Kids Head Out On Town For ‘Home Alone’
Grownups were way outnumbered Friday morning at the Garland Theatre.
The high-energy crowd that showed up for the free 9:30 movie seemed to consist largely of people who had not been born or were at least very young when that day’s feature, “Home Alone,” was a first-run hit back in 1990.
Before the doors opened, the free-form line outside the tan brick landmark featured a fair amount of jumping in place, as if invisible pogo sticks had been issued to every fifth patron. Boing, boing, boing.
And once everybody got to go in, “Don’t run” became an incessantly repeated, universally ignored adult dictate. Kids who had been pacifier-sucking crawlers not so long ago dashed to the concession line or sprinted to stake out choice seats inside the big old movie house.
They weren’t being bad. They were just pumped. One hit of that popcorn smell and they were flying.
The place was far from packed. But still, you didn’t have to look far to find a kid smiling as if Congress had just repealed bedtime and certain vegetables.
Before the movie began, the manager went down front and picked up a microphone. “We want to be as quiet as we can after the movie starts, right boys and girls?”
Yeah, sure, dozens of innocent voices murmured. No problem. Let’s rock.
“Is everybody ready for a movie?”
“YEAHHHHHHHH.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“PLEEEEEEZE.”
When the feature actually started, after a widely transfixing preview for “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie,” a few kids read the credits aloud. “A John Hughes Production.”
Others talked to characters on the screen or asked “What’s happening?”
One sevensomething girl tried to guilt her adult guardian into forking over for a soft drink by coughing and whispering as if she had been stranded on the Sahara Desert for a week. No sale.
A few free range children crawled beneath seats and moved up and down empty rows, only the tops of their heads visible. Others stayed put and practiced random vowel sounds.
But most kids watched the movie.
And if you were an adult and seeing Macaulay Culkin was what you wanted, it wasn’t a problem.
But “Home Alone” is been there, done that.
The audience was a better show.
, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.