Saturday night, our family went to see Nanny McPhee, a movie about a nanny with magical powers. We had seen previews for the movie the last time we went to a show. The kids saw commercials that it was starting this weekend, and so they lobbied to go see the movie.Everyone worked hard on their Saturday house cleaning chores, and it had been a few weeks since we had last seen a show, so going to a movie sounded like a good
idea.I looked up the review in the Deseret Morning News. The reviewer, Jeff Vice gave the movie only 1½ stars (out of four). I gave it three stars myself. I have learned that this reviewer is death on family/children's films. Most of the time if a show has anything sweet, endearing, or has a feel-good sense to it, he pooh-pooh's it as being saccharinely-sweet, and overly sentimental. I just don't think this guy cares much for family or kids movies. At least the those that are sweet and loving, and have a spark of light and truth to them! Maybe he's just a grump. Who knows?
Years ago, the Deseret News had a movie reviewer that I really respected. His name is Christopher Hicks. I found that my taste in movies, and that of Mr. Hicks were very similar. I found that I could base most of my movie viewing choices based upon his recommendations. I shared the same value set with him, and our tastes in films were similar enough that I was rarely disappointed. Mr. Hicks now writes a weekly column for the paper, but has retired from move reviewing. Its just not the same anymore. I really don't know of a movie reviewer in whose judgment I can place much faith. Too bad. I know that seldom do we find a movie reviewer that reflects our own tastes so well, but for a while there, it was a really nice to have a go-to guy when you were trying to decide whether or not a movie would be worthwhile.
As Saturday evening approached, the weather started going downhill. Amy and I made a quick trip to the grocery store for our weekly supplies. When we came out of the store it was snowing and blowing pretty hard. I like to call it "Wisconsin Cow Weather". With the bad movie reviews, and the bad weather outside, I figured there would be no problem getting seats in the movie theatre. Ha! I was sooooooo wrong! They had this movie playing on two screens. We got there 10 minutes before the interminable previews started, and still were unable to find 4 seats together (except on the front row -- which we will not do!) We ended up finding 4 single seats on 4 different rows. Fortunately they came in sets, so that two of the seats were directly in front of two other seats in the row below. So Dawn Ann sat behind Amy, and then 3 rows further back, I sat behind Bryan. It wasn't exactly the kind of family experience we are used to, but at least we got to see the film without breaking our necks on the front row!
The movie was actually quite good. The screenplay was written by Emma Thompson, who also stars as Nanny McPhee. The movie is based upon the "Nurse Matilda Tales". We found the movie to be quite entertaining as seven rude and spoiled children learn manners and decorum from the magical powers of Nanny McPhie. Her terms of agreement were this: "As long as you need me, but don't want me, I will stay. As soon as you want me to stay, but don't need me, then I must go." Nanny Mcphee has 5 lessons that she wants this family to learn before she goes.
The way she approaches solving the family's discipline problems is quite reminiscent of "Mary Poppins". There is also hints of "My Fair Lady" and "The Sound Of Music" too -- although this is not a musical. I found it to be great family fare, with lots of growth in the main characters, and lessons learned.
If you are looking for a nice family film, with lots of laughs, I would recommend Nanny McPhee.
5 comments:
You know I do like to listen to the movie show guys on KSL radio. I find them very funny. I don't always agree with them on their reviews but generally speaking they give enough info on something for me to make a decision or at least look into it more before we go to a movie. We are pretty picky about what we go to and when. So it isn't that I necessarily trust them, but at least I'm getting to know where their tastes are compared to mine.
Okay Dave,
Another technical question for you!
I'm adding blogroll to my LDS women's site, and I'm trying to get the 1click to work. I can't drag the link to my link bar, and when I tried the option of adding it by right clicking to favorites and putting it in the links that way, nothing comes up when I click on it? Any idea's in how to get that to work. I have explorer.
Hi Tigersue!
I have answered your question, but it is too long to go into comments. Besides, there might be someone else with similar questions about this issue too. So I wrote a whole post instead called 1-Click Blogrolling 101. I hope that it will solve your problem with Blogrolling.
Good luck with the LDS Women's blog. I've thought of doing something similar, only I would like to create a set of links for LDS dad's. I have already started one on my sidebar.
There are plenty of male LDS bloggers out there. However many of them post on the "Big Blogs", like Times and Seasons, or Millennial Star. Many of them are attorneys, and they seem to get the most pleasure out of debate and intellectual jousting -- like what attorney's are wont to do.
I'm more interested in how men deal with ordinary family life from an LDS Dad's perspective. How do they deal with the issues of balancing themselves between work, family, church assignments, hobbies and interests, etc.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a lot of what I am looking for. (I'm always on the look-out.) There are a number of non-LDS dads who like to do similar things. However, most of them like to brag about how much beer they can drink, and use a lot of coarse language just to prove that they are "real-men", even though they blog about family life.
Most men aren't as verbal about sharing their thoughts and feelings as women are. So I end up reading some of the women's blogs because they are what I find more interesting than the intellectual jousting contests (or the beer drinking and swearing contests).
For me, the best LDS Dad Blogger I've found is Woody, at The Inner Dad.
Anyhow, I hope you get blogrolling working like you wish. And I hope you have a nice day.
Grr... Chris Hicks used to get under my skin!! I'm glad Nanny McPhee was good though, I want to take my boys to see it.
I know one of the attorneys on T&S and he's always been full of... wanting to be better in not a nice way. 'Nuff said?
I think that is why Ladies were complaining about not getting on the big blogs. They mentioned that they weren't concidered to be lds blogs unless the completely discussed the gospel, when women tend to talk about so many things. I agree I like Woody's blog, and I like the ramblin Irishman, he always makes me laugh. You know I like to think, but I also like to see what others are doing, what is important to them. So if there needs to be a Dad's blog, so Dad's can get that same kind of support, go for it, I think it is great. I started mine because I thought what is all the complaining about, just someone do something about it.
Anyway thanks again.
Have a good day.
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