Thursday Thirteen, 6th Edition – Favorite Fluff Movies

This week’s TT features 13 of my favorite feel-good, fluff movies. By fluff I mean that these movies are simply fun, they aren’t meant to convey a deep message and change the world or win an Oscar. These are the movies you watch when you put on your sweats, get yourself a bowl of ice cream with your favorite toppings and settle on the couch with a comfy blanket and your cat and escape for a couple of hours.

As is usual, this list is in no particular order

1. 13 Going on 30 – I love this movie Who as a child hasn’t wanted to be magically older? When Jenna’s wish comes true, things aren’t the way she thought they’d be. She realized that some decisions she made when she was 13 didn’t turn out so well, and she has a chance to change it all. Pure fun I did find one of my favorite parts of the movie and have to share it with you here

2. Music & Lyrics – I’m not a Hugh Grant fan, but I wanted to spend some time with some of my girlfriends, so I decided I could handle watching a Hugh Grant movie. I graduated high school in 1983 and was in love with New Wave music, and when the movie opened with this video, I was hooked!

3. While You Were Sleeping – This has to be one of the best fluff movies of all time. Take an improbable story line, add the charm of Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman, along with a wonderful, warm and slightly crazy family, and you have this wonderful heartwarming classic.

4. Bring It On (the edited for TV version) – What fun!!! Great cheers, a rousing tale of cheerleading rivalry, and it closes with that cheerleading anthem by Toni Basil, Hey Mickey:

5. Clueless – Who would have guessed that taking the Jane Austin novel “Emma” and moving the setting to modern-day Beverly Hills would work so well? But it did, and quite well! There was even a TV show with some of the original cast from the movie, and it was very enjoyable, too.

6. Sweet Home Alabama – Fun! Reese Witherspoon is charming as a young woman who is trying to ignore her roots and attain all her dreams of the high life, but she can’t quite get away from who she really is. You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South of of the girl

7. Miss Congeniality – What is not to love about this movie? A female FBI agent has to go undercover at a beauty pageant to stop a serial killer, but she has no interest in anything feminine and is actually quite crude and graceless. In order to stop the killer, she has to win the pageant, and in order to win the pageant, she has to be completely made over. Watching her try to fit in with the contestants has some very hilarious moments, and the end scene where William Shatner’s character is singing the song for the winner is one of the funniest I’ve ever seen.

8. Never Been Kissed – Awww, so sweet!!! Drew Barrymore plays a newspaper editor who was the class reject in high school. Echoes of her nickname ‘Josie Grossie” still haunt her. When she has a chance to go back to high school on an undercover assignment, things change and she has a chance to do it all over again. The expected happens, though, when she’s attracted to one of her teachers and he’s attracted to her. He thinks she’s a student, though, so this romance seems to have no chance. But as with all good fluff movies, it has a happy ending

9. Legally Blonde – Come on, could this happen in real life? No!!! But is a fluff movie real life? No!!! So it can happen! Elle is a sorority queen who has it all, including the perfect boyfriend. But when he dumps her to go to law school, she decides to pursue him and ends up getting the job he wanted and graduating at the top of the class! Pretty good for a bubble-headed blonde who really isn’t so bubble-headed after all.

10. Return to Me – This movie has one of the most heart-breaking openings I’ve ever seen. I was crying and devastated! But it only gets better, and true love can come again. The music, the characters, the story all make this one of the best fluff movies out there. And if you can’t imagine an Irish-Italian restaurant, check this movie out

11. Ever After – This is not your ordinary Cinderella story! She’s not helpless, waiting for fate, a fairy godmother, some mice and birds to help her, this one takes charge, steps out and takes risks! She even rescues the prince! The wicked stepmother is so very wicked. There’s one scene with her that nearly breaks my heart, and one of the stepsisters gets her just desserts, while the other stepsister gets a wonderful reward.

12. Blast From the Past – Oh, no list of favorite fluff movies is complete without this wonderful, impossible story of a young man born in a nuclear fallout shelter to Sissy Spacek and Christopher Walken, a couple who took shelter there in the 60s during the Cuban missle crisis, convinced that Los Angeles had been bombed. After 35 years, when their supplies are running low and the lock on the shelter finally opens, Brendan Fraser’s character finally goes above ground for the first time in his life. He’s sweet, innocent, seemingly naive, and a very good swing dancer! (yes, Brendan Fraser really is a dancer!) He not only gets all the supplies they need, he finds himself a potential wife. This is a wonderfully funny movie, and the characters played by Sissy and Christopher are priceless.

13. Bride and Prejudice – This movie is another Jane Austin remake, and it’s wonderful! Who would have imagined that Pride and Prejudice set in modern India and Southern California done as a Bollywood musical would be so well done? But it’s not only well done, it’s lively and bouncy with great music, color and atmosphere. It pulls me out of my chair and gets me dancing! Plus, there is the handsome Naveen Andrews

And there you have this week’s TT. If you were wondering what to do this weekend, now you know!!! Watch one or two of these absolutely wonderful fluff movies…I think I’m going to be watching #13 this weekend…that video has me hankering for some Bollywood

Please be sure to visit the official Thursday Thirteen site to see other fabulous TT lists.