I had the good fortune of watching Cars 3 today with the reason I’m able to celebrate Father’s Day. Max had been looking forward to this day for the past week. We talked about how we were going to take him to see this (his second theater experience) and how we would get popcorn (his first popcorn experience). Leading up to today, Max talked about this at least once a day. He was excited.

I reserved tickets a few days in advance just to ensure we had seats (our local theater is fairly small; I didn’t think a Sunday morning showing would be sold out, but when your theater seats about 50 people for the screen it would be showing on, you can never tell). Our showtime was 10:45AM. Easily the earliest showtime I’ve ever been to for a movie at a theater. I can remember staying up for midnight showings on Thursday night releases. Now I’m hitting up brunch specials for Pixar movies.

Before the movie, we went out and had breakfast. We shared a smorgasbord of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, and hot cakes. Max was a bit restless leading up to the food being served. Fortunately, there was a coloring book with crayons at the restaurant. Unfortunately, Max didn’t want to color, but insisted that I color the picture so that he could watch. The juxtaposition of this meal to popcorn at the theater was definitely something I had yet to experience (even for a man who loves brinner).

Cars was the first Pixar movie that we watched with Max. I feel like there is a lot of dislike towards Cars out there (maybe this is a byproduct of Cars 2). It also feels like hating on Pixar these days is as about as fashionable as hating on Eagles. I am not one of those people. Maybe my tastes are unrefined and I’m easy to please, but I’ve enjoyed every Pixar movie I’ve seen. I even enjoyed Cars 2. It’s not my favorite, but it amused me and gave me a few dad joke chuckles. I felt that Cars 3 is better than Cars 2. Maybe not as good as Cars, but it’s still pretty good (except for the fact that Chick Hicks wasn’t voiced by Michael Keaton and that nearly ruined the movie for me). However, my enjoyment of the film may be skewed by the fact that Max seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

After the movie, Max was ready to get up and leave before we could stick around for the end of the credits. Alas, I do not know if there is anything special after the credits of Cars 3 (I assume there is, but I did not get to see it). We walked into the lobby and Max looked up at me and said, “I want to race”. So I did what any responsible father would do: we raced. Once we got outside, he held my hand and we raced to the car. Making car noises the entire time. It was a pretty special moment.