The movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was OK. Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore were good. Not the best Tim Burton/Johnny Depp ever by any means. I think it was meant to be much darker but to me it didn't come across, except for Johnny's Michael Jackson which was pretty frightening, and the various types of kids and parents shown. Too much like real life. Just look who's sitting next to you in the theatre, and seeing it in a mall just enhanced the mood set in the movie.
I have lived a little like Charlie myself from time to time. My Air Force dad would sometimes be gone for a year or two, leaving us with only a little money sent home for support, and he was not an officer so there was a very small income to divide up. Once we lived in a tar-paper shack in Southern Illinois for about a year. A little rotting-wood house with that brick-looking stuff stapled to the outside and an outhouse in the back. My mother would get up early to chop wood for the iron stove, which was for heating and cooking (no electricity). We had more than cabbage to eat because she made a nice garden in the backyard with corn, beans, and even strawberries. Our water supply was a garden hose hooked to the neighbor's faucet and poked through a hole over the sink in the house. Hot water was heated in a pan on the stove. The sink and the bathtub were both those galvanized tin tubs that people (including us) now use as rustic flower pots. We slept on quilt palettes laid out on the wood floor. Mice ran freely through the place. It really didn't bother me though, I figured I would always be poor and had accepted it. I was only in first/second grade. To add to the ambience, the house was right next to the railroad track, and to make it more Burtonesque, the house was the only one of its kind on the block. The rest were fairly average-looking typical small town middle class brick homes.
I learned to resent spoiled people who had it all on a silver platter, especially when they looked down on me. I was a "have-not" from Day-One whether I lived on base (where housing and social facilities were segregated by rank) or in the civilian world where we were dirt-poor. I don't appreciate being called a military "brat", believe me. I was anything but spoiled. It's always a good idea to have a little sensitivity before calling anyone a name.
Rant:
Should have gone to the Alamo Drafthouse instead of the REAL Alamo! Last time we went to the IMAX in San Antonio, we must have waited until the movie was a couple of weeks old, because our seats were dead center in the theatre, where we like to sit, and I must have forgotten that they were reserved seats.
If you are going to offer reserved seats in a movie, then offer the customer seating choices. People have all sorts of preferences for movie watching, and I HATE sitting in the back, especially the very last row in the theatre (if I wanted the screen to look smaller, I wouldn't travel 2 hours each way to come here and pay extra for the movie, you dopes!!), I like being closer to the screen than most people seem to like, but not front row either. When they sell these tickets with reserved seats, I would bet that the earliest ticket buyers would be rewarded for their trouble with front row seats (and in an IMAX? give me a break, that's hardcore). I'm sure there were people sitting in our ideal seats, wishing they were further back. This shouldn't be done like a concert, that's boneheaded. Boneheaded!! Grrrrrrrrrr.
Next lesson: Don't EVER park in that parking garage when the mall is about to close. Cars were not moving waiting to leave, so we kept going back in the the mall and back out to the garage checking for progress and there never was any. It took us 2.5 hours to get out of the damned parking garage. Our parking ticket had been validated but the fee was still $6 (it would have been $10 without the validation, the attendant told us).
We drove home for 2 hours in the rain, which put a final polish on the mood.
Rant Over.
Comfort food was consumed. My diet is just going to hell.
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