A Cinematic Experience

It was with a bit of excitement and rather a lot of apprehension that Daddy and I took Adik for his first movie at the cinema. A good friend of ours alerted us to a charity screening of Ratatouille in aid of P.S. The Children ("Protect and Save The Children"), a non-profit organisation that helps abused and neglected children, especially sexually abused children.

The screening was at 10:30am at GSC Mid-Valley and when we got there just after 10, there were already tons of people there! We queued up for popcorn, a surefire way to calm Adik in case he got nervous from the throngs of people as well as the dark and loud cinema.

When we went into the cinema hall, it was still bright. Within 2 seconds of sitting down at our seat, he was already up and about wanting to "go jalan". I decided to take him to kencing (he actually did pee, hooray for toilet training!). When we got back it was already dark. Hmmm... he didn't seem to mind.

Ok, good, now let's see if he'll sit down and watch the movie.

He did!

He sat on my lap and was quite enthralled by the HUGE, ENORMOUS yet LOUD screen in front of him. I slowly cupped my hands over his ears, fearing that he would dislike the loudness of it but then he brushed it away, almost irritated by my doing that in the first place.

This is a good sign! He then sat there quietly watching the movie, munching on some popcorn for the next 40 minutes.

This is a big deal for me because it was in stark contrast to the experience when I took Abang to watch the movie Cars last year. To be fair to him, it was a very different setting. Firstly, we were in the cinema when it went dark. So he was already a bit freaked out that suddenly everything went black around him. Then, those silly (and very loud) Carlsberg ads came on, further enhancing the freaking-out motion. He was already egging me to leave the cinema. By the time the actual movie came on - after various trailers which I thought were highly inappropriate to show before a children's movie, i.e. lots of gunfire and yelling - he was all but crying, "Mummy I want to go! Mummy I want to go!"

So traumatic. For him too. So I took him outside to calm down, then I tried to talk him into going back in, by which time the opening scene of the movie was in full swing - the very fast paced and loud race!

It was much better for Adik because Ratatouille is more muted, not so loud or fast paced. Anyway, after about 45 minutes he got restless so I took him outside for a bit but he was reluctant to come back in. I did a tag team with Daddy and he took over after awhile but when they came back inside it was obvious that Adik had had enough.

Never mind, we'll catch the next children's flick!