Spiderman – No Way Out until Eldest Child turns superhero - Janet Christie's Mum's the Word

Spiderman – No Way Out until Eldest Child turns superhero

Mum's the Word

We’re at Spiderman, The Umpteenth. Eldest and his partner, Youngest and I, and the cinema is heaving, laughing, talking through the film, snacking noisily just like Before Times.

I’m loving it, despite being hopelessly lost in the Spiderman/Avengers multiverse, since I’m not as good a parent as my friends who spent lockdown watching the entire Marvel movies canon with their kids. (I was too busy walking around Fife). No matter, there’s the reaction around me to bring me up to speed. Three Spidermen in one scene? Oooh. Apparently.

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” - Oh, who said that? I whisper to Youngest. “Voltaire, Churchill, Roosevelt, somebody…?”

“Uncle Ben” she fires back.

“Oh yes,” I say. Time to Get Out My Phone, Scour the Internet and Scooby Doo This Sh!t.

So special effects - tick, plot - hunners of monster type baddies to be despatched by Spiderman and pals, tick, but the dialogue has become a bit repetitious after each action sequence:

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah I’m OK. Are you OK?”

“Yeah I’m OK.”

“OK,” after each big explosion or fight scene. Who talks like that?

With another epic fight underway now’s a good time to get a cup of tea.

“Not that way,” hisses Youngest. Too many people in our row.”

She’s right. So I trample past my own crew instead (“This IS Really Hurting a Lot of People”) and head out of another less obvious exit. Clever. The door slams behind me and I’m trapped in a tiny wardrobe facing a fire door. What would Spiderman do? Go out the ceiling. I’ll phone my kids. I’ve left my phone in my coat. Should I push the door and set off the alarm and evacuate the entire building? Flashbacks to National Museum of Scotland evacuation on account of my kids on a school trip. But I’m claustrophobic, so yes! Sweating, I push the fire door and burst out from behind a partition at the far end of the foyer. Closely followed by Eldest Child.

“Ha! Did you come out the wrong exit too?” I say.

“Yeah. “

“Were you stuck in that little room?”

“Yeah.”

“Scary. So it’s not just me then?”

“Er. Well, we watched you go out the wrong exit and I thought you might be stuck.”

“Are you OK?” he says.

“Yeah I’m OK. Are you OK.”

“Yeah I’m OK.”

“OK.”

I Look Up To This Boy And Call Him A Hero.

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