My first mountaintop movie

As I've told you on a number of occasions, I love seeing movies when I'm out of town. I love the experience of seeing familiar movies -- familiar in the sense that I've seen ads for them and been anticipating them -- in unfamiliar locations. I prefer tucked away little single-screen theaters, but multiplexes will do in a pinch. My mere lack of acquaintance with them makes them exotic.

You might say that I like these movies in these cinemas to "show me the world," so to speak.

Aladdin may have done that in a way more exotic than all the others.

It's not because Aladdin, set in Arabia, is exotic in and of itself. It's because I saw it on top of a mountain.

See, this past weekend my sons and I went to Mt. Buller, about a three-hour drive from our home in Melbourne. Most people ski there, but my kids have never done that before and I'm still recovering from my dislocated shoulder, so we just frolicked. It's what Melburnians call "going to the snow." It doesn't snow in Melbourne of course, but during the winter months -- June, July and August -- it snows close enough by that you could actually make a day trip of it if you wanted. We made a three-day trip of it, starting Thursday night and returning Sunday afternoon.

At first I thought "going to the snow" would be the name of a hypothetical activity only, and not an actual description of what we were doing. See, Mt. Buller has not gotten much snow this winter. A co-worker who pays more attention to these things than I do told me, as I was departing on Thursday, that I'd be lucky to see much at all. So that's kind of what I prepared for.

Boy was she wrong.

There was a base of snow there already, and the rain on Friday made it wet and easily packable for snowballs and snowmen. That would have been enough to say we'd really had the experience. But then on Saturday the experienced kicked into high gear. Fluffy snow fell all day long, necessitating the chains for our tires we had rented ("hired," as they say here), never expecting to actually need them. There's plenty of drama I could tell you about the installation of the chains, whether they were on the right wheels or not, and my removal of them at 10:30 at night by the side of the road, but I'll spare you the horror. Let's just say that all's well that ended well.

We were still up on the mountain, and not back to our Air BNB about 20 minutes from its base, because we decided to take in Aladdin at the little Mt. Buller theater on Saturday night, starting at 6. Given what I've told you, how could we not?

Here's a picture:

I'd like to tell you the building resembled a small Swiss ski chalet, but as you can probably tell from the picture, it did not. It was actually in a six-story building set into the side of the hill that also includes the post office, a place with a bunch of trampolines and climbing equipment, and even the Mt. Buller campus of the local primary school. The auditorium where the movies are shown functions as a lecture hall and meeting location in addition to Mt. Buller's ticket to the silver screen.

But what the theater lacked in quaintness it made up for in remoteness. This is a theater that cannot even be reached by ordinary car. The village that surrounds Mt. Buller has as many as 50 different restaurants, according to the promotional materials, as well as accommodations, a little grocery store and a bunch of places you can buy and rent ski-related necessities. What it does not have, though, is parking for more than the most essential vehicles, those being the ones used to make and clear snow, and ferry guests up and down the mountain. The rest of the vehicles park five minutes' drive further down the mountain, accessing the peak via free shuttle.

The theater plays two movies per night, and Aladdin fit the bill perfectly, since none of us have seen it and it started at 6. Given how people had cleared out of the village square after it got out, having returned to their rooms or down the mountain already, I realized how much it was really intended for the people who are actually staying on the mountain, and can just walk back to their rooms. Given the events that delayed our return home until almost 11, I'm really glad we didn't see the 8:30 Godzilla: King of the Monsters. But I already said I was not going to horrify you with that.

Anyway, it was a really fun experience. The popcorn wasn't very warm and all up I spent about $70, which is a far cry from the zero money I usually pay to see movies. But we all liked the movie -- I was surprised at how much it overcame the initial shortcomings I perceived it to have -- and my older son declared it "either his second or third favorite movie." Then again, he's said that about each of the past five movies we've seen together.

I'd like to think watching it on the top of a mountain, as an escape from a cold but beautiful winter wonderland, had something to do with it.