There are people who grew up going to the movies every weekend with their parents.
That was not my childhood.
I can count the movies I saw in a theater with my mother and father on one hand.
Actually, I only need three fingers.
The first and only movie I ever saw in a theater with my father was Groundhog Day.
The first movie I ever saw in a theater with my mom was Top Gun.
The second and last movie I ever saw with her was The Wolf of Wall Street.
Three movies. Thirty years apart. Three completely different seasons of life.
And somehow, all of them feel like time capsules.
Groundhog Day With My Dad
The only movie I ever saw with my father in a theater was Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray.
I was 20 years old.
He was 56.
I don’t remember whose idea it was. I don’t remember what we talked about afterward. I don’t remember if we got popcorn.
But I remember sitting next to him.
At 20, you think you have time. Infinite time. You don’t think about your father being 56. You don’t think about mortality. You don’t think about how many shared experiences are left.
You’re just watching a movie about a weatherman reliving the same day over and over again.
At 20, the joke is the repetition.
At 53, the joke hits differently.
Groundhog Day is a comedy. But it’s really about time. About regret. About getting it right before you run out of chances.
It’s funny that the only movie I saw with my dad was about reliving the same day.
Because if there’s one day I wouldn’t mind replaying, it would be that one.
Top Gun With My Mom
The first movie I ever saw in a theater with my mom was Top Gun starring Tom Cruise.
I was 13.
She was 46.
If you’ve seen Top Gun recently, you know the love scene is almost wholesome by today’s standards. Silhouettes. Music. Fog machine doing most of the work.
But in 1986, sitting next to your mother at 13 years old, it felt like an eternity.
I remember staring at the screen with the intense focus of someone pretending nothing awkward was happening.
I don’t remember her reaction in detail, but I remember the energy shift. A subtle parental discomfort. A slight stiffening in the seat. That unspoken thought: Well, this escalated.
The funny part is that at 13, I thought that scene was wild.
Now it feels like a church picnic.
Time changes standards. And perspective.
Wolf of Wall Street With My Mom
The second and last movie I ever saw with my mom was The Wolf of Wall Street.
I was 40.
She was 73.
If you’ve seen that movie, you already know.
There are scenes in that film that make Top Gun look like a Hallmark special.
I don’t remember whose idea it was to go. I assume I suggested it. It had Oscar buzz. Leonardo DiCaprio. Big film. Cultural moment.
What I did not account for was the running time.
Three hours of excess.
Three hours of drugs.
Three hours of behavior that makes you reconsider your life choices while sitting next to your 73-year-old mother.
At 40, you think you’re fully grown. You think embarrassment is behind you.
It is not.
There is something uniquely humbling about sitting next to your elderly mother during scenes you absolutely would not choose to watch together.
I remember thinking, We are committed now. There is no graceful exit.
We sat through the entire thing.
When the lights came up, there was a moment. A beat.
And then we just… left.
No deep discussion. No film analysis.
Just two adults pretending none of that just happened.
The Funny Part
On paper, this is comedy.
A teenager awkward during Top Gun.
A middle-aged man trapped during The Wolf of Wall Street.
A 20-year-old watching Groundhog Day with a father he didn’t realize would one day be gone.
But here’s what’s interesting.
I never went to the movies regularly with my parents.
We weren’t that family.
And yet the few times we did go are burned into my memory.
Not because of the plot.
Because of who was sitting next to me.
The Deeper Part
Groundhog Day is about repeating time until you get it right.
Top Gun is about bravado, youth, and proving yourself.
The Wolf of Wall Street is about excess and consequence.
Without trying to, those three movies track life stages.
Youth.
Ambition.
Consequences.
Reflection.
At 13, you don’t understand your parents as people.
At 20, you don’t understand time.
At 40, you realize time is moving faster than you expected.
At 53, you understand why a movie about reliving the same day hits differently.
If I could relive one day, it wouldn’t be a business win.
It wouldn’t be a milestone.
It would be sitting in that theater next to my father watching Bill Murray wake up at 6:00 a.m. again.
It would be the awkward Top Gun scene with my mom, because that meant she was 46 and I was 13 and everything still felt wide open.
It would even be the three-hour endurance test of The Wolf of Wall Street, because it meant she was 73 and still willing to sit in a theater with her grown son.
The Quiet Truth
We don’t know which moments will matter.
We think it’s the big ones.
Sometimes it’s just sitting in a dark theater, sharing popcorn, pretending not to notice a love scene.
Three movies.
That’s it.
But they feel bigger than that.
Maybe because time, like Groundhog Day, keeps moving whether we pay attention or not.
And unlike Bill Murray, we don’t get unlimited retries.
We get what we get.
So if you still have a parent who can sit through a movie with you, even an awkward one, go.
Even if it’s uncomfortable.
Especially if it’s uncomfortable.
One day, you’ll wish you could rewind it.
–Ryan Gartrell
If I had one day to replay, I know where I’d sit.
