Well, they closed the museum for more than two years, spent more than $85 million and managed to make it…even worse.

Oh my gosh, we went there today and we were so disappointed. They’ve renovated the building, but they have the same old exhibits, except even smaller and more cramped, with fewer items on display. All the exhibits are like cramped in corners and there is very little to see, and lines everywhere to even get into these tiny rooms.

We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Reid was SO UPSET because we’d promised him he could see Indiana Jones’ hat. Nope. The entire entertainment/music/sports exhibit is now one room about the size of my living room with about three interesting things in it (Kermit, Oscar the Grouch, and the Ruby Slippers).

Yuck. At least the Museum of Natural History never disappoints.

There may be museum people who sniff, but I can tell you that it makes it all a lot more interesting for six- and three-year-old boys.

They have the actual Iwo Jima Suribachi flag (the second one) there. But you can’t take photographs. The guy who was working there told some other folks not to do so or they’d be dealing with “one pissed off Marine.” I guess we got immersed a little bit there, too.

I recommend the museum, which is free to attend, free to park, and empty of donation canisters.

Click on each photo for a larger version.

The National Museum of the Marine Corps and Heritage Center

The actors continue to get better with each film. Thanks to their growing skills, and some excellent direction, this movie is the best so far at conveying some of the complicated undertones of its accompanying book. In this case, these have to do with the encroaching adolescence of Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione. The movie does a deft job showing how complicated, exciting and downright humiliating the first teenage years can be. In the scenes on this topic, it is poignant and very funny.

Additionally, the movie subtly, beautifully illustrates Harry’s growing sense of separation from his peers — his feeling that he is cursed never to enjoy the simple pleasures that they take for granted.

This is the most frightening of the movies thus far, which is fitting as the fourth book was significantly “darker” than those which came before it. Several of the scenes caused even this adult — who knew what happened next — to squirm a bit.

My one big complaint about the film is that the filmmakers seem to have made a very conscious effort not to hew too closely to the book. In some ways this is good. But, since Goblet of Fire is my favorite Harry Potter book, it was also somewhat of a letdown. There are certain lines, certain scenes, that stand out in the book as special. Often, watching the movie, the appropriate line of dialogue from the book would run through my head just before a character should have spoken the line onscreen. But the “right” words never came. Every time, the line was either altered or omitted entirely. Additionally, my favorite scene in the book, and probably of the whole series, did not appear in the film at all (I’ll leave the details of this out, for the sake of those who haven’t seen the movie).

I understand that the filmmakers did not set out to make a Jill-personalized film and that they cannot include all my favorite tidbits. However, I imagine that some of my favorites are also the favorites of many other millions of people. A few direct quotations from the book would have made us feel oh-so-special.

All in all, I definitely recommend this film if you are a Harry Potter fan. And if you are not a Harry Potter fan….then what the heck are you thinking?