Evan Almighty at the Byrd

The Byrd
Originally uploaded by moonshinerr

After attending an Eagle ceremony for one of the Scouts in our troop we decided to spend part of our evening last night at one of favorite Richmond landmarks: the Byrd Theatre. The theater opened in 1928 and has amazingly managed to survive practically unaltered for almost 80 years. Today, it shows second-run movies for only $1.99 so we try and go down whenever a family-friendly movie is playing during the 7:15 slot.

Normally we'd try and go on Saturday night because that's when Bob Gulledge plays the mighty Wurlitzer organ that rises up out of the orchestra pit. I think we'd pay $2 a piece just to watch Bob play even without the movie. There's many a time we got polMom to go see a movie she was ambivalent about because of that Wurlitzer. However, we were at the Braves game Saturday night with the troop so we came to the organless Sunday showing instead.

Both of the boys thought the movie was funny and polMom liked the family-firendly message (she said it even redeemed Steve Carell in her mind a bit). I thought it was worth $2 ... everything is better when played at the Byrd. I think the movie could have been a lot funnier as what few jokes there were fell pretty flat. The kids loved the slapstick stuff that went on during the ark construction but I really wanted something more substantial to happen. But again, a nice evening out for about 20 bucks.