The Seizurest Place on Earth

Note: I posted this earlier today, but only the title published. I will now attempt to recreate it from memory. Apologies if I don't bring the funny the second time around. I am merely human.

Last night, Savannah and I went to see the new Disney flick, "Chicken Little." The film was showing on the only screen in Alabama to feature the new REAL D digital 3D technology. Gone are the blue and red paper glasses of the past. Instead, we received plastic glasses with polarized lenses. The glasses were modeled to duplicate the look of the glasses the titular chicken sports in the film. This means that even the most beautiful people in the crowd looked like complete dorks. Film truly is a democratic medium. In order to achieve the 3D effect, the polarizing lenses resolve a dual image coming from the new digital projector. I haven't found out much more than that about how it works, but I'll be looking into it after last night. You'll see what I mean soon enough.

We got there early to snag some primo seats -- right in the middle, as far back from the screen as the screen is wide. (That's the secret formula to the best seats in the house. Keep it between us.) There we sat -- the two of us and four other early birds. We had our dorky plastic glasses and our snacks, and we were just waiting for the film to start. A twitchy-looking manager entered and asked that we all leave the theatre while his crew re-cleaned it. We had seen a couple of theatre drones in there doing a half-assed cleaning job when we arrived, and I thought that was just the way they cleaned theatres these days. But now they were telling us they needed to clean again. Wow! Real customer service. Way to go, Manager Man!

The six of us gathered up our five-gallon buckets of soda, our bushel bags of popcorn and brick-sized boxes of candy -- all puchased with 6 months, no interest financing -- and headed out to form what would become a substantial line. As more and more people arrived, a sense of suspicion began to grow amongst the "Linies." (That's the term the popular media used to describe us. We prefer "Liners.") "I wonder what this is all about," said one. "I thought it was to get the glasses, but the glasses are right there in that box," another noted. I decided to add a little dash of intrigue. "We were all in there and they kicked us out." The collective gasp from the Liners nearly sucked all the air out of the building, like the sudden pressure drop inside a hurricane.

Then a bunch of theatre goons walked past with about a half dozen stantions -- you know, those pole thingies used for roping off areas. "They're blocking us out." "I heard somebody say something about reserved seating." "No, it's about the 3D. It doesn't work if you sit too close." I didn't buy that. Why would any exhibitor spend a quarter million dollars leasing a new projector and screen only to sell LESS tickets? Of course that would explain the additional $1.50 charge on our tickets.

Heir Manager returned to let the orginal seat squatters back in. The unity of the Liners was broken. It was now a matter of Haves and Have-nots. We have been in the theatre already. The rest of you have not. Indeed that theatre was remarkably cleaner -- not a single kernel of corn and only the lightest touch of stickiness to the floor, and that only for the sake of nostalgia. And, to my chagrine, the wing sections down front were roped off. I was at least partially wrong; I admit it. (Don't get used to it.) Savannah and I grabbed our original seats and settled in for some three-dimensional, digital wizardry.

The place filled up pretty quickly with couples, families and a few brave souls who obviously lost a poker bet and were forced to bring a whole cadre of kids. And we all divorced ourselves from our shame and enthusiastically donned our dorky chicken glasses. Then the Manager-nator returned, looking even twitchier than before. He welcomed us to the theatre and the first-ever Disney 3D blah, blah, blah.

Then the evening took a turn for the surreal. "You'll want to keep your glasses on the whole time, during the previews and through the entire film." Interesting. Maybe it takes a little while for the 3D effect to kick in -- a warmup period for your eyes and brain. Le Managére continued, "Because if you take the glasses off during the movie, it could make you sick." Huh? "The way the picture comes out, it kind of sends like signals that scramble your brain." What the? The unity of the Liners was back. "We've had a couple of kids... toss their popcorn today." Great. Somehow, I missed the part about the vomit-inducing, brain-scrambling signals in the ads for the movie.

"The signals can affect your brain kind of like an epileptic seizure." Okay, the gloves were off. It was us versus them now, and we weren't going along willingly with these Shadow Government operatives and their Mickey Mouse mind-control conspiracy -- at least not without some free popcorn or something. "But it's not a seizure." Oh, okay. Whew. It's like a seizure, but not an actual seizure. What a relief. Roll the movie, then Über Manager.

So the lights dipped low and the trailers started. The first screen that came up was a graphic that told us to take off our glasses for the previews. Now what? Who do I trust; the Mysterious Managismo or the team of Disney flunkies who hastily put together this art card? Playing it safe, I told Savannah to keep her glasses on, thinking her the more likely to urp because of the alien brain waves. I alternated between glasses and no glasses -- not because I was testing the differing physiological effects on my system, but because I couldn't make up my mind.

I don't know if it was from watching the 2D trailers with glasses on or from the effects of the 3D imaging, but for the entire film I had a the taste of metal under my tongue and a mild nausea. Yeah, this is going to revive the box office from its recent doldrums: the threat of seizures and the sensation of having just eaten an aluminum can. Brilliant!

As for the film itself, I'd give it two out of five stantions. This is not only Disney's first digital 3D film, it's also their first 3D digitally animated film. (Talk about a marketing nightmare.) In their infinite wisdom, the brains at Disney sold all of their traditional 2D animation stations (and canned a bunch of animators) to replace them with 3D systems. Their logic is that films like Shrek and the Pixar ouvre are successful because they are animated in three dimensions. Note to Disney: It's the stories. The Pixar films could have been hand drawn on bar napkins, and they'd still be better than Chicken Run, because they're well written. And they don't give you seizures!