Movies? Squash? Why not both?

I wrote last year about the most unusual vacation movie viewing experience I may have had, which was seeing Aladdin on the top of a mountain while "going to the snow" for the weekend.

I don't know if this one surpasses that, but it definitely challenges it.

We are currently in the town of Lakes Entrance, which is four hours from Melbourne. If you are paying attention to international news, you may have heard that Melbourne is now going under lockdown again for the next six weeks. As we still find ourselves out of town until the weekend -- having just extended our trip in response to the lockdown -- we're going to enjoy a last few days of mobility.

Part of that mobility is, of course, seeing movies, and Lakes Entrance just so happens to have a theater.

A theater that is also a squash court.

It's just about as odd as it sounds. When you open the front door, you can either go upstairs, which takes you to the candy bar, where you also buy your tickets, or you can go to the left, where there are three squash courts, whose height means they take up two floors.

When you're waiting in line for the candy bar, you can actually look down into the squash courts.

No one was playing at the time I went with my younger son on Monday morning to see Sonic the Hedgehog, which he had already seen but I had not. Either the courts aren't open for coronavirus, or no one saw it fit to spend their Monday morning playing squash.

But I could imagine how odd it must be to have people engaged in a hearty match while you're waiting for your popcorn. Or, how odd for them to have spectators to their huffing and puffing below.

Given the mixed usage of the space, I half expected it to be a dinky little theater that was more like a glorified home theater. But no, there are 120 seats in there -- only 20 of which could be used, of course. More than 20 were left unblocked, but the blocked off ones at least ensured that the 20 of us could socially isolate ourselves.

In the end, there were only seven of us. That included my son and me, one kid sitting by himself (who actually left halfway through the movie, inexplicably) and a mother with three children. I hope the 11 a.m. screening time had something to do with that, but then again, no open movie theaters are doing any sort of business right now. I made sure to purchase multiple items from the candy bar just to help out.

As for the movie itself, I really enjoyed it. I had heard good things, and I could tell within the first few minutes they would be confirmed. Sonic as a character is very much like that X-Man who moves so quickly, as well as the Flash, and they do some similar stuff here as in the "Time in a Bottle" sequence in X-Men: Days of Future Past. I always enjoy James Marsden, and as the villain, Jim Carrey was back in his scenery-chewing heyday. The great dialogue they give him, which he savors so fully, only help his gloriously over-the-top performance.

As we've extended our trip, it seems likely that we'll be back to this theater before Sunday, especially as the movies turn over on Thursday. It'll definitely be my last chance to go to the movies for a while. When I said Hearts and Bones two weeks ago might be my only cinema screening before another lockdown, I was not quite right, as I also got to The Personal History of David Copperfield last Thursday (see review here). Hopefully I can make it four total before I content myself with Netflix and iTunes again for a while.

And who knows, maybe next time there will be actual squash players.