With me being a social media freak, something I need to work on is putting the gadgets away where they don’t belong. This includes movies. Don’t get me wrong, in theaters I only ever bring my phone out to silence it, or if it seems like someone is really trying to get a hold of me. Other than that, I hate the glow of a screen in a dark theater. My problem is with watching movies at home. With no chance of strangers staring you down at home, I feel like I have more liberty in bringing out my phone to check my email, or tweet about what I’m seeing on screen. However, this really should stop, since I find I don’t get to fully focus on the movie.

So it was sort of amazing when I was trying to find something to watch on Netflix. After browsing several titles, I settled on Patrik, Age 1.5. If you’ve never heard of the film, it’s about a Swedish gay couple that thinks they’re adopting a boy that is 1.5 years old. However, there was a typo in the document they received, and the boy ended up being 15 years old. And a troublemaker. That “hates homos.”

The film touches on a lot of topics, the most obvious one being the fact that many people around the world think that gay couples are unfit to raise children (which is complete bullshit, by the way.) I don’t want to go too much into the story and give it away, since I thoroughly enjoyed it and want others to watch the film, too. So going back to what I introduced this post with, this film is in Swedish and I watched it with English subtitles.

This was quite the cure to my problem with checking my phone during movies. Since I didn’t understand the language, I couldn’t rely on just hearing the dialogue in the background. Having to focus on the subtitles to understand what was going on, checking my phone for even 5 seconds meant there was a risk of missing a major plot point. So, I made the decision to put the phone away and just fully focus on the movie. And what a great decision that was. Like I said, I enjoyed the movie and recommend it to people looking for something to watch.

This also has sparked my interest in watching more foreign movies. Although I’d rather say international. Foreign sounds a bit exclusive doesn’t it? But going back to the point, I always tune out during movie awards shows when it gets to international films, mostly because I don’t watch them. Patrik, Age 1.5 was the perfect movie to spark that interest, and I just might find myself watching more international movies on Netflix now.

Have you seen this movie, or does it sound interesting to you? Leave me a message!