Planes!

Being on vacation for August followed by one week home and a week of work travel (with the requisite fire-drill in the middle of it) kept me away from here longer than I intended.  So I've got a few stories I want to get down before I forget about them.  In fact, I know I've already forgotten one of the things I planned to write about.  Hope it comes back.

So the big one was while we were on vacation.  I think it was the Wednesday before we hit the road for home.  It was kind of cool and threatening rain, though I don't think it ever did, and I'd been waiting for a day like that to justify spending the afternoon indoors.  Why?  Because this was the first day James and I were going to a movie together.

He's seen plenty of movies already, usually on the portable DVD player or the computer or in the home theatre, but he's not been able to sit through a whole movie.  He's just too busy.  Christine told me, though, that she'd noticed him being able to sit through longer and longer stretches of movies and it was easy for him to watch a whole Winnie The Pooh movie without getting up at all.  So it seemed like he was ready.

We went to see Planes since it is "from the world of Cars" and Cars was his absolute favourite movie for the better part of this last year.  Even the mention of Cars at the wrong time would result in tears and pleading to watch the movie.  Seemed like Planes would be a sure hit.

I'll make one quick comment on the movie.  It is a superior sequel to the original Cars than Cars 2 was by a long shot.  It has none of the same characters, the plot is similar in some ways, but different enough that it is definitely its own story, and it is truer to the spirit of Cars than anything bearing the name since.  It's a good movie.

James was really, really quiet when we entered the theatre.  He was taking it all in and responding if I asked him questions, but otherwise we was in his "I'm in a strange place" mode of not saying or doing anything until he'd sussed it all out.  I had a stash of crackers for snacks since I didn't think he'd really enjoy popcorn and I didn't want to pack him full of chocolate bars, but I bought us a medium (approximate 1.5 litres, by my reckoning) iced tea to share.

We were early for the show, so for the first bit James and I just sat beside each other in the darkened theatre watching the slide show before the trailers started.  I was telling him things like "this is going to be fun!" and "you're going to see a new movie!" and he would repeat the key words back to me somewhat dubiously.

Boredom, predictably, set in, but only about two minutes before the trailers started, so I distracted him with the crackers and iced tea.  The trailers didn't really impress (though I confess I was kind of distracted by the trailer for Ender's Game, and I didn't even really care for the book and I think they're mangling the story for the movie, still looks good, though) but as soon as the movie itself started, we were set.  James barely moved the entire time, except to ask me if I'd seen something or to take an offered cracker or drink of iced tea.  During the last five minutes or so of the movie I could tell he sensed the end was coming to the story and that was about the time he started kicking his feet and bouncing.  Not taking his eyes away from the screen for a second, though.  When the end credits started to roll he immediately started waving and saying "Bye planes!  Fun planes!  Thank you, planes!"

We stayed for a bit of the credits, then left to meet Christine and Daniel at the Starbucks across from the theatre and right away he started trying to tell her whatever he could remember from the movie, mostly that it was fun and he watched it.  It was the most excited I'd seen him about anything I'd taken him to to date.

I've now seen him even more excited about something, but that's next post, I think.

But yeah, he was so thrilled with it he hugged me over and over, he kept saying "Bye planes!" and "Thank you, planes!" long after we'd left the theatre.  Looking forward to it coming out on Blu-ray.