Hawaii seems to love its musical nostalgia. In restaurants and bars, you can still hear some Elvis. In grocery stores you might still catch some Peter, Paul, and Mary. When we visited the Kukui Grove Cinema, instead of, say, a Geico commercial before the feature film, we watched concert videos from the seventies and eighties. Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” with those glorious fashions of our youth, was on the screen when we entered. It was a little strange, but so much better than the same ad (“Buy some Coke at the snack bar!”) we’ve seen dozens of times.
The theater had some other touches of the past. For instance, they do not take credit cards (but they do have an ATM in the lobby). The lobby has current posters, but also old posters for such films as Streets of Fire. We saw a large poster for the upcoming Fall “Ohana” film festival with eclectic collections such as a triple bill of Paper Moon, Starman, and Airplane. (I suppose the link is to be found between “Moon,” “Star,” and “Air.”)
It seems strange to use any of one’s time on Kauai inside a movie theater, but it was gloomy and rainy outside, and we had time before our redeye flight back to the mainland. We decided to watch Central Intelligence with Kevin Hart and The Rock (who inexplicably has decided that he now wants to be known by his exceedingly less cool moniker, Dwayne Johnson.)
There isn’t much church to be found in this film, which is set chiefly in Maryland. (Actually, it was set much more in Maryland than the movie we used for that state.) There’s one scene where a character claims to have come to the Lord and wants to repent for a nasty prank he played in high school. It is interesting to see the victim of the prank is so moved by the apology, until he finds that the repentance is just another prank. It’s a throwaway scene in a quite silly comedy about high school legacies and international intrigue, but it does show our longing to make old hurts right.
No comments:
Post a Comment