I hear The Shining is an upbeat family film

Okay, this post is about two movies – The Family Stone and King Kong. I will be giving a few details including the ending to King Kong. If you are like I was before I saw King Kong, you will have no idea how King Kong ends. If you are like me and want to know, please keep reading. If you don’t, come back tomorrow.

Now a bit of info to help you drive this baby:

1) I tend to get very emotionally involved with movies. If it’s a sad movie, I cry. If it’s a scary movie, I’m terrified for days. I can handle action films as long as I know the endings and any/all good guy deaths. Oddly enough, psychological thrillers are pretty easy for me, well, until the next thunderstorm.

Mis-genred films are my downfall. Don’t give me a drama and call it a comedy. Don’t give me a horror flick and call it a psychological thriller. Gothika is horror. White Noise, horror as well. I cannot handle horror. EVER. My grip on reality and all… Because of this, I tend to watch a lot of comedy and princess movies.

It’s really better that way. I cried so hard in Terminator II during the nuclear war part, I tore a contact lens and my father never took me to a movie again. I had a boyfriend who walked so far ahead of my sobbing self as we left the theater after A Beautiful Life, I couldn’t find the car.

Some people look better after a god cry, all swollen lipped and kissable or tragic and waifish. I do not look like this. I look like I’ve been crying for centuries. My nose turns red immediately and my skin turns blotchy. My eyes swell like I have a peanut allergy and I'm munching a PB and J. The whites turn crimson contrasting the green irises so much the green looks radioactive. If I’m on a real tear, I hyperventilate. It isn’t pretty.

2) Now, and for the last few months, I have been on high dose hormones. This cannot be helped and it cannot be adjusted. It has caused all sorts of mood swings. Only Sparky can tell the tale of what life is REALLY like with me right now. My version is totally skewed.

So, add the two together and let’s move on with the story…

Rewind time and its back to our first week in California.

One of the things Sparky and I wanted to do while back in Cali was to see some films in English, in a big over-priced theater with a huge screen, DTS sound and for me, popcorn.

A couple of days before Christmas the twins, Sparky and I went to see The Family Stone. Why this movie and not some comedy? Because Mim and I thought this was a comedy, a romantic comedy. Mim was supposed to start her heavy duty round of chemo the day after Christmas, so she and I would not be able to go see it together later.

Sparky is an easy sell, especially for a matinee. Show me a Kraut that does not love a deal. Jeff… Well, Jeff was a more difficult sell. Mim played her chemo card and TFS it was. We promised him it was a comedy. We left out the romantic part, but figured he’d live.

As the opening credits started to roll over a flowery wallpaper background, Jeff figured something might be up. Mim and I focused his attention to Craig T. Nelson, but he knew he had been had.

Only, Mim and I didn’t know we had been had too.

TFS has a mother dying of breast cancer/her last Christmas subplot. We were totally bamboozled.

It was like a German salad. They always hide the sauerkraut underneath the green leafy part. There you go enjoying the delish lettuce when before you know it wham bam you’ve got a mouthful of pickled cabbage.

I once tricked Jeff into seeing I Am Sam. He has never forgiven me because it made him cry. A lot. He shot me the same look when the mother tells her daughter the cancer had metastasized. He was pissed. I was too busy bawling my eyes out to really feel the heat of his stare. He got me back later.

After, walking to the car, Jeff swore he would never let Mim and I choose another movie without researching it first. We had been selling Brokeback Mountain as a western buddy movie with Anne Hathaway’s tits so the first thing he did when we got home was watch the trailer. Yeah, he didn’t see that movie and our credibility was totally ruined.

Christmas came and went. Mim caught a cold and had to delay chemo for a week. That afternoon we hit King Kong.

Now, before I say anything else, let me tell you, Kong dies. I did not know this. I had hope until the very end when he fell from the building that somehow, they’d get him on a boat to go home. I thought there were all sorts of Kong sequels. Somehow, I confused Kong with Godzilla.

So after 2 hours and 50 minutes of falling in love with that sweet gorilla, they’re shooting him off the building and I’m bawling my eyes out. I tried to be quiet about it. I tried to hide behind my hair so I couldn’t see Jeff and Mim laughing at me. I tried to think of Tiffany diamonds and cashmere sweaters to remove my focus from his sad and pointless death, but nothing worked. That DTS sound funneled Kong’s last moments into my brain.

After the movie, I was not just sorrow-filled and heartbroken, I was pissed. Apparently “Everyone knows the ending to Kong” so no one found it important to tell me he dies. If I had known, I could have prepared myself better. I cried all the way home. I was hyperventilating as I switched the TV channel to America’s Funniest HomeVideos. It took two hours before I finally calmed down.

Later that night, Jeff pulled me aside before he went to bed. He put his arm around me and said, “'Member that part in the movie when Kong was on the building and he thought the sunset was beautiful and then they shot him and he fell off the building? It was sad, wasn’t it?”