Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater

Weird things just seem to happen when we're around.  I wouldn't recommend hanging around us, frankly.

I took Little Smoot to see Where the Wild Things Are at a brand new theater this weekend.  It was cool to smell that new theater smell and everything.

We watched the movie on a new "XD" screen, which is supposed to include several amazing enhancements.  The main enhancement I noticed is that they toss in an extra surcharge for viewing a movie in this particular theater.

Anyway, we got through nearly the whole movie when suddenly the film stopped, the house lights came on, and bright lights started flashing.  And there was a rather shrill "WOOOP WOOOP!" noise, followed by an announcement that "the preceding alarm is to indicate the presence of a fire in the building.  Please evacuate immediately."  Lovely.

In a sense, this wasn't a really bad thing because I was getting really, really tired of the guy in our aisle who decided that it was cute that his young son had gotten bored with the movie at about the 5-minute mark, and he allowed the little brat to climb all over everything while talking very loudly.  As a form of discipline, the man would smile at the kid every so often.

So we all congregated outside where it was sort of a drizzle/snow mix.  The theater, which was obviously very well prepared for such an event, dispatched employees into the crowd to announce that "We don't have any idea what's happening."  They were actually telling us that, as though this was the helpful information we were seeking.

After 10-15 minutes, they opened the doors and let everyone back in.  Sadly, the annoying guy and his annoying kid had apparently left.  Just as we thought they were about to restart the movie, the alarm started sounding again.  A man eventually came into the theater to let us know that they couldn't figure out how to turn it all off, so we could just go home and take passes for future movies, possibly to be shown in their entirety.

I'm already looking forward to going back so I can see part of another great show.