Date Night

Tonight, Tim and I left the kiddo with his folks (at our house) and headed out with friends to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part the first). As is often the case around here, traffic was horrible (it being Friday and all) so Tim was actually a bit late getting back to the carpool lot. So our plan to meet up at Panera for dinner before the movie morphed into slurping down Panera in 15 minutes or less (seriously) in order to get to the theater on time. Thankfully I went yesterday to pick up the tickets, so we didn't have to deal with that then - and it was early enough that it wasn't hard to get seats (the other thing we were worried about).

I won the preview bet (which netted me nothing other than bragging rights, so yay me! 7 previews.) though there weren't really any, other than Tron Legacy, that I want to see. I'm not 100% clear on why they all seemed to be horror-ish (again, other than Tron and Yogi Bear) -- I guess that's the HP demographic? Young people who are into scary movies? I was actually expecting that maybe they'd be more kid oriented.

The movie itself is very, very well done. It seemed to me that they actually stuck a bit closer to the book in this installment than in previous episodes (though I haven't had huge issues with the decisions they've made previously, either. Perhaps that just means I'm not a die hard fan, or perhaps it's simply that I understand that any time you make a book into a movie you're going to lose something. Sometimes you still end up with a wonderful movie. Sometimes you end up with dreck. It's all about how good your screen writer is.) I also thought they picked a perfect place to break between part 1 and part 2. I had been trying to figure out what that break point should be and hadn't landed on anything that seemed to suit very well - which is why I was not the screen writer. (Ok, one of thousands of reasons.)

*slight spoiler ahead if you've not read the book or seen the movie*

Perhaps the most amusing part though - and honestly in some ways it's good, because it kept me from bawling like a baby - was the man in the fourth row from the front who has serious apnea problems and was snoring so loudly, frankly I was surprised we couldn't also *feel* the vibrations. And the snores picked up in volume right as poor Dobby was dying. So, while I would otherwise have been tearing up (I love Dobby!), the whole theater started to snicker - seriously, everyone - because of this moron who came to the theater and promptly fell asleep. (There are definitely cheaper places to nap.) One person a few rows back finally tried whispering loudly "Wake up!" - to no avail. And then Dobby was buried and things settled back in for the end of the movie. And we were all spared from weeping and feeling a bit silly about it.

Now, of course, I can't wait for the next one to come out - though it'll be sad to see the series end - if they do half as good a job on it as they did on this one, I will leave feeling very satisfied.