AILSA CHANG, HOST:
With Memorial Day behind us, we are officially in the summer movie season. And there is no shortage of titles to choose from. But, you know, summer is known for a particular kind of movie, right? Think popcorn pictures, escapist films that may have laughs or tears along the way but that end happily. It's a formula that has served Hollywood well, and that has also served to make a lot of people into superfans, including our critic Bob Mondello. He now sees more than 300 movies a year, many of which do not have happy endings. But that suits him just fine. In this encore presentation, Bob remembers the moment it all began - his first trip to a movie theater.
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BOB MONDELLO: I was 9.
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BARBARA LUDDY: (As Merryweather) Come on, bucket, mop, broom. Flora says, clean up the room.
MONDELLO: A neighborhood theater in Bethesda, Md., in 1959; a matinee crowded with zillions of kids discovering new things about a fairy tale we all thought we knew.
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VERNA FELTON: (As Flora) And now to make a lovely dress fit to grace a fair princess.
MONDELLO: The Disney "Sleeping Beauty" was different from the Brothers Grimm version. For one thing, the Disney animators reduced Princess Aurora's seven fairy godmothers to three - Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. And Flora and Merryweather had very specific ideas about colors. Flora liked pink. Merryweather liked blue. And when they were magically creating Aurora's birthday dress...
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LUDDY: (As Merryweather) No, not pink - make it blue.
MONDELLO: ...That caused problems.
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FELTON: (As Flora) Merryweather, make it pink.
MONDELLO: They kept casting spells and blue and pink bolts of magic...
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LUDDY: (As Merryweather) Make it blue.
MONDELLO: ...Some of which started shooting out the chimney like fireworks.
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FELTON: (As Flora) Pink.
MONDELLO: I think the reason I remember this part is that at some point, both Flora and Merryweather cast a spell at the same moment, and the dress ended up splotchy and spoiled. If something like that had happened in my house, my brother and I would have gotten spanked. But then Maleficent showed up, and we forgot about colors and splotches for a while and worried about curses and pricked fingers and swords of truth and forests of thorns and a huge dragon and kisses that awaken fairy princesses, only to have the issue crop back up again at the very end when Princess Aurora and her prince were dancing their way to happily ever after, fairy godmothers looking on.
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BARBARA JO ALLEN: (As Fauna) Oh, I just love happy endings.
FELTON: (As Flora) Yes, I do, too - blue.
MONDELLO: I was worried that they'd splotch everything up again, but before they did, I turned to my mom and saw she had tears in her eyes. And I said, Mom, it's not sad. And she said, I'm crying because it's so happy, which, to a 9-year-old, is nuts. Later I would realize that mom and dad sometimes yelled at each other in real life, and I wasn't connecting that to the lovers onscreen. Though, I guess mom was. She knew then something I wouldn't till later - that visions are seldom all they seem. But that day, mixed messages were not what she wanted to impart at my first movie ever, so she blinked and said, who wants ice cream? And I did. I'm Bob Mondello. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
