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One of my most heartening moviegoing experiences this year fell on July 24, the night I attended a press screening of Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” at the AMC Burbank 16. The movie was lousy, but the preshow in the lobby was thrilling. I first sensed something was up when, after several minutes of driving in circles, I managed to grab the last rooftop spot in a parking structure that rarely reached capacity — on a Monday night, no less. What was going on?
The answer became clear once I made my way into the multiplex and saw more moviegoers than I’d seen in some time. They milled in groups, poured out the doors, and scattered popcorn trails down ugly-carpeted hallways. Some wore pink (a lot of it). They jammed concession lines, bathroom lines, and possibly cellphone lines. (The modern scourge of mid-movie texting keeps growing worse.) Some of them, like me, were journalists who had dutifully showed up to watch Tiffany Haddish trade wisecracks with digital ectoplasm. Everyone else was there for a mighty spectacle of plastic, plutonium, or both: They were there for “Barbenheimer.”
Ah, “Barbenheimer” (a.k.a. “Science Guys and Dolls”), that happy accident of a blockbuster love child conceived by two rival studios, Warner Bros. and Universal, and by two filmmakers, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, who had succeeded in putting their highly personal stamps on improbable material. For the first time in a while, too, it clearly felt personal for a mass audience. For many of us, words could hardly describe the excitement of seeing people flock giddily to theaters en masse, seeking out pictures without the imprimatur of a Marvel or a DC universe, or even the more benign franchise imprint of an “Avatar” or “Top Gun” sequel. Perhaps originality at the movies wasn’t dead after all.
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(Matt Talbot / For The Times)
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