The concept seemed clever at the time: score a dime bag of herbie and see this movie fully loaded. My colleague Nick recognized the potential right away. “Dude,” he enthused, “that’s your first idea all year that doesn’t totally suck donkey.” We parked his Camry behind the Mann 16-Plex and did a couple of bowls. It was strong stuff. I guessed Hawaiian, western slope, but Nick said it was from a backyard in Van Nuys. I was lightheaded and skittish by the time we entered the theater. In no mood to have people lurking behind me, I insisted that we sit in the back row, far left corner. Nick sensed my paranoia. He handed me one of the four 16-ounce beers he smuggled in taped to his shins. It calmed me down and explained why he had been walking like young Forrest Gump.
They opened with the War Of The Worlds trailer. Tom Cruise mutters “This isn’t a war, it’s an extermination!” While the fate of the entire human race is pretty high stakes, this movie goes even further. We see the ex-wife tell Cruise, “Robbie’s got a paper due that she hasn’t even started.” Only Steven Spielberg ratchets up the tension level with such aplomb. The possible extinction of our species and a paper due! I speculated that Spielberg’s next film will combine nuclear terrorism with a pop quiz, but Nick missed my point, and offered that it will be another Indiana Jones.
About twenty minutes later, during a trailer for the next Rob Schneider lame-o-rama (which Nick will probably see thrice) my bladder started to hassle me. Getting up I felt a little woozy and I stopped to collect myself in between the double doors. A mom came through with two children. She grabbed their hands when she saw me. I understood. She goes to a kid’s movie and encounters a disheveled, glassy-eyed man sucking down a tall Bud in a darkened portico - she could have tasered me on general principles.
When I got back to my seat Lindsey Lohan was on screen driving an old Bug. Nick brought up the rumor that Disney techies reduced the size of her breasts. “Urban Legend,” I whispered. I maintained that nobody would use technology in such a pernicious way. We went back and forth, and every so often he would point to the screen and squeal, “Look, man! Did you not see Mean Girls?” I hadn’t, actually. We finally dropped it, agreeing only that if Disney does start altering breasts, they should go back to the original Love Bug and downsize Buddy Hackett’s.
Soon thereafter Nick got up for some food. I resisted, hoping to get back up to speed on the film. But after a few minutes I realized this wasn’t exactly Memento and I too retreated to the lobby. I found Nick eating some nachos while creepily asking the snack girl for her Instant Messenger address. He seemed unaware that his cause was handicapped by a big dollop of Velveeta hanging from his chin. I couldn’t decide between Junior Mints and Goobers, so I grabbed a box of each, plus a pretzel, and returned to a seat in the back left corner of the wrong theater. It wasn’t until the closing credits that I realized I hadn’t seen the VW for a while, just a bunch of girls who all wear the same pair of pants. It was a good flick that went by fast and left me hungry for more, a feeling I haven’t had at the movies for a long time. Go see Herbie fully loaded.
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