Watching Return of the King with Mom

[la_rainette]

Husband called, yesterday, and Froglet asked to talk to him. Excerpt from the conversation:

Froglet *sunny smile*: yes... yes... no... yes...

Froglet *frowns suddenly*: Uh, wait.

Froglet: Mom?
la rainette: Yes, Froglet?
Froglet: Have I been good?

:D

Husband was delighted to hear that she had indeed been good, most of the time.

In other, unrelated news, Mom and I watched Return of the King yesterday evening.


I now know why Froglet asks the most unexpected questions smack in the middle of a movie. It's all directly inherited from my mom. (Not that I didn't know, but I don't see my mom so often, and so I'd forgotten her natural ability to transform any serious movie into a Marx-Brothers comedy, just by being silly.)

Now, before we watch any movie with my mom, the movie has to pass the three-questions-test:

1) Does it end well?

If the answer is no, choose another movie.
If the answer is yes, proceed to question 2.

2) Does he die at the end?

If the answer is yes, and he's the good guy, choose another movie. Also, it means that your answer to question 1 was a lie. Please pay more attention to your anwers.
In all other cases, proceed to question 3.

3) Does he get the girl?

If the answer is yes, watch the movie.
If the answer is no, but you are able to provide successful explanation as to why the movie ends well anyway, watch the movie.

Return of the King it was, then, but by the time we'd gotten all the questions out of the way it was too late for us to make any intelligent comment during the movie. Also, please bear in mind that my mom has seen the first movies, but doesn't remember much as she hadn't understood much in the first place anyway. I mean, she just can't be bothered to take elves and dwarves and orcs seriously.

Mom: Is Isengard a bad guy?
la rainette: Mom. Isengard is a place.
Mom: Oh.

Mom: YAY! Well done, little Robbits!
la rainette: Hobbits.
Mom: Hobbits. Oh, Hobbits, really? Well done, anyway.

Mom: Oh, poor Sam. Poor, poor Sam! Gollum is so mean! Poor Sam! I don't want him to be all alone. Is he going to stay all alone?
la rainette: Mom.
Mom *grumbles*

Mom: Are you crying yet?
la rainette: No. You?
Mom: No.
Both *giggle*

Mom: Is Gondor a good guy?
la rainette: Mom. It's another place

Mom: Why are they dressed like Hell's Angel?
la rainette: Because they're dressed up like Orcs.
Mom: Oh.

Mom: Why doesn't Gilly have a horse?
la rainette: It's Gimly. And he's too small: his feet wouldn't reach the stirrups.
Mom: Well, they could have given him a Shetland poney. Or a donkey, or something.
la rainette: :D

*Nazguls fly about and scream*
Mom: oooo boy, they sound like Tadpole!
la rainette: ?
(Not entirely untrue, actually: Tadpole was born with no voice, and the doctors after much probing told us that nothing was wrong with her, it would come progressively and her voice would be fine after a while. So when her voice was halfway there, she deveoped that piercing, characteristic scream to make sure everyone would notice her. Now that her voice has reached full volume, she still uses it sometime, and it's very, very, er, loud, in a blood-curdling sense.)

Mom: What do you mean, he doesn't marry her?
la rainette: Well, he's more or less engaged to soemone else, you know, the elf lady?
Mom: BUT I DON'T WANT HER TO BE ALONE. Does she find someone? I want her to find someone. I mean, look at her, she's so sad! I don't want her to be on her own. Why does she have to be on her own?
la rainette: Mom.

Mom: Well. It's definitely worth paying for.
la rainette: Oh, you liked it then?
Mom: Well, it's very, very long. You get a lot of time for your money.
la rainette: :D

Endless fun, I tell you.


OK, I still have many questions to answer. *cracks whip* Let's go kick some Orc butt! Er. Or something.

Comments

[setissma.livejournal.com]

Tell your mother that Eowyn gets Faramir. (Nearly Burned To Death Younger Brother.) So she is not, in fact, all alone!

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

I know! I know! But she asked me that at the beginning of the movie, and I couldn't say all that right away, because then it would have been:

Mom: who is it?
la rainette: the guy who just attacked the orcs.
Mom: But he's dead.
la rainette: No, he isn't
Mom: How? Why? When? What? I don't get it.

And I didn't want to explain the whole movie before anything happened, and then have to explain what had just happened and we hadn't listened to because I was explaining something else. (does that make sense? It's a time warp thing, anyway).

[setissma.livejournal.com]

I totally get it. But I am still amused.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

" Why does she have to be on her own?"

Remind your mom its Eowyn's own fault for being picky and turning down that nice Wormtongue person in the previous film ::grin::

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

*dies lauging as she imagines probable conversation*

Mom: wormtongue?
la rainette: the, uh, bad guy who was keeping her, uh, uncle under control? (for this is, unfortunately, how I remember things. I haven't seen Two Towers for awhile, and I haven't read the books yet)
mom: oh, that one. well, good riddance, eh?
la rainette: ...
Mom: ...
la rainette: ...
Mom: but why can't she have the King anyway? She's pretty enough.

:D

[sir-gareth.livejournal.com]

> and I haven't read the books yet
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. A revelation of even higher scandal than my not having read HP. Being that the closest thing to fandom that I have is based on LOTR... I think I can return the compliment of the sending of the books. Unless you already have them... which makes it even more blasphemous that you haven't read them yet. *enraged*

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I do have them.

I wanted to read them, too.

And when I started, and realized that at page 50-something I still hadn't left the Hobbit village, and it was still only Bilbo's birthday party, I gave up.

I might try again one day, but only if I can skip the birthday party altogether.

[sir-gareth.livejournal.com]

So... not only have you not properly read them... you are now almost dissing them. *snorts* I admit the first time I read them the b'day party does seem to go a bit. In fact the hobbits don't leave Hobbiton for many more pages after the b'day party even.

Once you've got through that section once though, you'll realize how important it is and relish reading it the next time. Presuming, in your case, that you ever read it a first time! *shoves*

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll have to read them sooner or later I suppose. Husband gave them to me for my birthday last year, so there is no getting around it.

[terrylj.livejournal.com]

No...once you get through that section, and you plow on for a couple hundred more pages, then you realize that they still have not left the Shire yet... and absolutely nothing has happened... and they inexplicably keep singing... THAT'S when you want to grab Tolkien by his shirttail and shake him until his teeth rattle.

You realize 1. Peter Jackson's wisdom in cutting out quite a lot of this, and 2. Tolkien was evidently smoking the pipe-weed when he wrote the whole Tom Bombadil thing. The barrow-wraith was kind of cool, although the way that it dressed them in dead people's clothes was rather kinky, if you think about it. :)

Anyway, that's just the first book. Don't even get me started on the second book. ROTK is the absolute best out of the bunch, and after you read it and cry all the way through all the appendixes (appendici?), then you may have the moral fiber to sit through the rest of them and appreciate Tolkien's writing for what it is.

Or not. I still can't get through Fellowship without falling asleep.

I do feel sorry for anyone who has to read Tolkien's Legolas and always have the mental image of Orlando Bloom in mind, though. Or worse yet, Agent Elrond.

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* Well, thanks for the encouragements, Terry :D I may start with RotK, then.

they inexplicably keep singing

That sounds too much like Sound of Music for my peace of mind. I may skip this bit altogether. After all, hey, I've seen the movies! (Yes, Sound of Music, too. *nods gloomily*)

Agent Elrond *snorts* yes, I keep imagining him with less ears and hair and more sunglasses.

Have I told you lately how much I love your sense of humour? Oh, I have? Well, I'm saying it again then ;)

[terrylj.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I've never seen Sound of Music...I have an unexplainable fondness for Mary Poppins, though, which also features entirely too much singing. Except for the animated part with the penguins, that just gets on my nerves. But the chimney sweeps dancing, and Mrs. Banks marching around melodiously demanding "Votes for Women!"...yeah, I like all that.

And you really have to admire Tolkien's songs...he writes all this poetry in different styles, different meters, just showing off like crazy, and weaving in all this backstory from The Silmarillion--but without music, it's hard to get it.

People who have seen the extended editions and say, "There's too much singing in these movies!"...they have no idea.

[muffytaj.livejournal.com]

:D

Your family is so cool.

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

:D Thank you! I love my family, we have lots of fun.