This postscript would have been an edit, except that LJ's ideas of reasonable comment limits are much shorter than mine.

According to this interview with the director, the kind of interactive audience culture that alienated me last night is exactly what he hoped would happen if the movie took off ("I encourage you to be obnoxious in this movie because it is a movie that is a carnival. It's supposed to be a fun time . . . I hope that people understand it's OK to have fun, it's OK to sing along with the movie, it's OK to make fun of the movie. That's what the movie's there for"), so maybe I'm not the target audience for the movie. Except for the part where I really love it, so I'm not sure where that leaves me. At the moment it seems to be making me feel as though I've just been told that I love the movie in the wrong way, and I have hated my entire life being told that there's something wrong with me for loving things seriously, whether they are academic things or things that are objectively kind of junk, so I should probably leave this corner of the internet alone right now.