And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

A First for Me

There's some talk on my March list of how we should be taking time for ourselves and being less kid-centric. And while I don't think I'm any more kid-centric than necessary when one has a 5- and a 2-year-old in the house, I decided to take it to heart.

For the last almost six years (note the coincidence of that time period being almost exactly as long as we've had children!), moviegoing has been an activity that we rarely partake in. Hiring a babysitter is relatively infrequent, mostly for logistical reasons, and when we do hire a babysitter, paying around $40 (movies and sitter) for two hours of not talking to each other seems a little silly.

So, since I'm a big old crank today anyway, I decided to take myself the the movies to see The Phantom of the Opera, which I've wanted to see for a while . Dave, who despises musicals (except, for some reason, Jesus Christ Superstar), had no desire to see this; I, a big musical fan, was desperate to see it, even though I know it didn't get the best reviews and I hadn't been impressed by the clips I'd seen on talk shows.

Yeah. Well. Does it still count as "me time" if you end up doing something you enjoy so little that you actually cut it short? I walked out. Forty minutes into the movie. It was that bad.

I have never walked out of a movie. Not even from Joe Versus the Volcano, which I contend is the worst movie ever (I spent about 40 minutes during that thinking, "This must be a dream. This is a dream, isn't it? Isn't it? It's too ridiculous not to be" and it turned out it wasn't). But there were so many things that irritated me that I found myself obsessing over all the other things I could be doing. For one thing, I've never seen such obvious (and bad) lip synching in my entire life. I mean, yes, I'm a grown-up. I understand that it's not practical (maybe not even possible?) to actually film people actually singing in a musical. Tracks are laid down afterward. I get that. But geez, people, if you have to lip synch, at least look like you're singing an aria in your highest register -- don't just stand there with your mouth hanging open! Why show only part of a song being sung, with the rest appearing to be in Christine's head (seems like it would be one or the other)? Why show Raoul running/bouncing down the steps while singing but betraying no physical bouncing in his voice? And for the love of God, if your singers aren't the best (which, I'm sorry, they just aren't -- they may be perfectly pleasant, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief and accepting the thrill with which the actors reacted to Christine's debut, because she was not anywhere near good enough, even as the ingenue fulfilling the diva's role. Sarah Brightman, she ain't.), don't land on the notes and draw them out adagio-style. Every song was so plodding, and I just couldn't deal with it. I left* and drove across the street to buy the 2-CD set of the original, but unfortunately they only had the movie soundtrack. So I dug up my highlights album and am listening to it at full volume in my office. Ah, much better.

Sigh. So much for me time.

* Side note: I was amused by the fact that the radio was playing "If You Leave, Don't Look Back" when I got into the car. Maybe my life actually is taking place to its own soundtrack.

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 3:41 PM