a grave admission

I have something I have to confess to you.

As I type, it is late on Saturday night. The house is dark. Sam is sleeping. Crystal and Zach are away at Bonko (curses! and I thought that Katrina washed away the coveted Bonko table). I sit here in front of the computer with a cup of hot tea seaming beside me.

In the quietness I must face the facts.

Here it is. Are you ready?

I just watched a Will Ferrell movie.

You heard me right. I actually headed over to the movie theater, shelled out twelve bucks for two tickets and sat through an hour and a half of Will Ferrell.

The worst part is that I actually took my two year old son with me.

The worser part is that I enjoyed the movie.

Okay. So it's not as bad as it sounds. Quit throwing rocks at me! I saw Curious George. Gosh.

Seriously, though, it got me thinking. So I did a bit of research. If memory serves me right, I have seen a total of one Will Ferrell movie: Elf. And I borrowed the DVD from the Trauths...like a year after it was released to video.

Enough of my hatefest with Will Ferrell movies...let me tell you how much fun I had tonight.

So Sam and I read Sam's favorite Curious George book, packed some milk & dinosaur crackers and jumped into "Daddy's Jeep" to see the movie.

Did I mention that we listened to the Curious George soundtrack in the Jeep on the way to the theater? (By the way, I think I have a mancrush on Jack Johnson.)

Words cannot describe how much fun it was to watch Sam's eyes and face from the moment the lights dimmed until the credits rolled.

He loved it. He sat through the whole ninety minutes. He laughed out loud and burst out comments at the screen. ("There's George!!")

He didn't even get distracted by the kid two seats down who started screaming when a pack of poodles started yapping at George through a Taxicab window.

As for the movie itself, it is really interesting to see 2-D animation in this day and age. I remember when I saw Toy Story for the first time. I was wowed by the 3-D animation. I thought it was amazingly cool.

I think that over the past couple of years, we have forgotten how animation can be a beautiful piece of art. The story is painted in bold, bright colors. The starry sky takes your breath away.

And the whole thing has this feel to it. I don't know how else to describe it except to say that it feels like the old Curious George books.

The story is simple. It is full of little moments that just make you smile. Both George and the Man with the Yellow Hat are very well done characters. You fall in love with them pretty quickly. Will Ferrell and all of the voice actors do a great job (am I really typing that?). The soundtrack is Jack Johnson with some orchestration added here and there (which sounded awesome). And like all good children's movies, the point is clearly spelled out not long before the credits roll.

It is refreshing to see a kid's movie that is really for kids. I am tired of children's movies that throw in humor that flies over the heads of the primary audience. By the way, that doesn't mean that adults won't laugh or enjoy themselves.

It is a movie that makes adults want to be kids again.

So, if you have kids, take them. If you are a kid, go see it. If neither of the last two apply...pretend that one of them is true of you and go to the movies.