Happy Thanksgiving!
For the record, Cute W’s turkey was a triumph:
Cooked in an hour and 45 minutes, the juiciest turkey I’ve ever eaten and scrumptious gravy. He so rocks.
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and/or Thanksgivukah.
Um, what else?
Grandma and Grandpa took us to see Frozen yesterday (watch out–the official site I link to is loud).
This image from http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Frozen
M was not super-enthusiastic going in. After all, the last movie she’d seen was Catching Fire, with a bunch of her friends at a mall on a school night. So the whole animated film with the family during the day was far, far beneath her level of cool. In fact, when we arrived and I let M and J choose the seats, they headed for the last row, presumably so that M wouldn’t be seen by anyone. When a classmate showed up I couldn’t restrain myself from whispering to her, “So you aren’t the oldest kid here.” She informed me that the girl was actually four days younger than her. Okay. Whatever.
I get frustrated with Disney and the princesses, but I’d read some feminist gushing about Frozen (on feministadvisory.com and geekmom.com), so that had me psyched. In fact, watching the previews made me a little nuts, because what is the deal with all of these movies with groups of five, six, or seven people, and only one of them is female? It’s crazy-making.
In any case, we all liked Frozen. While it’s not even remotely like The Snow Queen, the story it’s based on, the story was great, with plenty of drama and humor and a couple of good songs. The songs are more like a Broadway musical than the pop stuff in Tangled, and the vocals sometimes seemed a little complicated for the rest of the material–expect to see ads for a Frozen Broadway touring company soon. But the two lead characters are sisters, and their relationship is central to the story. In fact, I was won over immediately in the first scenes because the sister relationship was so much like my kids: an older, blonde, eye-rolling sister tolerating and then giving in to play with the super-affectionate and enthusiastic little sister who adores her (and incidentally has J’s hair color). Yes, I was annoyed when one sister twirled and became decidedly Barbie-esque (does everyone else start analyzing the merchandising plans while watching kids’ movies these days, or is it just me? See also: The Lego Movie), but at least she was super-powerful while looking super-hot. Based on ads and previews, I was convinced that I would hate the stupid enchanted snow man character, but the actor doing his voice was so good he became surprisingly lovable, and his song about summer had Cute W and I laughing hard and loud. Stupid, but funny. So it’s a good outing for the family.
