Two Thumbs Up!
pamelamyers | January 3, 2013
On New Years Day, we decided to take Sam to her very first movie. At the movie theater, that is. She has seen one or two movies at home. For a while now we thought she was finally old enough to sit through a whole movie since she can do it at home pretty well. A few months ago, we learned that Monsters, Inc. was being re-released in the theaters in 3-D around Christmas. Our thought was that it would be a good choice for a first movie since she knows the story so well and hopefully that would keep her from getting bored. Besides that, Monsters, Inc. is one of Mark and my favorite Pixar films and Sam absolutely loves it too. We have watched it at home a million times and she thinks it is hysterical. We were really glad she liked it, since we do, and we also thought it was a great way to keep a normal childhood fear of monsters at bay. If she thinks monsters are funny, how can she be afraid of them? Whether it is the movie or something else, Sam doesn’t have a fear of monsters, in her closet, under her bed, or otherwise. We weren’t too sure about the 3-D nature of the movie, for a lot of reasons, but were lucky enough to find a few theaters showing it both in 3-D and regular, so we opted for the regular version.
The first time we tried to take Sam to the movie was during Christmas week. I mentioned it to her in the morning and we never wound up going because all she kept saying was, “I can watch Monsters at home!” So we decided to next time not even tell her where we were going. On New Years, off we went to the movies. The first thing Sam saw when we drove up to the theater was a movie poster of Mike, one of the characters. She yelled out, “I see Mike!” and was really excited. We took her in and she loved just being inside the theater. She watched the popcorn popping and looked at all the posters. When it was time to buy snacks, she picked out a box of Snow Caps, one of her favorites. We walked in to our actual theater and showed her what we called, “the big, giant TV” and I don’t think she really knew what was going on. Once she got settled into her seat and all the previews started, she was pretty hooked.
She sat in her seat for a little while then wanted to sit on my lap. She spent most of the movie there, which was fine with me. The funniest part of the whole thing for Mark and I was that Sam actually knows most of the dialogue to the movie by heart! She kept saying all the lines as the characters were saying them. It was so cute and so funny, but also made us wonder just how many times we let her watch it at home….uh oh. 🙂 She was so very good though and seemed to have a great time. Sam sat, ate her candy, giggled and was as good as could be.
When we got home we asked her if it was fun, and she said it was. We then asked her if she’d like to do that again sometime. She said yes and then suggested next time we go to the movies we go see Hop, another movie we watch at home. We tried to explain to her that we can’t really pick the movie, we just have to go to whatever is out at the time, but I don’t think she quite got it. Oh well. The sequel to Monsters, Inc. comes out over the summer, so maybe that one. In the meantime, there are always DVDs!