1. The Sound of Musicis my all-time, absolute favorite movie. But, wow, you just don’t realize how slloowwwww it starts until you watch it with your three-year-old and six-year-old sons.
2. Nor do you realize how much Maria and her nun friends discuss the plusses and negatives of Maria at the Abbey. I had coerced my family into watching the movie by promising them, “It’s about seven funny kids, singing, a love story, and a big war.” Something I knew each of them would like.
Needless to say the long conversations about a convent dealt with nun (ha, ha) of these.
3. Kids who have never watched a musical don’t get musicals. When everyone spontaneously starts singing, my kids were like, “What’s going on?! Why are they doing that?!” The girls were especially freaked out about this during the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” scene. They were rooting for Liesl to be cool in front of Rolf, but then she blew it with the impromptu singing. They did like the dancing, though.
4. The movie’s music is so popular, it’s truly broken into all age and gender groups. The kids, who had never seen the movie, knew the songs.
Catie’s school friends wanted to do a rendition of “So Long, Farewell” for the school talent show so she knew the words; Nate knew “Do-Re-Mi” from music class; Sam sang along with “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” (even though he didn’t remember where he’d heard it); and Elisabeth knew “Edelweiss” from our car.
5. How do you explain the Baroness’ love-triangle scheming to kids? They didn’t get it. Sample questions during the scene when the Baroness convinces Maria to leave:
Sam: So, that lady is bad?
Me: Yeah. Kind of. She wants to marry the dad. She’s making sure Maria will leave.
Sam: She will kill Maria if she doesn’t leave?
Me: Not bad like that. She just wants to marry the Captain.
Sam: Why? Because he’s on the dark side, too?
Star Wars has oversimplified good and evil for my kids.
Star Wars has oversimplified good and evil for my kids.
6. Also, my kids totally want some goat puppets to do their own version of “The Lonely Goatherd.”
7. The “Something Good” love scene with Maria and Captain Von Trapp seemed to last one million years. This probably had something to do with the kids squinting at the TV and asking, “IS HE GOING TO KISS HER?” and “WHY DO THEY KEEP SINGING?”
8. It could be because I’ve been sicker than sick for three days, but I really bawled at the wedding. This sort-of freaked the kids out. Especially when Catie realized the nuns were singing, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” at her wedding. She thought that was pretty uncalled for. And obviously the reason the nuns weren’t invited into the sanctuary.
9. The Nazi invasion was just the right mixture of suspense, plot getting-on-with-it, and history. Without WWII, the boys would have considered the movie a loss. But the scene of the Von Trapps hiding in the cemetery? They loved it. Nate compared it to “good Hide and Seek.” And Sam was so glad to know who the clear villains and good guys were.
10. We are all still singing “Sound of Music” songs, proving this movie is not only timeless—but also full of earworms we’ll never get rid of.
