a musical than the original one did, and I think still overall, I found it entertaining, So I would give hocus Pocus to two point five out of five spells. It's time to head down to movie Mike, Laura Paul. If you know me, you know I love a Marvel movie, especially one to kick off a new year. And coming out on February is Marvel Studios ant Man in the Wasp Quantum Mania. And this is the third in the Marvel ant Man trilogy. And I think this could be the most sophisticated ant Man movie yet, at least just by the looks of this trailer. It looks a lot different as far as the comedic elements in this one. Even just what the ant Man suit looks like. It feels like ant Man maybe getting a little bit more distinguished. So we'll talk about where the ant Man character has been throughout all these movies and his role in the Avengers. But before we get into this new trailer, here's just a little bit of ant Man in the Wasp Quantum Mania. People still need help that That's why we made this. It's like a satellite for deep Spacelift Quanta. Wait wait a minute, you're sending a signal down to the quantum realm. Turn it off now, I can get shoot hope if you've helped me, So what's it going to be? So in this movie we find Scott Lang played by the one and only Paul Rudd, and you have his daughter in this movie, now played by Catherine Newton. You also have Evangeline Lily back in this movie with her parents. So it feels very much like where we and did with ant Man and the Wasp. And in this movie they all go on this new adventure exploring the quantum realm and going against King the Conqueror, who we first saw in Loki the series on Disney Plus and is now going to be the new villain as we entered the new phase of Marvel. And you also have Bill Murray thrown into this movie as well. So the cast looks pretty solid here. And some things I noticed in ant Man in the Wasp, which I think it may be on the bottom of most people's list as far as more on the end of the worst Marvel movies ever made. And I think that's greatly due to the character himself as ant Man. And I rewatched these movies recently as I'm rewatching all of the Marvel movies. I watched both aunt Man Won and aunt Man too, And I think the reason there's so much hate around these is it kind of has that cheesy superhero comedy writing, more so in the second one in the first one. I think the first one is actually pretty olid, and the writing team in that one, I think they actually did a really good job. I think there's just something that people don't like whenever they cut away from the action sequences and whenever you look at a little bit further the joke of like, it's just these two very and like people fighting each other like a toy train set. So maybe there's a little bit like, oh, come on, this is ridiculous. But then later an Antman and the Wasp. I do think the writing suffered there a little bit, But I think overall the ant Man character has some heart. He is a character who is coming from somebody just trying to get his life back on track. Scott Lang is a next convict and it's really just trying to save the world but also just maintain his relationship with his daughter. And I think that's why you would care about Scott Lang. But in this trailer, it has what appears to be an entirely different vibe to it. It looks less comedy and more sci fi, more dramatic. There are some scenes in this that I was surprised used to see. It almost looked like a Star Wars movie in some parts. Even the new aunt Man suit is a lot more striking, and it even seems like it's less focused on the power's traditional powers of him shrinking down. I didn't even really see that in this movie. I think it's taking all these characters, putting them into the quantum realm for some interesting things to happen. And also just looking at the c g I in this trailer, which Marvel has been criticized fairly recently, and just the last year of them working their VFX artists pretty harshly and the results being some gaps in their c g I and things not looking completely right, things looking like they rushed all these projects. But the world they create of this quantum mania looks pretty good in this trailer. It looks pretty solid. So with the less comedic approach at least the feeling in this trailer and the heightened, more fine tuned special effects a little bit more dramatic here, I think this movie has some potential to be the best in the relogy I still really enjoy the first ant Man, fell off pretty hard there in the second one, but I have some hopes for this one, especially the more we get to see from Kang, who It's gonna be really hard to get a villain on the level of Thanos again, and I'm not going to set my expectations that high. I don't think we'll ever have as amazing of a villain that we had in the Infinity saga. But Kang looks pretty interesting in this movie, and I'm excited to get to know more about that character. So so we get Waconda Forever pretty soon on November eleven, and then to kick off, we get the New ant Man coming out on February. So definitely some good news if you're a Marvel fan. This leaks edition of Movie Law and that's gonna do it for another episode here on the podcast. But before I go, every single week, I give my listeners shout out. That's from anybody who leaves a comment, sends me a d M or comment. It's on TikTok, which I'm trying to post a lot more over there, So if you're not following me on TikTok, a lot of movie content at Mike Destro on TikTok and I'm gonna pull a comment for this week's listeners shout out. It is from Ashlynd Kennedy, who commented with the vampire emoji on my Corey Feldman interview and said, obviously I am trying to catch up on the podcast, so appreciate that, Ashlyn. Remember if you missed any episodes with the interviews I've done recently, you can always just scroll back on the feed and hit play on those if you've missed them. And I am currently lining up an interview I'm really excited to share with you guys. It has to do with the movie celebrating its fifteenth year anniversary from one of my favorite TV shows of all the time, America's favorite Yellow Family in one of the longest running series ever to be made. So as soon as I find out and get that guest confirmed, I will let you know when you can hear that. But it'll be a really cool interview that you're not gonna want to miss on the podcast. Some more details to come on that soon, but hope you have a great Halloween, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later,