Our 6-year-old New Orleans Northshore grandson spent last week with us at our South Mississippi home, and one of the plans was to take him to the Prytania in Uptown NOLA to see the 50th anniversary release of the animated Beatles film “Yellow Submarine.”
Wade knows about the Beatles and likes some of their songs, and it was at his elementary school earlier this year that he learned about the movie based on the 1966 Lennon-McCartney song. His teacher’s stories that included Pepperland and the Blue Meanies made Wade interested in seeing the movie this summer.
I’ve seen it only once and that was in 1968, the year of its release, when I was 16 years old, though I’m quite familiar with the film’s history.
Patty, Wade and I didn’t make it to the Prytania. A thunderstorm threat, the fifth of the week, made us nervous. Patty and I are in our late 60s and we had visions of flooded highways and byways and canals from cataract-testing sheets of rain, and we heard the voices of “turn around, don’t drown.”
We never left town, but we still saw “Yellow Submarine.” I got it for free through Amazon Prime and we watched it on our TV through Amazon Video.
The movie held Wade’s interest until halfway through. He was done after the “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” sequence and ready to watch something else.
Maybe Wade doesn’t love “Lucy.” Maybe the tangerine trees, marmalade skies and marshmallow pies were too much. Maybe the ever-changing colors of the ballroom dancers and chorus girls were too much.
I didn’t ask.
As a Netflix ninja for three years, Wade went right to his account and picked one of his go-to movies: “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed,” the 2004 sequel to 2002’s “Scooby-Doo.” Both of the live-action and computer-generated comedies are based on the 1969 TV cartoon about a talking dog who solves mysteries.
At Rotten Tomatoes, the critics’ consensus is that “only the very young will get the most out of this silly trifle.”
Wade got the most out of it. He was animated. He jumped. He danced. He laughed and then he laughed a lot more. He had a lot of fun.
Patty and I? We would prefer “Scooby-Don’t.”
