The Movies, or There and Back Again

I love everything about the movies- using the touch-screen device to buy tickets, all of the snacks, the display of “coming attractions,” and that exciting feeling you have when the lights go down. You grab a shovel-sized handful of popcorn in anticipation. The movie’s starting!

I can’t forget my very first movie. I was seven, and my biggest desire, even more than world peace, a Barbie stereo, and the latest Britney Spears CD, was to see Lilo and Stitch. My mom agreed to take me and my sisters to the matinee.

I loved the movie. It was sweet, funny, and it introduced the new idea of suspense to me. According to a favorite family story, when Lilo tentatively opens the door in one scene, I shouted, “Don’t go through the door!” to the amusement of all of the other members of the audience.

This experience forever changed me. It taught me manners (don’t kick someone else’s chair or shout suggestions out to the characters on the screen- it stops being cute at seven-and-a-half), basic math (if Katie has two dollars, and popcorn and a drink costs sixteen dollars, how long will she have to wait until dinner?), and of course, how to locate the nearest exits in the event of an emergency. I’ve also found that when movies bring people closer together. When times are tough, nothing sounds better than a family’s laughter.

That’s what makes movies great. Life is hard and boring and tragically fresh out of musical numbers. When students are eating in the cafeteria, they generally don’t begin a dance choreographed by Kenny Ortega. We don’t keep aliens that crash landed in Hawaii. We don’t see dead people. We don’t fly. Wardrobes don’t have awesome places with talking animals and Turkish Delight on the other side- just boring coats and that scarf your aunt made that no one will buy from you.

But it sure would be cool if we did, wouldn’t it? And that’s what movies are about- giving us an escape from our daily lives. The directors, producers, and cinematographers invite us into a world full of people with big dreams, challenges to overcome, and perfect hair days.

Movies invest themselves in us. We end up rooting for the football team who, at the beginning of the movie, couldn’t hold the ball correctly. We’re heartbroken when the main character gets engaged to James Marsden, instead of her one true love, Ryan Gosling. We cheer when Inigo Montoya’s father’s death is avenged, and the a cappella group wins the championship, despite one girl who’d rather be doing anything else, one serial barfer, and one closet mermaid dancer.

I give movies the same rule I give people:

Every movie has potential. It’s what movies do with that potential that determines where they go from there.

When I say that, I don’t necessarily mean “award-winning material.” Sometimes movies win awards, and people are sitting watching the Oscars who didn’t like them at all. Even more often, movies don’t win those awards, even though they should, because it was heart-wrenching and inspiring and featured Vikings, cool accents, and the training of dragons.

But awards aren’t the only recognition movies receive. It’s the viewer’s vote that truly counts. To be perfectly honest, when my mom and I are watching one of our favorite movies, we’re not really concerned with the fact that Amanda Seyfried didn’t win an award for predicting that there was a thirty percent chance that it was already raining. We aren’t outraged that no one gave Whoopi Goldberg a Golden Globe in her classic 1992 film, though she completely transformed a cloister of pitchy nuns from an inner-city church into a flawless worldwide phenomenon. We don’t call the Academy and tell them that they forgot to include Reese Witherspoon as a nominee, every time we see her try to get into Harvard Law School.

That’s a perfect example of how people can disagree over movies. We’re all different, and entitled to our own opinions. A saga telling the story of a moody girl falling in love with a sparkly blood sucker unwilling to wash his hair could truly fascinate me, but it could crush my friend Ashley’s soul. Ashley’s soul could feel instantly revived through an animated film about a fish traveling across the ocean to find his son, but I could feel personally offended that someone would create a film where fish can talk. Despite the fact that we will never see eye to eye on this topic, we will hopefully respect one another’s opinion and agree to disagree (that is, except for Ashley and me- I know I’m right on this one).

I don’t believe that all movies are filled with mindless violence or the misogynistic treatment of women or boys eating worms in order to avoid people stuffing them in their pants. Movies can be works of art that help us think about things in new ways. They can show us great examples of strength, bravery, and honor, when we don’t have those in our lives. When we don’t know what our college major will be, or what to do after parents get divorced, or how to recover from heartbreak, movies can inspire us to keep going, and pursue the right path.

Going to movies doesn’t solve our problems. But it does give us a few things we’ll need to solve them- time to get away from them for a little while, time to laugh and cry and smile, and time with people who love and care about you.

And let’s not forget a great musical number.

P.S. See if you can guess the number of movie references in this blog entry (directly mentioning Lilo and Stitch doesn’t count). Write down your guesses in the comment section below (shout out to Anne Hartman, who always reads this blog).