3 Effortlessly Fun Memorial Day Movies to Stream Now, Including Wild Mountain Thyme

If you somehow landed a rare free Memorial Day and forgot to plan anything beyond snacks, I’ve got you. Fire up a streamer, kick back, and start summer right with a few movies that go down easy. One recent romance with a truly bonkers twist, one peak-90s teen fantasy, and one glossy classic that still works 36 years later.

Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)

Emily Blunt’s having a moment on the big screen right now with her supporting turn in The Devil Wears Prada 2, but one of her better movies slipped past a lot of people because it opened during COVID. That’s what long weekends are for: catching up.

Blunt plays Rosemary, an Irish farmer who has loved her neighbor Anthony (Jamie Dornan) since they were kids. He acts oblivious, which gets more complicated when a confident American suitor, Adam (Jon Hamm), shows up and actually pays attention. The catch: Anthony does love Rosemary, but he’s hanging onto a very odd secret that keeps him frozen in place. Yes, the twist you’ve heard about is real, and it’s as strange as advertised.

Shot on lush Irish locations, this is an unabashedly old-school romance with a friends-to-lovers spine. It’s written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck), which gives it that theatrical, swoony vibe, and Blunt and Dornan are almost unfairly photogenic together. It’s familiar in all the cozy ways until it isn’t, which is kind of the point.

Streaming: Netflix and Disney+

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991)

Pure summer energy. Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate) is a California teen determined to spend her break at the beach and the mall. Her mom jets off to Australia with a rich boyfriend and leaves Sue Ellen and her four siblings with Mrs. Sturak (Eda Reiss Marin), a cranky babysitter everyone immediately hates. Then Mrs. Sturak dies. Suddenly Sue Ellen is the household adult, whether she likes it or not.

She fakes her way into a job at a fashion company and somehow crushes it with zero experience, pays the bills, keeps the house from imploding, and still finds time for a sweet, awkward romance with Bryan (Josh Charles), a guy who delivers hot dogs for a living. Of course, a jealous co-worker starts tugging at the threads of her lie, and the whole setup teeters.

This is peak 90s: loud prints at the office, rock and house music on the soundtrack, and a wish-fulfillment streak a mile wide. The jokes still land, and it’s got more heart than you remember. Sometimes pretending to be a grown-up is the most teenager thing you can do.

Streaming: Hulu

Pretty Woman (1990)

Here’s the deal: they settle on $3,000 for a week. He’s Edward (Richard Gere), a smooth corporate raider who wants company with no strings; she’s Vivian (Julia Roberts), new to sex work, sporting a wig that looks like a Halloween Carol Channing, and flashing a megawatt smile. It’s supposed to be strictly transactional, but then come the polo matches, the opera, and the inconvenient feelings.

The movie shot up Netflix’s charts when it hit the service in May, and it’s easy to see why. Three decades and change later, it’s still a glossy, old-fashioned love story — even with the messier elements, including one very uncomfortable sexual assault scene. Roberts is incandescent, Gere plays cool and wounded in equal measure, and their chemistry is playful and genuinely sexy. Laura San Giacomo adds extra spark as Vivian’s unapologetically mouthy best friend, Kit.

Streaming: Netflix