Looking for a clean version of your favorite movies? Check out how to watch an edited version of Christmas Vacation or Family Vacation. It's easy to create an edited version that works for you!
I remember growing up we would often tape movies and shows on our VCR. Remember those old things? We taped A Christmas Story, Back to the Future, Pretty Woman, and much more.
If I was bored, I could just grab a movie to watch. It was awesome!
As an adult, I love to share movies that my husband and I watched growing up with my son. We love to watch National Lampoons Christmas Vacation every year before Christmas. Unfortunately, we kept running into a problem.
The movies that we grew up watching were edited for tv. I don't remember actually seeing Doc getting shot in Back to the Future and we were completely shocked at all the things in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Our favorite movies we watched growing up weren't family appropriate.
For years we just talked about what we would watch with our son when he was older. Then a few months ago a blogger friend mentioned VidAngel.
What is VidAngel?
It's a video streaming service that allows you to edit what you are going to watch. You can edit out swear words, violent scenes, or just about anything else you would want. It is absolutely amazing.
We have used it a few times now to watch movies that I normally wouldn't let my son watch. He loves it because he gets to watch movies he normally wouldn't be allowed to watch, I love it because I can edit out all the things I don't want him to see.
You can watch older movies or the movies that just came out. You can see how to make any movie family-friendly with VidAngel.
If you haven't signed up with VidAngel you can sign up for free here. Once you sign up just choose the movie you want to watch and click on add to watchlist.
How To Watch Clean Versions Of Movies
We watched National Lampoon's Family Vacation. It is a movie my husband loved growing up, but it rated R so inappropriate for my 14-year-old.
Next, you will want to click on the filters button to go through and set all the filters.
It will list out all of the filters that are available. You can easily go through each one of the categories and choose what works for your family. They have profanity, sexual remarks, blasphemy, crude talk, and discriminatory language edits.
Once you have edited out all the language you can move on to scenes you might find inappropriate. You can have it skip over scenes that show things like nudity.
You can also delete scenes that you may find violent. Each one disappears with just a click. I have noticed that the editing of them is pretty good. My son had no idea a couple of the things even happened.
When you are finished editing the movie it will show you the total number of filters that are in the movie. As you can see, we left a lot of stuff in the movie. Because my kiddo is almost 15 I didn't have a problem with a lot of the stuff in the movie. For me, it is more editing out the curse words.
Although I feel like they do a great job of editing the movie without it looking too edited I wouldn't recommend cutting out all of the filters. You probably really don't want your 5 year old watching a rated R movie even if it is edited. 🙂 I would recommend going down one rating from what you normally would. If you let your child watch PG movies then a PG-13 edited movie should be good.
Using VidAngel With Streaming Services
You can also use VidAngel with a lot of streaming services to edit and make them clean.
Right now VidAngel currently works with Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon Video, Amazon Prime, Amazon Channels Showtime, Amazon Channels STARZ, Amazon Channels Paramount+ , Amazon Channels PBS and Amazon Channels AMC+.
I love that with VidAngel we can show our son movies that we enjoyed from our childhood and let him watch movies he normally couldn't see, all for $9.99 a month.
It's a great way for us to spend a family night for a reasonable price. Has your family tried VidAngel yet? What did you think?
Brittany says
I have been wondering about VidAngel lately! There are even some PG movies we have seen lately that had me cringing a bit. Thanks for all the tips!
Julie says
I know! I feel like they keep letting a little bit more slip into PG rated movies.
Lindsey Mozgai says
I've never tried vidangel but I've heard a lot about it. We use free promo codes to get our redboxes discounted and sometimes even free if we want to rent a movie. Does vidangel offer coupon codes on their movies?
Julie says
I have yet to see any coupon codes. We love the free promo codes for Redbox and still use them for some movies. I use Redbox for new releases that I don't care if my kiddo watches and then I use VidAngel for PG-13 and up movies. I also love VidAngels selection of older movies. I have found that Redbox only has newer movies and VidAngel has movies that are 10-20 years old.
Margery says
We just recently signed up for VidAngel to watch "Captain America: Civil War" with my 12-year old and 15-year old daughters. I loved that I could filter out the ever-increasing profanity and blasphemy which now comes with "Disney" movies.
However, I did discover a downside to "returning" the movie for credit. We were charged $19.99 for purchasing the movie, which was charged to our credit card. The surprise came when the credit of $18 (for high-definition) wasn't actually returnedd to our credit card. Instead, it lives in our VidAngel account, to be used against the next purchase of a movie. So, it feels like the first movie costs $20, but all subsequent movies are $1 or $2 for either standard definition or high definition.
I guess I can think of the initial $19.99 as the startup cost for this awesome filtering service, but it wasn't clear to me from reading their information on the website. I just think it's nice if folks understand that ahead of time. I'm looking forward to watching more movies with my family on VidAngel.
Julie says
It is amazing to me what is in movies like Captain America. I feel like they gear the movies to kids but then make them rated for adults. I am so happy that my kiddo can now watch movies like Ironman or Captain America without me cringing over what is said. Thank you for pointing that out about the credit. I guess I didn't pay attention when I received the money back again.