The interminable wait for Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 opened Thursday here in Australia, yesterday in the U.S.

And yet it may be many weeks before I see the sequel to my #1 movie of 2015.

Why is this, you ask?

Well, I had the opportunity to see it as long ago as Tuesday, when I could have gone to an advanced screening that was Admit 2. But it was in the evening hours after work, and the same night that my older son has basketball practice. This is relevant because, in what qualifies as the biggest surprise of the year related to him, he actually wants to see this movie. I may have mentioned this in a recent post.

The most salient reason for my skipping it, though, is that one of my critics at ReelGood has been super keen to get to a free screening, only I'd been failing to check my email and let a lot of them go by the wayside. This one I caught at the perfect time, and he was only too eager to snap it up. Having written about 95% of the reviews on my site in the past eight months, I was only too eager to let him.

Besides, I figured I'd be watching it this weekend anyway, and I'd just have to get through reading his review without having too much spoiled for me to reach my goal. I mean, I figured it wouldn't be a great follow-up to Inside Out, a probable cash grab for Pixar, but if there was any chance it was in the same range of quality as its predecessor, this was a movie I needed to see ASAP, to shake up what has been a pretty average year so far.

Well, I appear to have figured wrong.

When I broached with my wife the idea of going to see Inside Out 2 this weekend, using my older son's surprise interest as a way into the topic (my younger son's interest is taken for granted), she suggested that it might be a good thing to save for school holidays.

Which don't begin for another two weeks.

Now, since I've already posted a review on my site by another writer, waiting to watch this movie is something I can, actually, do. If I were the one reviewing it, it would be a different story. Oh, we could have just let the movie go unreviewed, but I can't remember the last Pixar movie that has not gotten a review on our site -- it would have been before I started in 2014. Not about to start ignoring Pixar films now.

But being able to wait to see Inside Out 2 and being willing to wait to see Inside Out 2 are two different things.

Besides, I'm starting to get an idea what people think of this movie, and it's quite a lot. My critic, who can be a bit of a curmudgeon about the mainstream, gave it a healthy (by his standards) 7 out of 10. The IMDB average user rating, I saw just now, is even stronger at 8.0 -- and that's huge as it represents the accumulation of a lot more opinions.

But the one that really hyped me up came just this afternoon, when the father of my younger son's friend came by to pick up a piece of furniture we're giving them. This guy may not be super discerning, but when we asked how he liked it, he said on a scale of 1 to 10 it was an 11. He described it as "so beautiful," and this is a fairly tough guy who used to be a top-rated soccer player when he was younger.

Yeah, I think I'm going to like this movie.

And if my wife takes pity on me, maybe we'll see it tomorrow after all. 

I mean, my Celtics did just miss their chance to sweep the Dallas Mavericks by getting blown out by 38 points, down from a 48-point deficit, which was the largest in the NBA Finals in the past 50 years. I need a little pitying.

The final downstairs movie that isn't to be

We're moving out of the office I've called home for the past six years. (But didn't attend very much in 2020 and 2021.)

Tomorrow is my final day there.

For the purposes of this blog, the significance of my office move is that my current, soon-to-be-former office is about six floors above Cinema Kino, the movie theater where I've seen probably 50 to 75 movies over the years I've lived in Australia.

It's not the most convenient theater to either my old house in North Melbourne or my new house in Altona, but it's been the most convenient theater to my office, so that has meant a large number of viewings over time. (Plus, it's one of the MIFF theaters so it's been host to probably a dozen MIFF viewings.)

After tomorrow, it won't be convenient to anywhere. 

I'm being just a bit dramatic here. My new office is not actually that far away, only a 15-minute walk from my old office, ten if you catch the traffic lights right. So I'll probably still go to Cinema Kino.

What I won't ever do again is clock off of work and be in my seat downstairs less than five minutes later.

Although I didn't do it as often as I would have liked, I loved those occasions where I wrapped things up as quickly as I could in order to arrive in time for the start of a 4:20 movie. It felt like some kind of life hack, like I was getting away with something. (And I guess I sort of was, as I am technically supposed to be at work until 4:36.)

Now, most people never get an opportunity like that, so if any violins are playing out there for me, they are probably the world's smallest. 

But since I did get to taste it, I loved how it tasted.

I'd hoped to taste it just one more time, as a ceremonial ending to my final day in the office, but unfortunately, the movies in question just don't work out for me, or don't have convenient start times if they do. Let's look at my options:

Bad Boys: Ride or Die - I haven't seen it, and don't really plan to -- I kind of feel like I'm still punishing Will Smith, and in any case, I gave up on this series after the second one. I'd probably stretch and take the plunge, but it's showing at 3:50 and 6:20. The first is too early, especially on a day when my coworkers are also in the office, and the second defeats the purpose of a convenient downstairs viewing if I have to wait two hours for it to start.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Seen it already, and it has basically the same start times as Bad Boys anyway.

The Watchers - Seen it already, and the start time is even five minutes earlier at 3:45.

The Way, My Way - I don't really know what this is but the screenings are at 1:20 and 6 p.m.

The Fall Guy - Seen it already, start time not convenient anyway.

The Three Musketeers: Milady - I don't really know what's going on with these two French Three Musketeers movies but I don't care about the Three Musketeers and never have. But the 3:30 start time does not even make it a consideration.

Challengers - Saw this ages ago and it only plays at 1 p.m. anyway.

The Taste of Things - More French movies. Not really keen on this one anyway, but its start times are 2:50 or 5:50.

High & Low: John Galliano - The poster for this documentary makes it look interesting, but again, it's at 3:30 and 6:10.

The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan - Yes you can watch both Musketeers movies, but this one only at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Wicked Little Letters - 10:30 a.m. only.

Perfect Days - 1:10 p.m., 8:15 p.m.

Radical - 10:30 a.m.

Thirteen movies and not a single one starting between 4 and 5 p.m. Maybe I am getting out of here just in time.

I even considered coming into the office on Friday, which is usually a work from home day but is probably the final day my building pass will work. It also has the benefit of following Thursday, which is the day new movies are released.

And Inside Out 2, the only new movie opening that day, is indeed playing at 4:20 p.m. 

In a way, it would be a perfectly symbolic means of dealing with the emotions -- manufactured a little though they may be -- of moving out of a building you have worked in for six years.

But you know there's a but coming, and it's this: Inside Out 2 makes for the rare movie that all four members of my family might actually watch together, and we'll likely go see it together next weekend.

Yes, you read that right. My 13-year-old son, only two months from turning 14, said he wants to see it. We saw an ad for it come on during the NBA Finals, and I joke-asked him if he wanted to see it. He serious-answered me that he did. You don't have to tell me twice.

So it looks like the downstairs work movie will become a thing of the past without a formal send-off. 

But again, it's not like I'll never come to Cinema Kino again. If I hoof it, I can probably even get there from my new office for a 4:45 movie, if they see it fit to program one.

More than anything, though, I think it is just symbolic of a change I am not dealing with well in other ways, which are also pretty minor but nonetheless still relevant for me. For one, it takes longer to get to my new office, with a longer walk from the train station -- longer by five to seven minutes. Secondly, it doesn't have the same convenience to eating establishments. In my current building, the cinema is ringed by about a dozen different options in an upscale food court, about half of which I frequent.

And I'm a guy who doesn't really like change, in any case. I'll miss silly things like the familiar concierge desk and elevators, and the grandiose complex itself, with its twin skyscrapers flanking the food court, the cinema, a hotel, and a number of high-end clothing stores. The new office does not have any of these charming attributes.

But we do get those fancy curved monitors, so I guess that's something.