Thursday, July 14, 2011

Pooh vs. Potter?

Harry Potter returns tomorrow. But while everyone else is weeping over the last film installment of a worldwide favorite, I'm rejoicing over the appearance of another. What am I speaking of? None other than the most famous bear in the world, Winnie the Pooh! Please don't mistake me. I am an avid Harry Potter fan, but when it comes down to being a teenager without a driver's license and who happens to have a restrictively tight budget, it's almost impossible to part with twenty dollars to watch two movies.

I'm hoping that perhaps I might be able to get away with the illegal method. Both movies are playing on the same night. If the scheduling matches up so that one ends just before the other begins, I'll play the little criminal and pay for one movie and then movie hop to go see the other. If not, I'll have to pick because twenty dollars is a lot of money! Well it's not a LOT, but it's the equivalent of three books and I'd rather have three books that last a life time than two movies that I can only watch once before getting the DVD. 

Anyway, with that dilemma coming into play, which should I choose? The obvious answer would be Harry Potter, but I really think that I would rather go see a happy movie that takes me back to my childhood memories than visit a gloomy film, pre-knowledgeable of the fact that all my favorite characters die. 

After The Order of the Phoenix, I became convinced that J.K Rowling was trying to torture me. Sirius Black (my favorite) went first, Dumbledore said goodbye shortly after, and in the seventh and by far the most depressing book Lupin, Mad-Eye, Dobby, and Tonks all get wiped out as well (along with other beloved characters). Do I really want to see all those corpses when I have the option of watching a film in which the most depressing thing is helping Eeyore find a tail? 

Winnie the Pooh makes a smile come to my lips and a little youthful light return to my eyes. The books provided me with some valuable lessons and gave me guidelines with which to live my life. Does that sound like an exaggeration? Well, it's true! Pooh (though he pictures himself as stupid) is about as wise as they come. You really can't "stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you", sometimes you have to reach out to them and make friends for yourself. I really am "braver than I believe, stronger than I seem, and smarter than I think!" 

It seems like so much has changed since I was the little five-year-old reading Pooh and agreeing with Piglet when he said, "It's hard to be brave when you're only a very small animal." Now I'm sixteen with my sights set on college, soon to fall out of the nest and find the wings to fly. I'm at the place where Christopher Robin was in The House at Pooh Corner where he "came to an end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there looking over the world, just wishing it wouldn't stop." 

Sorry Harry! If push comes to shove and I have to choose between you and Pooh, I've got to go with my  trusty old pal who taught me the basic morals of life before your source material was even published. 
                                                                 --Bonnie

8 comments:

  1. i used to do that, hope from one theater to another. it was so much fun! i'd pick Pooh and Friends too. :)

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  2. Ha ha it is...but also illegal and I got caught one time. Thank goodness that the manager who caught me was really nice and decided to let me slide!

    Glad to hear that you'd pick Pooh too. I think I will and then just go and see Harry Potter later in the summer.

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  3. Even though I am of course biased toward HP for the simple fact that it's HP, I would still go for HP. The reasoning is this: some films are fab on the big screen, others don't matter how big the screen is. Pooh would be the latter - it's not something you NEED to see at the cinema to really enjoy. Not that you can't enjoy HP on a computer or TV, but it's a big movie with cinematography to go with it.

    It's the reason we don't normally go to see animations or comedies or that kind of movies at the cinema, even if we'd like to see them. We can just wait for the DVD to come out and see it at home. We save the cinema for big adventure / sci-fi / fantasy type films, because they look great on a big screen and you experience it in a different way at the cinema. :) So even if we weren't a couple consisting of a Potter fan and a huge Potter nerd, we'd see HP at the cinema and wait for the other one to come out on DVD if we wanted to see it. :)

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  4. Believe it or not, I rationalized the EXACT same thing in my head when I went to the movies Friday night. I ended up going back on my "blog post" word and chose Harry Potter. I'm glad I did! I think that Harry Potter was a "must-see." That's the last Potter movie to play on screen! I'll never be going to midnight showings anymore or counting down the days until I see it in theaters. Pooh kind of pales in importance next to HP's last translation to the movie screen.

    My choice also worked out for the best. When my mom was picking me up from the theater she said, "we should go see Winnie the Pooh together next week" and I almost jumped out of my seat. Whenever my mother and I go to see anything together, she automatically pays for the tickets. So I guess I'll get to have the best of both worlds. :) s

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  5. I saw Harry Potter yesterday. I enjoyed it overall and I teared up at a certain scene involving Snape but I wasn't happy with some of the changes made, especially toward the end. I know that the movies can't be the books but would it hurt them to keep to the spirit of the books??? Instead, we were treated to an action/adventure movie. Granted, there is a ton of action and I'm fine with that but I felt that they missed out on some of the really important themes of sacrifice and love that is especially prevalent in the Deathly Hallows.

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  6. I agree. But I never placed too much wait on the HP movies. I always enjoyed watching them, but they never satisfied my true image of the series from the very beginning. The only one that I really loved was the Prisoner of Azkaban. This last one was pretty good; enough to satisfy me, but it wasn't the BEST.

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  7. Ur right...HP is a bit depressing. But, you know they delibrately left me hanging on the first part, and you know i am literally ACHING to see the next, Awi-Bear :) But, I swear everytime I think about Piglet and his worries and Eeyore and his unmistakable bad luck just brings a smile to my face :D

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  8. It's completely depressing! The last one isn't that bad. It's not the best of them. There were things that I was looking for and they all made their way in, and it wasn't as depressing as the book.

    I always go to see the Winnie the Pooh movies! I think there was a movie that focused on Tigger that came out a while back where he was trying to find his family. I still love that movie! There's just something about Pooh and his friends that makes me feel all "warm and bubbly." :P

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