Well, Daughter #1 had yet another half day today. One of the few advantages of being out of work is that this does not typically create a schedulling problem for us, since (aside from me cranking out yet another another bunch of resumes) "What else do I have to fill my time with?", etc.Anyway, since the last time she was off a half day, going to a movie worked out real well for us, I figured we'd try again. While there looks to be a half dozen or so good kids' movies coming out in the near future, nothing she hadn't already seen jumped out at me when checking the listings. Ah, but there was Shaolin Soccer playing down at the big AMC multiplex ... I'd heard good things about this a long time back, and was surprised that it was in the theater at this late date with no ad support that I'd noticed.
We made it down just in time for the 1:05 showing, and were the ONLY people in the theater. This, actually, worked out well, since I'd not anticipated that it was all in Cantonese with English subtitles, and many of the subtitles were half-off the bottom of the screen ... meaning that for substantial chunks of the movie I was having to read the longer or more obscured of these to Daughter #1 (who, while brilliant and all, is still only 8 and not the world's fastest reader). Frankly, I hardly noticed that it wasn't in English, the story moved along so well and the characterizations were "universal" enough that you could have probably followed along just fine without the translation.
I have since read that the version we saw (the Miramax release) is a real hatchet-job over the original, with almost a half hour of the Hong Kong version clipped. This did make sense in retrospect, as there were certain "back story" elements that were very thinly sketched. Oh, well ... it was a fun movie ... I'll have to see about getting the DVD (Amazon has them from $10.35) of the original, as IMDB's review gives the original a 10/10 while only giving the Miramax cut a 5/10!