How to Plan a Themed Movie Night
One of my favorite activities to do with kids is to plan a themed movie night. This takes your typical movie night and elevates it to include a meal that is themed to whichever movie you pick.
While it might sound like a lot of work, it only takes a little bit of creativity to transform your usual meals into an evening filled with memories.
Here are my steps to create a perfectly themed movie night:
1. Pick your movie
There are so many ways you can go with this depending on what genre you are in the mood for! My family likes to have classic movie nights where we watch things like Jaws, Top Gun, or Back to the Future.
Disney movies are often really easy to convert into themed meals.
If you need some inspiration, here are some of my top picks based on genre:
Top Family:
- Toy Story
- The Princess and the Frog
- Despicable Me
Top Romance:
- The Princess Bride
- The Proposal
- 50 First Dates
Top Comedy:
- The Lost City
- Glass Onion
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Top Action:
- Jurassic Park
- Top Gun: Maverick
- Back to the Future
Top Science-Fiction:
- Prometheus
- Ready Player One
- Tron
Top Thrillers:
- The Sixth Sense
- Silence of the Lambs
- Parasite
Try out Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ for an extensive library of movies that will be a perfect start to your movie night.
2. Plan themed menu
Next steps are to plan your menu. Start with the location setting of the movie to determine what type of cuisines you might cook.
For example, if you are watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that will lend itself towards making a Greek menu. Or, perhaps you are watching Under the Tuscan Sun and therefore opt for an Italian meal.
Secondly, think if there is a signature dish that the characters make in the movie. One of my family’s favorite themed movie nights is watching The Princess and the Frog where we get to eat the New Orleans classic, gumbo! If you are feeling more ambitious, you could try making ratatouille to go with Pixar’s movie of the same name, Ratatouille.
If you want to make something quick and easy, pizza can easily be transformed to fit most themes. I once cut out pieces of pepperoni to look like dinosaur footprints when we were watching Jurassic Park.
You could also theme your food by coming up with creative titles based on characters or themes in the movie. When watching The Incredibles, we had Mr. Incrediburgers with Pepper Jack Jack cheese.
Drinks are also an imaginative way to incorporate your movie theme, such as drinking apple juice when watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
I wouldn’t overthink your menu, but you can easily find ways to get creative.
3. Don’t forget dessert
The best part of any meal is the dessert, so don’t forget it! Again, you can easily theme your desserts based on the above criteria.
When we watched Forrest Gump, I made a bunch of chocolate truffles to put them in little boxes because as his mama always said “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.”
Another family favorite is watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. For that meal, I incorporated chocolate into every course. The best part though was having chocolate fondue for dessert to represent the chocolate river in the movie.
4. Dress Up
If you really want to take your themed movie night to the next level, I recommend incorporating costumes. This can be particularly fun for those with little kids.
One movie night, we watched Robin Williams’ movie Hook, which lent us to a pirate themed movie night. Much to my surprise, my preteen daughter at the time got really into dressing up. I told her to go pick out an outfit and fifteen minutes later she came back into our room with a scarf over her eye and basically every piece of jewelry she owned. She killed it!
Costumes can be a fun way to make your movie night something different and certainly memorable.
5. Make it cozy
Now that you know what movie you are watching and what you will be cooking, the next step is to make your movie night as cozy as possible.
You don’t need fancy movie chairs to make it a movie night. We used to pull out our biggest blanket and lay it out on the floor with piles of pillows on it. Grab extra blankets and light a fire. You can also use some twinkle lights to set the mood.
6. Popcorn
Is it really a movie night without popcorn? This might not be super themed, but it is a requirement for any movie night in our house.
For Christmas, we got this amazing popcorn machine that has that classic movie theater feel to it. It stays in our movie room and completes our perfect movie night.
If you want to change up your standard popcorn, you can easily add a variety of seasonings to it. For the kids, feel free to add in some chocolate surprises like M&Ms.
7. Projector
If you want to take your movie night outdoors, then consider investing in a decent projector. We connect our Roku to the projector and it can easily make for a great summer night movie complete with making s’mores.
Follow this simple steps to plan your perfect themed movie night. Leave a comment below to let me know of your movie and menu! I am always looking for new ideas.
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