So today, my father and I took my mother to see this movie. Here's the story, though. She's dying of liver disease, and has been in and out of hospitals and rehab facilities more times in the past couple of years than she's been home. This year has been spent almost entirely in hospitals or healthcare centers of some sort, fighting off terrible, painful, debilitating side effects of the disease, up to and including terrible dementia caused by ammonia in the blood stream.
But this week, she has been doing phenomenally well and wanted so bad to just come out for the day and be with us and see a movie. She has been pushing herself hard in her physical therapy to be able to walk again (hasn't been able to walk in over a month due to issues affecting her legs) because of how badly she wanted to prove to the people their and to us that she is strong enough to come out and around for a day. So we took her to see this movie (which I already loved).
Now usually in the past, she sleeps through movies, but this one, she was sitting forward and wide-eyed the entire time, fully engaged and excited and really, really into it. She held my hand for most of it and frequently looked to me with a grin at really big parts. She was like a kid seeing Santa Claus for the first time, and I can't remember seeing her in this great shape in a long, long time. It was absolutely magical, and to see her this amazed at a movie was very moving for me. Things have been so bad for so long, it was just so wonderful to see her like this.
And after the movie, she couldn't stop talking about how much she loved it, how she loved the dinosaurs and the exciting scenes, and the big moments near the end. It was fantastic.
Now she has seen a lot of genre movies in the past, some she's liked and some she hasn't (didn't really care for JP3 at all), but her reaction today really cements with me the reason this movie does well. I completely understand why some people don't like it, but it seems to really resonate so strongly because for most, it's just so utterly FUN. It's not so rapid paced as to prevent people from enjoying it (3), and despite what people say, the characters are not entirely forgettable. At least not the main ones, the ones that count. Maybe due to the screen charisma of those main characters, but they work for a lot of people. And dinosaurs! Dinosaurs done really, really well and in exciting ways.
I was a big fan of this movie to begin with, but after today, not knowing how much longer I'll have with her, I think JW has gone down in my book as being a very, very special kind of blockbuster movie. And I just couldn't be happier seeing it succeed in the ways it has.
t: Do you have any of these in avi form/size?
