It was raining all weekend, the second half of the Fort Lauderdale Air Show was canceled, and the falling wet stuff isn't going away anytime soon. Rain in Florida isn't anything new, but weather reports indicate thunderstorms hitting the area every day for the next week. Womp.
Weather.com puts next Sunday as the first day with less than a 30 percent chance of rain, and the rest of the week is nothing but sadness and scattered thunderstorms. The National Weather Service has a slightly more optimistic view of the situation but has also issued flood watches for all of Miami-Dade County and the eastern parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties through tonight. Not time to break out the rowboats yet, but it won't be any fun for the vacationers.
Not that you'd be going outside anyway, but here are five movies currently streaming on Netflix that feature a sunnier version of Florida. Enjoy them while the sky falls apart outside your window and makes your dreamy tropical paradise soggier than an old diaper. (And come on Netflix, let's get Cool Hand Luke on streaming, please.)
1. Flipper
No-brainer. Set on Coral Key and features Frodo, Crocodile Dundee, and the most beautiful friendship ever to be cemented by playing catch with a Pepsi can. (Never mind that it was actually filmed in the Bahamas. It's about Florida, and it's pretty sunny once the hurricane finishes setting up some plot points.)
More than one movie in the cheesiest line of monster movies ever made is set in South Florida, and this one features a giant crocodile invading Miami. And the brave American fighting the "1,500-foot pissed-off crocodile that's heading up the coast"? STEVE URKEL.
Not technically a movie, but this Discovery series features Florida as one of the nation's problem spots for feral hogs, giant wild animals that originated as livestock but quickly became a destructive invasive species, according to the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
4. Day of the Dead (remake)
The terrifying George A. Romero original was set in Fort Myers, but that would be much too cool to be on Netflix. Unfortunately, you're stuck with the "remake" -- the plot, characters, and zombies are different, and it's set in Colorado, but it's slim pickins on the ol' interwebs. It's either this or Flipper 2.
5. Mega Piranha
A piranha eats a damned helicopter. Yeah, it's another movie from the Asylum, but the studio likes destroying South Florida towns, and we couldn't figure out a way to just come out and say that you should probably just make some popcorn and watch Hope Floats.
"Just give hope a chance to float up..." Gets me every time.
