Saturday at the movies

Took the older kids to a movie theater birthday party this morning. It was nice to get out of the house and have DH stay home with Lap Boy aka Perpetual Motion Boy. Also, alien invasion/car chases are a good way to keep your nasal passages cleared. The movie was Race to Witch Mountain, a remake of Escape to Witch Mountain.  I liked Escape (the book and the movie, as well as a series of short stories by Zenna Henderson about the People, which is very extremely similar to Key's world--I think Henderson's stuff came first, FWIW). Anyway, the special effects were of course more special in this one, and I liked the adults more, but I liked the kids better in the original. Whenever you have foreign characters (whether ethnically, planetwise, or just "other"), you have to decide how accurate you're going to be, and what the cost of accuracy will be. The writers here went for rather literal, stilted dialogue on the part of the alien kids, which is maybe more accurate (nonnative speakers getting the grammar but not the more subtle parts of the language, such as slang and humor). But it created a barrier for the viewer. It emphasized their otherness so much that it was hard to feel any sympathy, to see through their eyes, and to have anything but neutral feelings for them. You could argue that the main character was the taxi driver, but still, I wanted to feel more for them than I did. They had cool talents and were trying to escape for their lives and prevent interplanetary war, which are nice things, but there was nothing personal about it. So I guess we learn that you can get away with things in movies that you can't in books--ie, even if it's a failing of the movie, people will still pay money for it. I didn't hate it, and it was fun to watch, but I guess I've been writing too long, because I start to look at movies just as critically as books to see what I can learn from them.

In other events, I sure hope the weather clears up, because this week is spring break, and I don't know what I'll do if we're all housebound here together. I hope you are all having a great weekend!