Dinner and a Movie -- or not.

Alright... so it wasn't dinner and a movie. With three kids, anytime Kelly and I get out alone... we're on borrowed time.... so, we just did a movie. In this case, Juno. A good movie... I'd give it a solid B+. Quirky (I'm a big fan of quirky movies), funny and entertaining.... worth the $15. Now, going to the movies is pretty rare for us. There just is never something that hits us both. In general, these are the kinds of movies I like:

• Sophomoric humor (think "Talladega Nights" or "Dumb and Dumber")
• Quirky (see above -- "Oh Brother! Where art thou!", "Napoleon Dynamite", etc)
• Challenging (I like having to figure out what's going on. It doesn't bother me one bit if I'm confused for 2 hours as long as it's all sewed up at the end)
• Man Movies (a la "Gladiator", "Saving Private Ryan", "Braveheart")

Kelly prefers:

• 80's (Dirty Dancing, Mannequin, Footloose, etc)
• Romantic Comedy (Insert any handsome male actor with the young actress of the month, add a plotline where circumstances keep them apart.... then at the end there is some kind of kiss -- and you've got a winner)... "Never Been Kissed" is the perfect example here and the chick flick that started them all.... "Sleepless in Seattle"
• Musical (Sound of Music, Chicago, Hairspray, etc)
• Important note: movie MUST grab her attention in the first 10 minutes... otherwise she's going to fall asleep

Okay... so... you can see our movie likes don't exactly match up... so, going to the movies usually doesn't appeal to us (we'd rather just hang out and talk and make each other laugh). We'll occassionally bite the bullet for one another and watch something outside of our "zone" for the sake of the other's enjoyment...and, occassionally, a movie will come out that we both want to see... "Juno" being the perfect example.

Anyway, before we had kids, we went to many more movies... here is just a smattering of them:

• "The Wedding Singer": What's interesting about this is that we went to it on opening night. Nothing unusual about that right? Well... it just happened to open on Valentines Day in 1998... our first Valentines Day as an engaged couple and last Valentines Day before getting married (in May '98). GREAT movie -- the moral of the story here: any woman that will happily accompany you to an Adam Sandler movie on Valentines Day is marrying material.
• "Titanic": This movie had more of an impact on our year of engagement than any other. We first saw it after ice skating w/friends at Reston Town Center. It was December of 1997.... 11 at night and, on a whim, we decided to take in this nearly 3 hour long movie. Any movie for Kelly past 9 (see above comment about sleeping) is dangerous. Well... this was the exception. Kelly LOVED this one... and so did her good friend and roommate, Shannon (who was also engaged). They both resolved to watch it.... OVER and OVER and OVER. Kelly promised to watch it for a full 24 hours (umm... that's 8 times)....and we did. It was a good movie.... the first time... and the second time I watched it. Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.... but.. after about the 3rd time, I started noticing the acting wasn't so good (especially from Leonardo Dicrappio)...and that it had some glaring plot holes... but... you know... it made Kelly happy watching it so it made me happy. Over that winter, we even made a special trip with Shannon (and her fiance -- now husband -- Tim) to a museum in Virginia Beach that had a Titanic exhibit. Oh... and I also had to bear numerous references by both Kelly and Shannon to "Make it count"....
• "Star Wars", "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", "Chronicles of Narnia": These were all a series of movies we watched with Kelly's parents. As soon as the theater got dark and the sound turned up....Kelly fell soundly asleep.
• "Sixth Sense": I had heard good things about this movie and that it was a "little" scary but it had a "great" ending. This was one of these aforementioned movies that Kelly was willing to "take a bullet" and watch with me. Well, within the first 15 minutes, I almost peed in my pants from stuff freaking me out. Kelly was being a trooper. That is until this one scene, about half hour into it, where the temperature drops and the little boy (you know, the "I see dead people" kid) walks out of his room and sees this ghost in his kitchen that starts screaming at him. Once that started, I had the heebie jeebies... and Kelly.... well.... Kelly was sobbing uncontrollably saying "I want to leave... I want to leave... I don't like this movie".... well... so we left. To this day, still haven't seen the ending.
• "Patch Adams": This movie was, perhaps, the worst movie of all time. It was Robin Williams playing the same freaking character he plays in every movie.... in fact, it might as well have been called "The Genie from Aladdin plays a Doctor"... It was supposedly "based" on a true story.... but the only truth in it is that there was really a doctor named Patch Adams. The rest of the story was so incredibly ridiculous that is was completely lacking in any believability or credibility. Nothing wrong with an opinion... right? Well... unfortunately Kelly LOVED this movie. To this day, I think it's the only movie where we had diametrically opposed opinions.... so... don't bring up "Patch Adams" around us... it's our Kryponite.
• "Jackass": We are church-going, evangelical, family-oriented Christians. Naturally, we probably protested this movie and wrote the studios telling them to stop making such "crap"... right? Wrong. We were so excited for it...we went on opening night. So, there we were... with a movie theater full of drunk frat boys and sorority girls from JMU... and us... little Christian couple in the middle of the movie theater. Kelly laughed to the point of crying. Definitely one of the most unique movie experiences (rivaled in my mind only by a 1994 showing of "Dazed and Confused" at Grafton-Stovall theater at JMU... I can still smell the skunky stench of pot and the sound of Budweiser cans being cracked open during that movie).

Ok... so... there you have it.... long post... I know... but it could be another year before we hit the movie theatres again.