Our friends, the Whipples, suggested a brilliant idea for getting out of the house with small children: drive-in movies, especially late at night when the little ones will fall asleep on the way there. Friday we went to the Southbay Drive-in to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Batman Begins. Charlie was just too weird. I loved that book when I was little, and I even got into Summer Governor's School in high school by writing some annoying essay about how Willy Wonka was the person I most admired, so I consider myself somewhat of a Wonka expert, and I'll have you know he was not the disturbed, detached, slightly malicious character in that movie. Reviewers complaining about the Michael Jackson similarities were not off base. But I was laughing out loud during the oompa loompa songs. Nephi quite liked the movie, actually, but thought it might be a little too twisted for kids.
Batman Begins, however, was awesome. Christian Bale is my new favorite movie star (replacing no one, since I've never really noticed a movie star before. Christian, however, is very noticeable.) And after seeing the movie I understand better the pressing nature of the heated Batman vs. Spiderman debate going on in other corners of the internet. It was a little too violent and action-sequency for Nephi, but I must have been distracted by Christian or something and I really enjoyed it. Nephi is also annoyed by dumb science in movies, which comic book based movies have in abundance. However, he thought that the movie did a good job visualizing Gotham and evoked images and emotions true to the comic book world.
Anyway, the one drawback was getting home at 1:30 in the morning, which takes old fogies like us a whole day to recover from. But the atmosphere - "all walks of life" enjoying some good entertainment - was a lot more pleasant than the manufactured movie theater experience, and the price is right. It was a fun night.
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