Sunday, May 30, 2004
Erika's current working schedule as second unit sound on The Pacifier makes her "weekend" run from Thursday to Friday. Which means that my weekends are purely "Dad days" with the girls.
Yesterday we made a trek over to the Science Centre. Today there was nothing planned, and I opted to take the kids to see Shrek II. This would be Annie's first movie -- or maybe I should say the second attempt at taking her to a film for the first time. First time was about a year ago, when I teamed up with Glenn A. and his girls to see The Princess Bride at the local rep cinema. Annie just couldn't sit still for it, and I ended up leaving Vanessa in Glenn's care while I took Annie outside for a walk in order to kill time until the movie finished. After about another year, I figured that maybe Annie was now up for it.
Vanessa was all keen to see it of course, even thought she had already seen in once on the day it opened as part of a friend's Shrek-themed birthday party. Annie had been inside the theatre lobby before - it's the nearest place that sells frozen yoghurt, as I discovered last summer - but she had never been inside one of the theatres before. She asked me to hold her hand as we entered the darkened theatre, and I chose seats that could get us out of the theatre quickly if we needed to. I thought about getting a booster seat but it wasn't necessary as Annie ended up sitting on my lap for the whole movie.
There weren't many people in the theatre, as it was an early matinee. As a result, the sound was louder than usual. Unfortunately I think the defining experience for Annie was a preview trailer for Spiderman 2, which had plenty of explosions, screaming, and rapid-fire mayhem. Annie started crying and I put my hand over her eyes to blot out the staccato jump cuts culled from the movie. The rest of the ads were considerably less scary from a two-year-old's perspective, and I managed to get her settled down as Shrek II started.
Thankfully nothing in the movie was anywhere near as scary as was the trailer for Spiderman 2, and she ended up sticking around, enjoying her frozen yoghurt and laughing occasionally - especially at any scene involving slapstick.
And what did I think of it? I enjoyed the movie, but part of the charm of the original Shrek was it's freshness, and that all of its characters were new and novel. Not so this time around. The over-the-top Puss in Boots character was arguably the best thing about the movie in what was otherwise a more subdued outing. I wouldn't rush out to see it again, though I'll likely end up getting it for the kids on the inevitable DVD some Xmas-time, hopefully used.
Unfortunately, thanks mainly to the Spiderman 2 trailer, Annie has absolutely no desire to see a movie in there again, despite enjoying Shrek 2. And from what I've seen of the trailers for the third Harry Potter movie, and I think I will take a pass on bringing Vanessa to go see it, as it looks considerably scarier than the first two. I think it will be a little while before I can take either of them to another movie there.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
