I got 99 problems, the movie Hitch ain't one...

On Friday my wife and I went to see Sideways. We both really enjoyed it. I have now seen 3 of the 5 films nominated for Best Picture and this one has been my favorite so far. I also liked Ray and Finding Neverland, but Sideways was just a better movie overall. When we started making plans to see a movie on Friday I was half-way worried that Amy would want to see Hitch, which I haven no interest in seeing. I’m not sure why I had that fear. We don’t normally see that kind of movie at the theatre. I guess I thought that because we don’t see as many movies as we once did, Amy would want to see something a bit more unchallenging. Not that Sideways was a challenging movie, but you pretty much know everything is going to work out in a movie like Hitch. (Also, there’s a good chance there will be a wacky montage set to a classic Motown hit. That seems to happen in every romantic comedy.) Anyway, Amy said that she would like to see Sideways, but had no desire to see Million Dollar Baby. We both agreed that The Aviator just looks boring despite being directed by Martin Scorsese.

On Monday we took Aden to see his first movie at the theatre. He wanted to see Hitch, but we fortunately talked him into watching Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. We prepared him for everything that would happen beforehand. We told him that it would be in a big room with a big screen and that he would need to be still and he couldn’t get up and run around. As the time drew closer to go see the movie we kept asking him if he still wanted to go see the movie. He would say yes and then he would add one of the caveats that we had drilled into him. It would go like this:

Us: Aden, do you still want to go see the Pooh movie?
Aden: Yes. I’m going to be still and sit in daddy’s lap.

Us: Aden, are you sure you still want to go see the Pooh movie?
Aden: Yes. It’s going to be on a real big TV.

He had a really good time and was very well behaved. He got antsy with about ten minutes to go in the movie, but other than that it was a fun experience. After we got home he came up to me and said, “Daddy, what was the color of that movie?” I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I asked him if he meant what color were the heffalumps. He seemed to think that was the correct question and I told him they were purple. Now he refers to it as The Purple Movie. This is Aden’s shtick. He renames things despite having full knowledge of the actual titles. It took us a while to realize that he actually knew the real titles, but just enjoyed calling them other things. His first renaming was of the movie Toy Story. The first time I showed it to him I let him hold the DVD case and I told him we were going to watch a movie with a cowboy, and an astronaut, and a slinky dog, and a piggy bank, etc. He then opened the DVD case and saw a picture of the slinky dog and the piggy bank. From then on Toy Story has been referred to as Dog Pig. That’s the most drastic renaming of a movie so far. The other examples aren’t as extreme. Finding Nemo is The Fish Movie and The Lion King is That Lion Movie. It’s never The Lion Movie, it’s always That Lion Movie as in, “Do you want to watch That Lion Movie, Daddy?” Of course, Aden also referred to doughnuts as duck-dogs from the very first moment he saw one. He could say doughnuts; he just thought they were actually duck-dogs. He got that from Dr. Seuss’s ABC:

Big D, little d
David Donald Doo
Dreamed a dozen doughnuts
And a duck-dog, too.

So, there’s my three-day weekend in movies. I should also mention that I watched The Motorcycle Diaries, but I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t actually think I needed to see Che Guevara’s political future being molded through an epic motorcycle trip, but the movie had gotten some really good reviews. I’m not sure if I saw the same movie as the critics did because I was incredibly bored, but at least I didn’t have to go see Hitch.