On Sunday we had an afternoon at the cinema. We caught Frozen before it closes, and the previews of The Lego Movie.
Frozen
Frozen has been out for a while now in the UK, but Sunday was our first chance to watch it. We didn’t go to an earlier ‘sing-along’ screening but went to one mid-afternoon. Though it was in one of the smaller screens at our local multiplex, about half the seats were taken, and mostly by families with young girls. Because it’s a Disney princess film, of course.
I’ve been aware of its most popular song, Let It Go, for some time – as well as its covers and its parodies. It’s a great song but really you need to watch the film as well to make full sense of the lyrics. In particular, Let It Go isn’t sung by the main protagonist, as you might have expected.
Thankfully, the film really is worth watching – we both really enjoyed it. Yes, okay, it’s a kids film, but the characters are really relatable. Plus, there’s a surprising amount of innuendo to keep adults entertained; I had to tell Christine off for laughing out loud when Anna asks Kristoff to, ahem, ‘take her up the north mountain’. Fnar fnar.
Oh, and apparently it’s worth staying to the end of the credits. We found this out after leaving the cinema. Doh.
The Lego Movie
Conversely, we watched The Lego Movie before its official release in the UK, which is on Friday. I can foresee some ‘interesting’ Valentines Day visits to the cinema.
I think when The Lego Movie was first announced, a lot of people were expecting it to be rubbish. To be fair, there haven’t been many good film adaptations of toys or computer games. Thankfully, The Lego Movie breaks the mould and is actually good – funny, touching, and with an actual plot! For people like me who grew up with Lego in the 1980s, there’s a lot to like, and although it is computer animated it feels like it could have been made using actual Lego and stop-motion animation. Things like the references to Octan, the fictional petrol brand used by Lego, and the various mini-figures that have been released over the years.
There are, however, two scenes that stop the film from being near perfect. I don’t want to post spoilers, so read what Dave2 said about it. Obviously, anything below the spoiler warning on that blog post is a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen it, be careful.
I think this is the first time in many years that I’ve seen two films in a day – the last time was probably 2007ish. Generally, going to the cinema is something we do every other month, even though we now have a Vue cinema close by in Halifax and don’t have to go all the way to Bradford. Sadly it’s quite an expensive treat – tickets for the Lego Movie were over £10 each as we ended up seeing it in 3D, and Sunday is peak time. Nowadays we’re not so likely to go to the cinema unless it’s a film that we definitely want to see on a big screen, as even buying the DVD is often cheaper now, nevermind renting it from Lovefilm.
