Movie night

Another gem by W. Bruce Cameron. I love movie time with my kids, it's good bonding and we all appreciate the times spent together.




From time to time my kids and I will have "Movie Night," a bonding experience in which we all get together and argue about what movie we will watch if we ever stop arguing.

Tonight's Movie Night has ended in a compromise: My son will watch his movie in my bedroom, my daughters will watch theirs in the living room, and I will pay for the pizza.

My kids all agree this is fair.

I start off watching with my son. His movie begins with a chase scene involving cars that have the ability to jump over everything in their paths, and as they do, the cars they jump over explode. So many automobiles crash I begin to wonder if maybe this whole film wasn't just a clever way for General Motors to burn off excess inventory. "Are there any people in this movie?" I demand. My son makes a shushing motion—to keep track of what is going on he apparently needs to be able to hear the metal crunching.

I wander into the living room. My daughters are each clutching a box of tissues, as if anticipating that their movie will give them allergies. A young woman is sitting on a park bench. "What did I miss?" I ask.

"The credits," my older daughter murmurs.

"I mean, in the movie."

"Nothing has happened yet."

"What? It's been ten minutes. In your brother's movie they've already managed to dismantle the entire military-industrial complex."

"Would you be quiet?" my younger daughter hisses.

Back to the bedroom. The car chase has given way to a gun battle. Two men, each armed with over seven tons of ammunition hidden in their pockets, are shooting at everything but each other. Stuntmen in paramilitary garb fall like hailstones, glass shatters, and cars, of course, explode. Neither of the shooters seems to have grasped the concept that in order to hit someone you need at least to point your weapon in his general direction.

"Which one is the bad guy?"

"We don't know yet."

In the living room, my daughters are in distress. "She can't decide which one she loves," my younger daughter explains.

"That's silly; why doesn't she just ask her father?" The young woman is sitting on the same bench. "Didn't they have a budget for any other furniture in this movie?"

"She's going to pick the wrong guy," my older daughter pronounces flatly.

"How do you know which one is the wrong guy?" I ask curiously. They both give me pitying expressions. "Wait, let me guess: It will be the one she picks."

They refuse to look at me, so I know I'm right.

In what I suppose passes for an action sequence, the young woman stands up from the bench, then sits back down. My daughters reach for their tissues.

In my son's movie, the two combatants have exhausted the earth's supply of ammunition and are chasing each other over city rooftops. On motorcycles.

"Any sense yet of why these guys want to kill each other?" I ask.

"This is the coolest movie ever," he breathes.

"I thought not." The motorcycles land on the roof of a speeding train, which immediately collides with a gas truck stalled on the tracks. Both motorcycles sail unscorched through the ensuing fireball, exactly as would happen in real life.

My daughters are weeping. "Why didn't he just go to her and tell her he loves her?" my younger daughter laments.

I nod my head in agreement. "After all, it's not like she's hard to find; she's always on that bench."

They give me sour expressions. "Now he's going to go off and join the army," my older daughter informs me, as if it is all my fault.

"Good, maybe he'll wind up in your brother's movie; they need more men over there."

Oddly, both films end the same way, with a man sailing away on a boat. In my daughters' movie, the young woman runs to the dock, waving, but the young soldier doesn't see her, and my daughters sob. In my son's film, the boat is sunk by a surface-to-surface missile, and he cheers.

Best part of movie night: the pizza.