Invinci... Hey, What's So Funny?

This past weekend, we saw the movie "Invincible". But this story isn't about the movie itself, it's about the experience of seeing it in the theater we did, with the crowd we did.

What's that? You want a movie review, too? Er... OK. Well, it's a Disney movie, and it's based on a the true story of a guy who later worked as a story consultant for this movie. So if you can't figure out how it ends, there's something wrong with you. But that really doesn't matter - if you think, based on the movie trailer, that you'd like it... you will. I liked it.

We went into a local theater to see it. In this particular theater, there are seats way up at the very top of the auditorium that we are quite fond of. Up we went. And we found a lady sitting in "our" seats. She said, "I've got about 30 kids from my class coming, so I've got these top three rows reserved."

Er... fine. We sat across the aisle. There were no kids in her reserved area. For the next 10 minutes, people would walk by, and start to sit, and get the same mini-lecture that we got.

Eventually, some honest-to-goodness kids showed up and started taking those seats. We were a little concerned, because sometimes large crowds of kids (with minimal adult supervision) get a bit roudy when the lights go down, and we wanted to watch the movie. We wern't looking forward to kissing noises, or shouts of "Mrs. Teacher! Polly put popcorn in my ear!". Little did we know, we were concerned about the wrong demographic.

When the movie started, there were two adults in "our" seats, and then the rest of those three rows were mostly filled with kids. And they were perfect angels. I swear I never heard one of those kids, not even for clumsy tripping-over-your-neighbor bathroom trips. But the chaparones...

At one point, I heard a choked gasping noise. It sounded like sobbing, at first. I looked over, and one of the adults was on her knees, on the floor in front of her seat, with her back to the screen. She was throwing her head back and making sobbing noises. It took me several seconds to realize that she was actually laughing very loudly. On her knees. With her back to the screen. And then I realized that adult #2 was out of her seat, standing in the aisle, and leaning over trying to squeeze herself behind the back row of seats.

"I can't believe I dropped that!" "[grunt] Where is it?" "I'm so sorry!" "I've almost got it. [grunt]" "I think it's right back here!" All the while, every sentence was punctuated by that laugh/sob noise from the kneeler.

She had dropped her cell phone. I had an idea for where she could store that thing that would have been safe and warm. But I refrained.