Saw Wallace and Grommit today... Part of it...

Originally posted on 10/16/05...

I went to the movies with Julia today since my wife has to work on Sundays. We would have gone yesterday to the movie, but we spent part of the time buying a used car.

I purchased a 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe. I test drove it for a few days and really liked it. It gets decent gas mileage for an SUV. It rides really smooth, too.

Today I was feeling really horrible about the purchase. I haven't purchased a car with payments in over a decade as one I bought with insurance settlement money, one was a cheap repo and the other was given to us. I felt really good about this purchase for most of the day, but maybe it was the alcohol I ingested while watching the Baylor/NU game, but started feeling really horrible about it. I kept wondering if it was the right decision and if I really needed that new of a vehicle and if we could afford it (we can). Basically, I had a huge amount of buyers guilt. I shouldn't. We needed the new vehicle because our last car was falling apart. As a bonus, there's a warranty on the car AND our insurance went down. I'm feeling better about it now, though.

So seeing as how I was bummed out, I decided to take Julia to the new Wallace and Grommit picture, "Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit"

Julia loves the Wallace and Grommit DVD that I bought for her before she was born (the first one I bought knowing that I was going to be a father), so she was pretty excited to see the movie.

We rush to get to the theater, but I had to stop as an ATM to get some money. We half-run to the entrance and buy tickets. We buy a pop and a popcorn and run to the theater, expecting to barely make the movie on time.

I have no idea why I was worried about being late.

We must have sat through seven movie trailers before the main movie started. There were trailers for Dozen 2, Chicken Little, some new CGI movie about animals feeding off food in the suburbs, Curious George and a movie called Dreamer. Dreamer is a Dakota Fanning movie about a girl who basically begs her father, a horse trainer played by Kurt Russel, to keep a horse that got injured alive. The horse gets better and they consider running it. It's all sentimental and crap... Basically, tears started streaming down my face a little during one part of the trailer when Dakota and Kurt talk about a story she wrote about a king that lives in a big palace with a horse. She says the story is dumb. He says that he loves the story about the king. She whispers, "I love the king, too."

So I'm a real sentimental guy. I was feeling homesick today and thought of Julia telling me that when I saw that scene. So sue me. Hey, I've only seen ET twice and I cried when ET leaves each time.

So the movie starts and it's a Madagascar spin-off with the penguins from that movie doing a Christmas short.

Immediately, Julia is impatient.

"I want to see Wallace and Grommit!"

I shush her and try to explain that it'll start after this one.

"But I want to see Wallace and Grommit!"

Finally, the movie starts not a moment too soon. I was afraid we were going to have a repeat of the March of the Penguins movie. Julia was entranced at first, but then bored silly after 20 minutes. We didn't see the end of it. It's a great movie, but whoever called it the perfect family movie is high.

The new Wallace and Grommit movie centers around our heroes Wallace, the inventor, and Grommit, his dog, in their efforts to rid the neighborhood of the rabbit problem before the annual vegetable festival. They now run a service called AnitPesto. They capture rabbits from people's gardens and house them in their basement.

While experimenting with a new brain modification device, Wallace and a bunny are hooked up during a full moon. He thinks thoughts like, "Veggie bad. Carrots bad."

Something goes wrong and suddenly a huge rabbit is on the loose eating up everyone's gardens and causing rampant destruction.

The movie is pretty charming and it's kind of odd seeing a non-cgi 3D film in wide screen. I started noticing when finger prints would be on the characters as they were doing their actions and when they would disappear.

But then, we had to leave.

About an hour into the film, we see the Were Rabbit transform and Julia was not amused.

She turned to me, "Daddy, I want to go... NOW!"

"What's the matter?"

"This movie is scary!"

"No, it's not. It's okay sweetie."

"I want to go now!"

"Umm.... Okay."

And we left. I guess I'll have to wait for DVD to see how this ends. I could have forced her to stay, but I didn't want to press my luck.