Delightful Movie

Last night, with the excellent company of my wife and our good friend Jim Barnick, we watched the Disney/Pixar animated movie “Cars”. I haven’t enjoyed a movie so much in years.

Though the plot was trite and completely predictable, the characters (all cars!) were wonderfully done, the dialog sweet, cute, and very funny. While there was dialog that most likely would only be understood by adults, there was plenty of appeal for kids. The dialog was modern, but the style — good, squeaky-clean, pure fun — was classic Walt Disney. And the animation was simply spectacular, from front to back. A couple of particular sequences stood out for me: splashing water, and a nighttime scene of blinking neon lights on a city street — but that’s like saying that a couple of Belgian chocolates stood out in a world championship chocolate contest. The whole thing was delectable!

My last visit to a movie theater must be at least five years ago, probably more like ten. That whole experience was awful, completely independently of the movie itself — jam-packed with noisy, rude people, smelling of rancid popcorn, seats covered with who-knows-what (and who wants to know, really?) … and you pay handsomely for this experience. By contrast, our very modest “home theater” has only the audience we want, the excellent company of our friends, cats, and dogs, and … the pause button. Modern electronic miracles give us THX audio and a giant high-quality screen. DVDs (and NetFlix!) give us all the content we could ever want. I cannot understand how the movie theaters stay in business!