Ok, there was no bouncing ball. In fact, the Sing-along Sound of Music was more Rocky Horror than Sing-along With Mitch. A PG13, less organized Rocky Horror. With accordians.

Charmaine Carr, who played Leisl in the movie, was present to co-host the event. (I'm pretty sure that the other host was Big Gay Al, from South Park.) As we entered the theater, everyone was handed a small plastic bag filled with props: a couple of picture cards, a square of "curtain" cloth, a sprig of artificial edelweiss, and a party popper. They told us to hold up our props at certain times, given a bit of hand gesture choreography for "Do-Re-Mi", and asked to do things like boo whenever the Nazi's appeared onscreen, and to bark "Rolf, Rolf" when he appeared. The crowd was quite mixed, with many small children, so we were asked to go no further than innuendo in any other comments.

From the beginning of the film, the audience was quite noisy. Unlike Rocky Horror, during which the audience participates with standard responses, many people shouted out whatever came to mind, whenever it came to mind. The 4 year-old girl sitting next to me kept shouting out the most random things. It was extremely difficult to hear dialogue over the collective "cleverness". We also discovered that the audience's idea of the tempo differed slightly than the actual tempo of the recorded music. We could have used the bouncing ball over the subtitles.

As the evening wore on, the crowd settled down a bit. There were still moments of hubbub, but as the novelty wore off, so did the urge to shout. Even when I couldn't hear the soundtrack, it was pretty amazing to see the film up there on the big screen. And, when all is said and done, singing along with a huge crowd of people is always a bit of a rush.

They kicked off the evening with a costume contest. I think, if I ever go to this event again, I may have to go in costume as well. The favorite costume of the evening was the big, bearded Mother Superior. But the "aaaaaaaaaaah" went to the tiny little girl dressed as Maria when she first arrived at the VonTrap villa.

Best audience participation moments:

Cries of "Free Bird!" and "Play Stairway!" everytime the guitar came out.

The waved lighter at the climax of "Climb Every Mountain".

During the escape, when the Captain relates a plan to walk up into the mountains and cross the border out of the country, someone yelled, "Those mountains border Germany!"