Friday night, I went out with some friends to see Monsters vs. Aliens, in 3D.  It had received pretty good reviews and I definitely thought it was a pretty entertaining movie overall.  They took a fun but simply hypothesis: Monsters!  Fighting Aliens!  and turned it into a quick feature film.  Very little time is spent fleshing out the characters or developing the story but… it was an enjoyable, if not the most memorable, couple of hours spent in the theater.  I had heard MvA was the first Dreamworks movie that compared to the Pixar movies and I would tend to agree.  

On the other hand, the sticker shock of the movie ticket was quite memorable.  I’ve read that the movie theater business has been struggling for years even as movie ticket sales have grown to enormous portions.  Despite being a movie aficionado, I very rarely make the journey to the theater.  After paying $14.50 for my movie on Friday night, I don’t seen any reason to increase my theater attendance.  $11/ticket + $3.50 for the 3D “bonus” and you’ve matched the cost of my Netflix subscription per month!  I do like the 3D and IMAX presentations theaters are now offering — a legitimate improvement over my home theater that typically movies do not have — but the cost is a bit much.

Because of those movie prices, there are few movies that are compelling enough that I do with to see them in the theater — and that is only because I would like to see them sooner versus later.  Obviously, Pixar movies are almost universally worth the money for me to go see in the theater.  The occasional Dreamworks movie — Shrek (the original), despite some elitist naysayers, was a great idea and an excellent movie — also tends to make the list.  The fact that these studios are CGI-Animation studios has little influence on my decision but it seems to be a big deal to other people.  I recall sitting in a theater several years ago for a movie and nearly every preview was for an upcoming animated movie, including one of the Pixar movies.  After several of these animated movie previews, a lady in front of me exclaimed “Aren’t there any adult movies coming out?”  For whatever reason, that has always struck me as odd.   I don’t equate cgi/animation with “kids” movies or classify “real” movies as adult movies.  I would consider any Pixar movie to be a genuine contender for Best Picture any year.