Remember movies?

Posted on Apr 8, 2021

Remember movies?

You don’t. Nobody does. And if you do remember movies, shame on you! There’s still a pandemic going on, don’t you know! You need to be staying inside! You can’t go to movies anymore. Nobody can. We watch all our movies on subscription services on the internet, we have to pay through the nose monthly, and we don’t even have Sno-Caps to eat.

But there was a time once, many moons ago, where you could go see a movie. And we would see them in theaters. They were these… closed, dark boxes where you could cough on other people and eat secret food loudly. And we loved them. We would go there all the time, and we would cough, and sneeze, and breathe all over the place, and we wouldn’t wear a mask, and we’d sit next to strangers. 

We remember. And we want to share our movie theater experiences with you. Which are seven experiences, all from 2012. We don’t see movies much.

Brave

Brave was actually the first film Will and Paula ever saw together in a theater - and we saw it with Will’s family in the same theater! Nowadays that would be a death sentence. But we saw Brave and it was, well, okay. Disney movies are already really overrated, but this one was especially so. Pixar has really gone downhill since Wall-E, huh?

Yeah, this one was really bland. The ending was pretty lame, and the “main villain”, for what it was, wasn’t very engaging. Frankly, we’ve forgotten most of it.

Madagascar 3

But meanwhile, Dreamworks produced Madagascar 3 and holy shit, that kicked ass! Did you guys watch this movie? It was shockingly good. This was sincerely the first movie we had ever seen together by ourselves and we had no expectations going in except that it looked like the only fun thing to watch and wow. It’s easily the best Madagascar movie. Maybe we’re just easily impressed, but it was impressive. The badass chase scene! The Katy Perry musical circus number! The classic Afro Circus thing! This movie really had it all, and we left feeling bubbly. Easily the best Madagascar movie, and probably one of Dreamworks’s best overall. And this is for the sequel to a Dreamworks sequel!

Paranorman

Paranorman we went to because we wanted to support the arts. You know, the indie claymation scene? You ever heard of a little studio called Laika? They made, uh, Coraline?

Paranorman was no Coraline. It was okay, though. It wasn’t really funny, or even very entertaining, but we saw it in 3D so the bad movie 3D really made our eyes hurt. No, that makes it sound like we didn’t like Paranorman. We did! We thought it was a great movie to watch. But it was just that: a great movie to watch. The claymation was miles above what was exhibited in Coraline, which already had fantastic stop-motion work, so it was a masterpiece of clay and tiny little dolls in motion. 

Also, there was a gay character, but he was basically a last-second joke at the end. But it was a pretty funny joke.

Wreck-It Ralph

Towards the end of 2012 and the start of 2013 we really got into Wreck-It Ralph, mostly because it’s a really good movie and probably the last movie Disney has ever done that felt fun and sincere. We watched it using secret methods and really, really liked it, and decided that we just had to go to a real theater and watch it on the big ol’ screen.

And wow, it was worth it. Really, really worth it. Watching this movie using a secret method that didn’t even have the entire ending on it was not the way to go. Not that we advocate paying for movies ever. Wait, I’ve said too much. But seriously, being able to see the credits sequence alone was worth the admission. It was so good, we saw it twice! Yes, we paid twice to see this movie! It was fun! We liked it a lot. We can’t really apologize enough for that.

The Avengers

There’s a special kind of cinema in our area called the Cinema Grill, which is a movie theater with a little twist. The twist is that they serve you DINNER while you watch a MOVIE! Talk about dinner and a show am I right!! It’s our very own Alamo Drafthouse!! Nothing heightens the movie experience than being surrounded by the sound of people eating hamburgers instead of popcorn and you are also eating a hamburger. 

We saw The Avengers because it was pretty hot at the time, but this was well before the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned into such a massive thing like it is today, so it wasn’t cringe. We just wanted to experience the novelty of having dinner and a show so we didn’t really really care what we watched. And it turns out, The Avengers is the perfect movie to half-watch while eating a hamburger. There’s so much nonsense going on at a time you can take a minute to really enjoy your hamburger, and when you look back up the Hulk is slamming Loki into the floor like a pillow at a pillow fight. 

The Lorax

Another movie at the Cinema Grill. Okay, let’s get personal here for a minute. Did you use Tumblr from 2012 to 2013? Be honest. Really, really honest. Okay, we can level with you: we really liked The Lorax. I mean, we didn’t like it, because it wasn’t a very good movie, but… you had to be there, okay? We weren’t even really there for the Onceler. We wish we could explain this to the layman. You had to be there. Even if you didn’t care about The Lorax, you had to watch The Lorax so you could understand 75% of your dashboard.

The Cinema Grill hosting a showing of this was a prime opportunity for us. We had already seen The Lorax also using secret methods and decided that well, we might as well get the authentic experience! Which is, I guess, eating a plate of chicken tenders while you watch The Lorax and having a waiter talk to you during the important parts of the movie. The question is, what are the important parts of The Lorax? I guess the only part that matters is the song. I don’t need to specify which song. If you were there, you know which song.

Frankenweenie

This one is the final entry in our Cinema Grill “trifecta”, as it were, aside from the time we tried to go watch Wreck-It Ralph in the Cinema Grill and gave up because there were way too many kids there and went to McDonalds for McRibs instead. 

But you want to know a time where there was nobody with us at the Cinema Grill? It was when we were watching Frankenweenie. Boy, that was a fun movie to razz on while we were watching it. Tim Burton trying to walk where Henry Selick ran turned out to be a hilarious flop, the perfect thing to half-watch and laugh at. We still say “Sporky No!” based off of the hilariously wooden delivery when the titular dog died. 

I tell you friends, we tore into this movie. Every stupid little joke, we mocked. Every fucked up racist stereotype (yes, there were several!) we hissed. It was a true B-movie experience, the perfect movie to laugh at and not with.

We really do miss movies. We miss them a lot. But what can you do? At least we can watch movies at home, even if we have to serve our own popcorn and chicken tenders.

Tagged: 2012 disney dreamworks movies pixar