Challenging my rewatch rules

Different rules apply when you're on vacation. While I may watch fewer movies -- only one new-to-me viewing (The Lion King) since we landed 11 days ago -- my kids may watch more. As their parents sort out logistics related to seeing friends, eating at favorite restaurants and running errands, the kids may just have long, slow mornings in front of Netflix.

Such is how my younger son has now watched Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween -- a movie he had not seen before our first afternoon in the hotel -- about seven times all the way through.

I only watched it one of those times, paying almost complete attention so I could legitimately add it to my list of movies seen. I've got my standards.

But the standards are challenged when you have the movie on in the background enough to have seen all the parts again, for a total of probably two to three viewings, and you can recite certain lines before they're about to happen. According to my official records, I have seen this movie only once, but I could act out a dramatic recreation of most of it without additional viewings.

The problem arises from the fact that I started keeping track of repeat viewings, in a statistical sense, back in 2006. I define a repeat viewing as a situation where I specifically sat down to watch a movie a second (or third, etc.) time, not where someone else in my family was watching it in the background. If they did that at home, I'd probably leave the room, but when you're traveling, you often tend to be in the same room for one reason or another. (Like now, when I'm charging my computer.)

It wouldn't be a problem, probably, except that I've found it was useful to assign specific dates for the rewatches when I add them to my rewatch list. If I've seen Goosebumps 2 over four days, what day do I assign the viewing? Especially when I didn't see the parts in order?

To accommodate for this, I may just choose a date in this time range and list myself as having seen it again. It's definitely a movie I've seen more than once at this point. And I'd like my records to acknowledge that.

A second difficult situation arose this morning when my son asked me to watch Incredibles 2 with him. It's a film we've both already seen, but I had only officially seen it once. Even though I still had jobs to do, I decided to sit down with him and watch enough of it for it to count as an official second viewing. But then he asked if he could fast-forward past the boring parts, so I disengaged from the official second viewing.

As for Goosebumps 2 ... I'm surprised at how much I enjoy it. I thought it was straight-to-video, but in picking up the above poster I noticed that it appears to have actually had a theatrical release. (Jack Black's cameo did not tip me off, because he's been known to do things like record the entire TV series of Kung Fu Panda.) It's got an appealing cast and surprisingly great visual effects, although I should acknowledge I've been watching it on really good TVs.

Also, Slappy is becoming my favorite kid-appropriate movie villain. Here's Slappy:

Surprisingly, Slappy is voiced by Black in the original but not in the sequel. I say it's surprising because listening to him talk in the sequel is the thing that made me check to see if Black did the voice. He did in the original, but in the sequel, Mick Wingert offers a good enough Black impersonation for me to have made the connection. I suppose that's the difference between paying Black for one day of work or for the whole week.