... and incredibly close

It was really fortuitous that I went in person, three hours before showtime, to buy my kids and me Incredibles 2 tickets on Sunday. If I’d been 15 minutes later, I probably wouldn’t have gotten them at all.

I had to do it in person rather than online because that’s the only way for me to get a free ticket as a critic. And I had to do it three hours early because it was raining cats and dogs and pigs and horses, so that theater was gonna be full, especially on opening weekend.

I could have done it after my son’s 11:45 a.m. weekly basketball class, rather than before my son’s 11:45 a.m. weekly basketball class. But it was already going to be borderline ridiculous that we were going home for lunch for an hour between basketball and the movie, and stopping to get tickets would have made it even more so. (The gap was too long just to kill time, especially when it was raining cats and dogs and pigs and horses.)

And besides, if I’d gone afterwards, I wouldn’t have gotten tickets.

Even at 11:30 a.m. only the front row was still available for the 2:05 show. See, most people actually buy their tickets online.

And that’s where the subject of this post finally comes in. (You knew I was getting there.)

We did indeed see The Incredibles 2 incredibly close, though it was not extremely loud – I was surprised to notice myself straining to hear the dialogue at times. I suppose that could have just been the steady rumble of a theater filled with children on a Sunday afternoon.

And though I was initially concerned, if not for myself then for my kids, about having the Incredibles dwarf and consume us, it does not seem to have unduly affected any of our experiences. My parents and other parents of their generation used to tell us we’d hurt our eyes if we sat too close, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside these days. Kids sit too close to screens all day long. It’s a byproduct of modern existence.

Being so close did make me feel even more immersed in the tremendous retrofuturism I was seeing on screen, glimmering at me in all its glory. In my review (which you can read here) I called the movie a Rolls Royce, as that was all I could think when I watched it. Pixar movies have looked fantastic before, but I’m not sure I can remember one looking this fantastic. Which I suppose only makes sense given that they’re improving the technology a little bit each time out.

Anyway, don’t need to go into too many details on my thoughts as my review pretty much says it all.

But yeah, if any movie is a front row kind of movie, this one is.