When did the dollar show become the $2.50 show? Not that I'm complaining. It's sort of nice not dropping a twenty spot when going to the movies.A friend and I went to see 17 Again at the $2.50 show last night (my friend snapped the photo you see on the left on this Blackberry). I haven't been to this particular theater in years. It was in better shape than I expected, although certainly nothing like the digital movie theater that opened in town a year or so ago. The last time I was in this theater, the seats were tiny and they didn't have a head rest. Thankfully, they've done some remodeling since then and it turned out to be an enjoyable evening.
The movie itself was better than I expected. The story line intrigued me because who among us doesn't have regrets? It's about a guy who gets a chance to back to high school to see if he'd still make the same decision to marry his high school sweetheart. His life hadn't been all that he expected and he blamed his wife for that. I won't spoil the ending for you if you haven't seen the movie. But seeing the movie does make you wonder what you would do if you were given the chance to go back to high school to make the same life changing decisions you had to make during your senior year. Even if I had the chance to do it, I don't think I would take it. The mistakes and poor choices we make are part of who we are. They feed our wisdom and presumably prepare us to make better choices in the future. Besides, the real world doesn't allow us to become 17 again.
Admittedly though, that means that sometimes our wake up calls come too late. Not too late in the sense that we can't change, but too late in the sense that sometimes we can't undo the ramifications of a poor decision. Sometimes we just have to accept the ramifications and move on. And sometimes we can redeem the situation, but it's much harder to redeem a failure than to have our circumstances changed magically. In redemption, there's a price to be paid and the magic is slow, imperfect, and painful. But that makes it more real.
