Monthly Archives: February 2014

Why The LEGO Movie is the best family movie of the year

We took the whole family to see The LEGO Movie last week & boy did we have a great time!

It was seriously the best family movie I’ve seen in years. Here’s 10 reasons why The LEGO Movie is the best family movie of the year!

My son brought Little Emmet to see his big movie with him!

My son brought Little Emmet to see his big movie with him!

1: It’s a multi-generational movie. My husband played with LEGO. I played with Lego. My son REALLY, REALLY plays with LEGO. We’re a LEGO family.

We all enjoyed this movie together. Like doubled-over-laughing enjoyed it.

2: This is a gender-neutral movie. The lead is a boy, but the ACTION doesn’t start until the girl gets there. And she doesn’t sit in a castle, rubbing her minifigure claws together pining for a prince.

3: The cast. Chris Pratt from Parks & Rec plays the lead. Liam Neeson plays Good Cop/Bad Cop. Allison Brie plays UniKitty, a cat/unicorn combo, BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DOES! The cast is amazing. Amy Poehler’s ex-husband Will Arnett plays Batman. Nick Offerman! *forgets what she was saying, due to mustache-enduced swooning*

4: The movie was really clean. No sex jokes! Sometimes kids’ movies try to appeal to adults by adding innuendos. I hate that. Stop it. If you can’t go 90-minutes without a sex joke, you need to reevaluate things.

5: The references! There’s a reference in this movie for everyone. From riffing on LEGO series that didn’t take off, to history, to pop culture over the last 40+ years, to super heroes, to HARRY POTTER REFERENCES…

6: The music, by Mark Mothersbaugh, of DEVO or Rugrats fame, depending on your age, sticks in your head in a cute, chipper, inside joke way.

You could say it was AWESOME.

7: The morals: You don’t have to follow the directions. In fact, life’s more awesome if you don’t.

Secondary moral: Mom? Dad? Relax. Let your kid’s imagination guide you. Don’t be a Micro-Manager. (My husband & son would’ve rather the movie didn’t have the sentimental live-action part of the story, but still loved the movie.)

8: The details. The movie is made up of… Lego parts! The whole hour & a half, my son was squinting at the screen, deconstructing how they were making it happen. The muzzle flash when they fire their blasters? It’s the 3-prong flower stems (Part 3741!). My first comment leaving the theater? “We’re going to have to buy that, so we can pause it 100,000 times, because I did not catch everything!”

9: The LEGO Movie celebrates creativity. It sparks it. It ignites it. It causes hours of quiet play on my livingroom floor, creating:

10: The reason The LEGO Movie is the best family movie of the year is that it’s been weeks since we watched it & we’re still talking about it, playing out scenes from it, giggling at the jokes, and singing EVERYTHING IS AWEEESOMMMME! The online hype wasn’t wrong this time. Yeah, it’s a great big ad for LEGO & the kick-butt girl character is a bit of an angry-girl trope, but she’s still head & shoulders above what they could’ve done with her. It brought us together & I heard somewhere that everything is cool when you’re part of a team. 😉

Refreshed Perspective

I was doing a lot of running around in town the other day, for my boy. We took him to see The LEGO Movie & he fell in love with the little blind packs of minifigures you can get from the movie.

He very rarely asks for anything specific, the last time was Christmas 2008, when he asked for discontinued Teen Titan toys, so I was going full Super (Crazy) Mom, looking for these dang things & everyone was sold out. We live 20 miles out of town & there’s no “Just hop to the store for one thing”.

As I crossed to the opposite corner of the town, I thought “Man, I’m hungry, my husband’s almost off work, but I have 2 more stops. I wish I lived in town, so I could finish this up later.” But I can’t because of how far out of town we live. I was tired & grumbling & cranky at the world.

I checked the last 2 stores & decided there was no way I was going to cook dinner when I finally got home, so I stopped at the grocery store that’s next to the exit to the highway, grabbed a chicken meal & got in line.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy looking at me, it gave me a weird vibe, but not a dangerous one, so I didn’t think much of it. Until he said “HEY! I haven’t seen you since high school!”

I have no freaking clue who this guy is, but he gets in line behind me, so I’m stuck. He’s got an adorable little boy with him & I make small talk with the kid & ignore the guy while the checker rings me up. As I’m trying to swipe my card, the dude says “Man, you sure new how to party.”

Yeah. I knew how to party 17 years ago. Yep. That’s why I have a kid that’s about to turn 16!

I paid, grabbed my bags & headed for the door, hurrying through the parking lot because I didn’t want to get stuck chatting in the parking lot with this guy that remembered me as I was at 17.

That’s when I thought, “Thank fucking God I don’t live in town.”

Sometimes life gives you reminders that you live the way you do for a reason. For me, my desire not to hear “You sure knew how to party!” like I’m still defined by my teen years in a small town, is much stronger than my desire for speedy shopping.

Ick! I was really struck by how the thoughts juxtaposed each other. I enjoyed every long mile of the drive back home to my podunk town on the edge of nothing, even if the trip was a total Lego-man failure.

Best (& Fluffiest!) Grocery Trip Ever.

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I sent this picture to my husband, to strike fear into his heart that I was going to buy the whole cart.

I didn’t buy the WHOLE cart, but I did put a good dent into it. The kids were over-joyed.

Summer Bible Camp

Being sent to summer Bible camp was one of the things that shaped my core & made me who I am today. But not the way the church probably wanted.

I got yelled at for not capitalizing “he” when talking about Jesus.

My big brother, seeing I was pretty miserable, (& probably also not wanting to get up in the morning to walk me over there any more than I wanted to go) decided I could just stay home with him instead during the summer.

That was the year he made me watch The Fly & The Blob & every other horror movie our gas station had for rental.

So thanks, old biddy that yelled at me for not knowing to capitalize pronouns related to your deity.

You led me down a totally different path & I’m happy for it.

Three other clear memories from Summer Bible Camp:
Meeting a lanky, dark-skinned boy that would NOT BE QUIET while we drank tiny paper cups of orange McDonald’s drink & much preferring his quiet frilly-dress-wearing sister. Being bothered by that loud & constantly-moving boy would turn out to be my first interaction with my husband.

Learning about ammonia from a teen girl that was helping out at the church. She let me smell it (ew), explained to me about the vapors produced when mixed with bleach & held a tiny little chemistry experiment (ammonia volcano) for me, while we were supposed to be memorizing Psalms 23.

We made a sheep magnet out of cotton balls & our sheep dog puppy ate it. I was distraught for a second, but then thought “Well, that only makes sense, since he’s a sheep dog.”