A Good Night

Sorry for today's photo - needs must - I had hoped to take a picture of the poster outside the cinema but there were none! Just ones advertising upcoming features, not ones already showing, so had to get this one off the internet.

Had a brilliant evening out with J. We were going to see "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" at the cinema, and decided to make a night of it as it's been ages since we went to the cinema.

J really wanted to go to Chiquitos beforehand and as it's normally difficult to persuade him away from wanting to eat at the McDs or KFC at the leisure park, I was quite happy to agree to this request. He was on top conversational form and to my delight was happily trying new foodstuffs:

dipping his tortilla chips in salsa - and liking it! He'll be getting salsa with his fajitas at home from now on then!

wanting onion rings again after not having eaten them for years, and with a marie-rose type dip which he has never tried before. Didn't like either of these things this evening though - but hey at least he tried them completely of his own accord

corn on the cob which he has tried in the past and never liked despite loving loose sweetcorn niblets, but he had a go at them tonight - to no avail!

And he did eat a whole adult portion of breaded chicken and skin-on chips too (he didn't notice the skin at first - I waited till he'd eaten one and had said that he liked them before I drew his attention to the fact that they hadn't been peeled). So a successful meal out I would say, and then we crossed the road to our film.

I hadn't even realised that they were doing a prequel to Planet of the Apes until about a month ago, and when I heard I was so excited, and knew I would have to go and see it as soon as possible after it was released. This is really unusual for me to feel like this about a film but I don't think that anyone of my generation who has watched the original film can ever forget that iconic and powerful final scene, and then wonder how on earth it had come to be that apes had managed to take our planet over. Well this film was apparently going to answer that question which had intrigued me so long ago.

Soon into the film I was worried that I wasn't going to enjoy it, for the main character - Caesar the chimp - is not what you would call a cute-looking fella and I didn't think I was going to develop any feelings or emotions in relation to his character. How wrong I was. Very quickly I was absolutely rooting not just for Caesar but for all his mates as well. By the end I was willing them on, and when they outwitted the humans I was chanting "Clever apes. Clever, clever apes" in my head. There were some gasp out loud, jaw-dropping moments and some very witty and ingenious blink-and-you'd-miss-them references to the 1968 film in it. The ending before the closing credits was bittersweet, and included a surprisingly moving last interaction between Caesar and his owner. I say "before the closing credits" because they start and then there's one last bit which reinforces effectively something else that has ribboned it's way through the film and which is of the utmost importance in terms of comprehending the subsequent takeover by the apes.

Anyway, all in all it was two hours of superb entertainment. In my opinion.

I hadn't been sure how J would take this film. He hadn't seen the original nor the Tim Burton remake (which I haven't seen either) so had no context onto which to hang this story - for him this was going to be a stand alone tale. He seemed to enjoy it, although he didn't quite grasp the medical research side of things and he also didn't know what Alzheimer's was beforehand - and I couldn't exactly explain any of that stuff to him sitting in the cinema. A quick chat with him afterwards about it, and he got it - I think this would have made a difference to his understanding of certain parts of the story. However, there was more than enough action towards the latter part of the film to keep his eyes fixed on the screen.

When the opening credits had began, J had whispered to me that he didn't think he had ever seen a 20th Century Fox film at the cinema before and it got me thinking about how it's so good that I can now take my boy to films that are not Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks!

Thanks for your company tonight J - I had a great night out with you. Hope this is the first of many more non-children's films that we can go and see together.