Local Voices: Hot 3D Flicks Help Us Forget Temps but Yearn for Classics

As summer really heats up this week, many of us will grab the kids and our purses (do NOT forget the purse or wallet!) and head to the movies for an afternoon of air conditioned bliss and entertainment. Wehrenberg Theatres even gives a discount on heat advisory days: An adult receives a ticket for the price of a child.

This summer the blockbuster 3D adventure of a lifetime just started: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Of course, thousands of local fans camped out for the premier (), but my family was not among them. Sorry, Potter fans, my family wasn't interested in Harry Potter for some reason, although we have have nothing against him.

Surprising Reactions to 3D Explosions

The 3D summer blockbuster our family did shell out the extra three bucks for was Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Question: Is it obvious to anyone else who has seen this movie that the producers clearly couldn't secure the rights to use "Dark SIDE of the Moon," but they referred to it that way many times in the actual movie?

I do not feel it necessary to watch movies in 3D. The one I really enjoyed was Avatar, and I felt it did add to the experience of the planet Pandora. But Transformers 3D...eh. I was not impressed. I just didn't feel that the Decepticon parts were actually flying at me, while there were parts of Avatar I felt I  had to duck left or right to avoid being struck by something. We were in the second row for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, so that was not the issue.

We liked the movie okay. I had seen a review on the Today Show by two moms who stated, "If you want to get inside a man's head, watch this movie."  They explained this is due to all the cars, explosions, car chases, explosions, robots...oh, and also explosions. My two boys liked it, and I actually enjoyed the whole moon storyline in the film, which incorporated some real moon history.

But one person in our family who did not like it, the only man in our family, was my husband.

Exact quote from him, with about 30 minutes left in the movie:

"I hate everything about this movie. I have no idea what is going on."

This resulted in me laughing out loud for five minutes straight in the movie and is making me laugh right now.

I, being the extremely helpful wife that I am, immediately began loud-whispering some of the major plot points, but he had such an irritated look on his face and kind of waved me away. I quickly gave up explaining to watch the remaining 25 minutes of explosions.

The Sharing of Cinema

We love movies at our house. When we were dating, my husband and I bonded over such movies as Tequila Sunrise, Goodfellas, and nearly any Woody Allen movie.  I took the kids to see the midnight premiere of Toy Story 3 on opening day. We even had a Toy Story marathon right before we left for the theater at 11:15 p.m. to get great seats.

The kiddos just returned from a trip to Ohio, where they visited the Ohio State Reformatory, formerly a prison, but more excitingly, the place where the movie The Shawshank Redemption was filmed! The Reformatory also has sets from the film that did NOT take place inside the prison, such as the room where "Brooks Was Here" was carved into the rafters.

We showed our kids this movie (Yes, it is rated R, but we knew we could discuss the rated R parts with the kids and that they know better than to use foul language, at least around their parents) before their visit to the Reformatory. We all loved it. I was surprised at how funny the movie really is. I did not remember all the funny parts.  For those who haven't seen it, well, I was about to summarize the plot but you should just go rent or purchase it. I bought it on DVD at Target for $5. It's that good. (It is fiction, based on a Stephen King novella titled Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.)

We may head to our local friendly theater this week to beat the heat. I wish there was a really good film to take the family to, a little more like Shawshank and a little less like Transformers.