March of the Sshhh

I have a terrible habit of talking during a movie, about the movie, narrating the movie, adding extra sounds and dialogue that come out of my mouth without control. I can't seem to help it. My husband does this too, but he's more of a preview talker. He loves to give his preview reviews on the spot. At the end of a trailer, he likes to say loudly, "Hell no. We're not seeing that." When we saw the preview of Hildago and the wall of sand was about to come down on Viggo Mortensen's and his beloved horse's head, my husband blurts out, "$20 he makes it."

I'm not so rude that I'm whispering or talking through the most silent and poignant moments of a film like when I saw Motorcycle Diaries and I was mute because I was trying to take in all the beauty that was Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna, and behind me a woman talked the ENTIRE MOVIE explaining in spanish the complete historia de Che and la revolucion (which is not what the movie was about) to her friend who must've been like, "Let's see a movie and catch up." I thought at the time, This must be some kind of karma, but this did not stop me from yelling out in spanish, "Enough already."


My family saw March of the Penguins this weekend, and as the movie began it hit me like a ton of bricks that my daughters have inherited the same bad habit. At 10, Maya's wit has sharpened to a nice point, thanks to us, and Mina,6, came out of the womb a smart ass. The four of us together are deadly. But how can you NOT add dialogue to a row of emperor penguins waddling along for miles and miles and miles? They are dying for us to add expression to this. When the male penguins started their 70-mile journey to get their mate on, I whispered to Husband, "Must be some great penguin pussy for all that." Husband responded by yawning loudly.

As the penguins strutted along, my girls and I blurted a series of "Move it." "Let's go boys!" "Doh!" “Hey Ed, what’s for lunch?” Also, Maya asked me a ton of questions during the movie like, "Why do baby animals have to die, Mami?"

As the movie progressed we wore ourselves out a little with the penguin speak and just watched the amazing martyrdom that is Raising Penguin. Until the mother penguins left the eggs entrusting to the fathers' care to make the 70-mile journey back so they could get something to eat, and Maya yells out, "These mothers are like, PEACE. I'm outta here." And as the mothers waddle back one by one towards the sea to get their eat on, Mina finally speaks up by singing the Conga Line song, "da-da-du-du DU DU!da-da-du-da DU DU!"

And I laughed annoyingly through the rest of the movie over that one.