[Previous entry: "Fifty Extra Tons of Crap, Coming to a Lung Near You."] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Some Wendell Berry"]
11/17/2002 Entry: "Harry Potter And The Annoying Woman With Ten Kids In Tow"
Harry Potter And The Annoying Woman With Ten Kids In Tow
I saw the Harry Potter movie yesterday. It was raining and it was the only thing playing at the neighborhood theater that I hadn't seen already. Actually it was almost the only thing playing at the theater, taking up 60% of the screens. So I arrived early and get a seat pretty close to the screen so I could blot out most of the kids.
Well, actually I sort of wanted to see it in kid-filled audience, because I saw the first HP movie in almost-empty theater a couple months after it's release, and I didn't think it was all that good, especially the special effects. I was interested in seeing if the kids would mind the crappy special effects, or if the effects would have gotten better now that the target audience was a few years olders.
I was surprised that it wasn't that crowded given the rain and the opening day status. There are actually a lot of seats empty around me when the previews started. Suddenly a women appears next to me and started counting off empty seats. She asked me to save them for her, because she had ten kids with her. Ten kids ! Then she ran off again before I can tell her I don't save seats for strangers, especially not wet strangers with cranky kids on the opening day of a movie. Well, it didn't matter because five of the seats are taken up almost immediately by wet grumpy people who were waiting behind the woman. Folks must have been loitering around outside waiting for the lights to go down.
About five minutes into the previews the woman shows up again, kids in tow. "What !! what !! These seats were all saved !" She glares at me. I shrug my shoulders and toss some popcorn into my mouth. "I have ten kids with me ! Ten kids !!" Then she starts lobbying all the people who have taken the seats, She's going to go get the manager. She had saved these seats. She had asked me to do it. People are pulling out their tickets looking for their assigned seats. I toss some more popcorn in my mouth. It's all a lot of fun. I don't feal guilty or sorry for the woman at all. If you want a block of ten seats, come to the theater sooner than ten minutes before the movie. Especially for the opening day when its raining out.
The woman starts placing kids all over the theater, since by now almost all the seats have been taken. The kids don't want to sit by themselves or next to strangers. Another kid is complaining that he won't have any popcorn if he has to sit in the another row. These two friends want to sit next to each other. So and so doesn't want to sit next to whats-her-name. It's complete chaos. Finally once kids are seated all over the place, the woman disappears again. Eventually she comes back with empty popcorn bags, filling them from one of the big tubs she had, and starts handing out the bags to the standed kids.
Some time in the middle of all this, the movie started. The woman is butting her way down the middle of the aisles to get to charges, disturbing everyone. And each time she goes to one kid, the other kids all start acting up, being noisy and talking throughout the movie, so then the woman would has to keep going over and tell the kids to behave themselves. This continues throughout the entire movie, at five minute intervals.
Actually, almost all the kids in the theater were talking during the movie. Most of them were shouting out lines of dialog before the actors did. I'm assuming a lot of these lines have been playing in commercials and pre-hype shows for the past couple months, but it was still pretty creepy. These kids even had the actors intonations down. It was like they had seen the movie five or six times already, instead of it being the opening day. Maybe they all downloaded it off the net before hand. The kid in front of me even had the book with her, and was going through it like it was an opera score !
The movie itself was not very interesting. For the most part, I don't think it went over too well with the target audience either. The effects were not much better than the first movie, and the movie just shows what utter nonsense the book's plot was, especially the ending. Apparenly one of the unnamed powers of the Phoenix is resolving dangling plot complications. Based on the chatter, everone wanted to see the howler letter scene, and they were disappointed by it. The only part that got any real audience reaction was when Harry and his friend threw the teacher into the snake pit.
Based solely on audience reaction, the best part of the afternoon was before the movie during the preview for some movie featuring a talking, rapping kangaroo.
The most interesting part for me was also during the previews when they showed a gender-bending rebranding ad for the Easy Bake Oven that played during the previews. It's now the Queasy Bake Oven and makes bloody bone cookies.
I also liked the the first 15 seconds or so of the movie which show the suburban sprawl where Harry spends his summers.
