Today was the premier for Robots. Max and I had been looking forward to this movie for a long time. We'd sit downstairs in the basement and watch the trailer for it over and over. It was full of interesting scenes and cute little jokes. So today we packed up a bag of toys, and couple of snacks, and headed to the theater to see it.

I had done a quick scan last night on Metacritic which gave it mixed reviews. I was especially dismayed to see the two reviewers I track the most, The WSJ and the Christian Science Monitor give it particularly low scores, but we were committed at that point, so off we went.

I think this movie was targeted at an age group slightly older than Max. My first hint was the preview for Star Wars III, which is full of battles and evil. Scared all the little kids in the theater pretty good. Max calmed down enough to sit in his seat again, and we got through the rest of the previews ok; then on to Robots. Max seemed to be into it, and I didn't have to describe too much of what was going on which was good; but I didn't get into the movie that much. It jumped around a lot, and action could be hard to follow at times.

Of course Max also jumped around a lot and could be hard to follow, not to mention the distraction of our location. For some reason Max likes to watch movies from way up in the back, sitting in the very last row of the theater. Not only is it dark and far away from the screen, but the back row shares a mechanical defect with its cousin--the last row of seats on an airplane--where the seats don't go back, as there is a wall behind them. Its a very annoying location, one that I would rather avoid.

Still we made it through, and Max went on to play with his robot toys for the rest of the day; so I imagine he liked it. I'm still looking forward more to the DVD release of The Incredibles next week.

The surprise of the day was another movie I had gotten from the library: Elf. Most Will Ferrell movies are pretty dumb, but this one really pulls it off. While there were a few embarrassing parts near the beginning, the movie gets past the stupid jokes pretty quickly and turns out to be a really good movie. The supporting cast helped a lot, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, and James Caan did a great job. Just to calibrate, CSM gave this movie a 100 as well.