I have to say, I'm not best pleased with the Music Box Cinema right now.
I had a good time at the movie, because I love Bedknobs & Broomsticks and have since I was kid, but seven dollars for a Sunday morning matinee of a film that came out in 1971 is a bit steep. I wouldn't mind so much, because I like to support my local independent cinema, but I think we may have actually had a
reel from 1971. The film quality was pretty terrible -- I don't mind the scratchiness so much, I rather like the "dirt" in fact, but there were a couple of points where the film jumped in the middle of dialogue.
Also, inexplicably, it was missing scenes. And I sound like such a doofus that I know this, but the version we saw was missing one song and at least two plot-points -- the library duet, the scene where Paul provides the magic words from his picture-book, and the scene where Brown joins the army. I can't imagine why they were cut except perhaps for time; unless you really don't want the hero joining the military as a message to kids, there wasn't anything offensive about them. Perhaps I'm even more of a doofus for thinking it, but cutting the last scene pretty much eviscerates Brown's character arc as well.
Still, it was epic to finally see it on the big screen. It's a strange little film; there are these moments of childish, silly whimsy, and then all of a sudden you get hit in the face with some pretty heavy themes. The summoning of Britain's ancestral militias to drive off the invaders is mythical stuff, and the special effects have held up really remarkably well. (Other than the bed-travel scenes, which are pure seventies lolarity.) It was thrilling to see the soldiers crest the hill -- and then you pan away and there's a line of them just going on forever. It's remarkable, the power of impact in that imagery.
I thought it might seem a bit creepy, an adult going alone to a kiddie matinee, but it turned out I was in the majority. I ended up sitting with three other guys my age and one guy in his fifties, and there were a bunch of college kids in the back, and then dotted around were maybe two or three couples and four or five families. Grownups significantly outnumbered the kids. It was nice, actually, to dork out about this film we all really loved and had come out in the PISSING DOWN RAIN OMG to see. The older guy we were sitting with could remember actually seeing the film in a cinema the first time round.
You can find the whole thing pretty easily on YouTube, if you're feeling nostalgic or have never seen it and would like to, but my two favourite parts are the
Portobello Road extended scene (which I don't think ever aired in actual cinemas) and the
Substitutiary Locomotion battle.
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