Bo'ness Hippodrome

When I was growing up, a trip to the cinema was always a magical experience. In the summer, particularly, the local picture house would show various children's matinees so there was a regular supply of films both good and pretty awful to watch. The main thing was that it was dirt cheap - entrance and a cheap ice cream could be had for pocket money. I think the rot started with the introduction of the Cornetto which, at 30p, cost more than the ticket itself. However, going to the cinema remained a cheap day out and, when we moved to the Falkirk area, a night out for two - tickets, an ice cream and a quick drink in the pub before hand - could be had for a perfectly reasonable £10. That ended in 2001 when the Cineworld multiplex finally put the old ABC cinema out of business.

In fairness, I could see the attraction of the shiny new multiplex compared to the old fleapit. In fact, calling Falkirk ABC a fleapit was rather unfair to fleas as they had long decamped to somewhere with more comfortable seats, less sticky smells and a decent sound system. I can remember watching The Green Mile with a friend who struggled to stand up afterwards having suffered from what he described as "paralysis of the buttocks". Nevertheless, one by one the old picture houses closed to be replaced by new, bright, shiny, expensive and utterly soulless multiplexes. Falkirk Council, however, chose to save one for posterity and this week we actually went to see a film at Scotland's oldest working cinema, The Bo'ness Hippodrome.

For those unfamiliar with Central Scotland, Bo'ness is a small town on the Forth just down the road from Grangemouth - although with a less science fiction skyline. It is short for Borrowstounness, although I have never seen it referred to as such (it does, however, appear on the town's road sign in very small letters). The picture house, by rights, should have suffered the same fate of many small town cinemas by being turned into a bingo hall, nightclub or converted into flats but, by chance of fate, it was listed and eventually renovated by the council. I'm all for urban curiosities being preserved - for example, the old blue police boxes in Glasgow - but what is nice about the Hippodrome is that it is a fully functional working cinema showing a mix of contemporary films and old classics. For the summer holiday's this has meant various children's films; and this week it was a mix of The Railway Children and Toy Story 3. I took Raymond to see the latter.

I've been a fan of the Pixar movies since the first Toy Story film came out in 1995. At the time the great attraction was the innovative computer animation; it seems hard to believe that this was once a novelty as it is now the default for any modern animated feature. But the great surprise was that the studio appeared to have spent as much on the script as they had on the computer hardware. I recall one of my workmates at the time saying that it was "Too good for kids". This is rather a strange attitude; do we really want children to watch any old rubbish? I sort of knew what she meant and, whilst it worked well as a children's film, there was enough knowing humour around parenting and consumerism to keep adults entertained without it flying over the heads of a younger audience.

Not every film manages this, and I think it was Jonathan Ross that pointed out that Shark Tale made lots of references to X rated gangster films that children would never have seen (at least one would hope they hadn't) and otherwise we were left with lots of nasty stereotypes about Italian people. The Toy Story series has always avoided this although I felt the latest film was much darker in tone; possibly too dark for younger children and we did have one small child in buckets of tears at one stage - although this is pretty standard for a matinee performance. I still do wonder whether the U certificate was justified.

If you have seen either of the previous Toy Story films, the third instalment has pretty much exactly the same plot with the toys being lost and having to find their way back to their owner. This is the latest 3-D extravaganza but, thankfully for me, the Hippodrome was showing it in 2-D. Aside from that I was pleased to note that they had full digital surround sound so even though the building is antique they can give modern films the full hi-tech treatment (without the 3-D induced nausea). Where this film is different is in examining the harsh end of consumerism and the over-reaching theme of childhood's end, adding a much more melancholy edge to the storytelling. This is where it really is aimed at the adult audience and quite a few of the parents left the film with rather red eyes; in fact one woman had the whole mascara down the cheeks look - I don't know what I looked like but I didn't have the 3-D specs to blame for eye-strain.

Raymond really enjoyed the film; so on that level they are hitting their target audience, but I do wonder whether I would show it to either of our younger children just yet. Anyway, I really liked the Hippodrome and I will have to try this out for an evening show.