List Love // Films I've Seen in Movie Theaters

+ Jingle All the Way // 1996.

One rainy day, after some party in our kindergarten class, a bunch of my little friends and their parents invited my dad and I to go watch a movie with them. I was so excited {of course, I wasn't sure why or for what I was excited, I just knew everyone else was excited}.

Fifteen minutes into the movie, I made my dad take me outside and walk the halls with me. We never did go back in. Scared the living daylights out of me. And no, it's not technically a scary movie. Dad's never let me forget this.

Not that I would. *shudder*

+ Princess Diaries // July 2001.

For some reason, one of the elderly ladies in my parents' Sunday School class had two tickets to Princess Diaries the week it came out. She invited me to join her and this was a Big Deal because none of my friends had seen the movie yet. Oooh.

I brilliantly forgot my glasses at home that day {wow, Sam}, so I spent the entire time squinting hard at the big screen. It was really fun nevertheless and I was the envy of all the girls in my class for quite a while. As a third grader, I must say, twas quite the awesome. Thanks, Vivian!

+ Spiderman // May 2002.

My mom saw an ad in our local newspaper that said the first however-many people to call a local real estate office would win tickets to an early screening of Spiderman {the first one; this was before the superhero movie craze hit}. So she called and got us three tickets to the viewing.

I don't remember much about the experience. I know I wasn't really impressed with Tobey Maguire as Spiderman and thought he was kinda weird. Other than that, this movie didn't make much of an impression on me. Honestly, I totally forgot I saw this in theaters until I almost hit Publish on this post...

+ Pirates of the Caribbean 3 // May 2007.

Tenth grade, right after finals, a random bunch of us decided to go watch Pirates to celebrate. A few people had cars by this point, so it was So Cool to be able to get there without parentals driving us. By the way, when I say "a random bunch," I really mean a random bunch. Like, we all knew each other and got along since we attended such a small school, but we didn't really hang out with each other every day. It was one of those weird moments in history when cliques don't exist and everyone's friends. *shrugs*

One of our teachers helped drive, too. Don't worry, it wasn't anything weird. He was cool and everyone at our school liked him and he knew we needed another car, so he tagged along. We thought he was even cooler after that.

Man, that was a long movie. Not that we were bored; no, we all liked the movie and there was lots of spirited debate afterwards about the way the movie ended, but we were sneaking glances at our watches two hours in. Also, that kiss/wedding scene was just absolutely hilarious to us. Seriously. We died laughing later about the improbability of that truly happening. Oh, tenth graders.

+ Enchanted // December 2007.

Half our hangout crowd {the male half} went to go watch Cloverfield while we three girls and two of our braver brethren watched Enchanted. Let's just say the dinner afterwards was a WEIRD mix of conversation.

This movie was adorable. Still is. But really. D'awwwww. And that Jon McLaughlin song "So Close" is still a favorite. Really liked this one.

+ Up // June 2009.

The night of our high school graduation "alumni" dinner*, our hangout crowd decided that we wanted to spend some more time together {even though we had just spent a week in Hawaii with each other 24/7 (which come to think of it, may have been the big reason we missed each other... separation withdrawals?)}, so we got permission from all our parentals to go watch a midnight showing of Up. It was impromptu, it was spur of the moment, it was great.

I think the only un-great thing about it was that there was only one showing of Up that late at night and it was in 3-D, which would have been fine, but the tickets were eighteen dollars each. Sheesh.

Also, Up isn't really the best movie to see in 3-D. The only time you feel that trippy-ness that you get from watching something in 3-D was when the house falls off the blimp and Carl looks over the edge. Everything else was just as good in 2-D. In case you were wondering.

*The day after we graduated, there was a {subtly} mandatory dinner for all the new alumni and their parents where the admin fed us spaghetti, congratulated us on graduating, and then made their plug to a captive audience for donations back to our alma mater. Like, DUDE. We just paid private school tuition for thirteen years and have another four years {at least} of college tuition, before we even have an inkling of getting an income, however small it may be. CALM YOUR HORSES. {Besides the fact that our class wasn't the biggest fan of our admin. And the admin knew that. So there were a lot of -___- faces in the audience that night. And I'm sure the parents weren't that excited about being hit up for more money that quickly either. *rolls eyes*}.

+ Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey // December 2012.

Christmas break hangout with the high school crowd. This is a self-admitted nerdy group of people-- Debrr can quote giant swaths of Lord of the Rings genealogy-- so they all really wanted to see this movie. Only me and one other person had never read the books before, so we were just watching this with new, unjaded eyes.

I rather enjoyed it. Even wrote a blog post about it here. Still haven't read the book {have it though... heh}, but thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie.

Plus, this was the outing where I started teasing my former college roomie about her potential boyyyyyfrieeeeend, since she didn't join us for the movie due to a "previous engagement with a friend", but did meet up with us later for dinner. I was like, "dude. I know all your friends. And you wouldn't be this secretive if it weren't a Big Deal." Moohahahaha. The joys of bestie-hood.

+ Despicable Me 2 // August 2013.

Summer in LA, impulsive adventuring. A bunch of us wanted to go see the movie since we'd heard such good things, so we got in a car, drove to the nearest movie theater still showing Despicable Me 2 {this was a month after it came out}, realized the tickets were exorbitant, looked up prices at other nearby theaters, found one ten minutes away with a showing starting in ten minutes, made the mad dash to get there before it started, got there in time, and enjoyed the show.

Two of the people who went have incredibly distinctive, LOUD laughs, so it was hilarious sitting next to them for this movie. Every time there was a funny bit, the two guys CRACKED. UP. and everyone else in the theater would turn around and stare. All those little kids and their parents were probably like, "what in the world..." It was great.