Lights, Camera, Family Vacation!
May 16, 2006. There's no need to rent a movie when the family stays in a luxury vacation rental in Los Angeles. The New York Times' chief film critic, A.O. Scott, took his family to Tinseltown for a working vacation and found a lot of movie magic in real life. That's no small feat, considering that folks like Scott from New York City have a certain kind of jealous rivalry disdain with their West Coast cousin.
A trip to Los Angeles might have nothing to do with Hollywood. After all, there are plenty of other attractions, from Knotts Berry Farm amusement park to the J. Paul Getty Museum. There beaches for those who like sun and surf, and mountains for those who enjoy hiking. Because of the volume of flights in and out of LAX, reasonable airfares are easy to come by.
Scott and his family, however, went out like movie stars. The visited Warner Brothers Studio, one of several that feature tours of the very sets where movies and television shows are filmed. They hit up the famous intersection of Hollywood and Highland, home to the Walk of Fame, Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater shopping mall complex. They drove to Malibu, beach town of the rich and famous, and watched dolphins swim in the ocean.
Sometimes, the mandatory tourist stops can be disappointing because they have become so cliché. Somehow, this isn't true in L.A. Maybe it's because the sights-to-see feel so comfortably familiar, like you and all the strangers around you have seen them all somewhere before. Somewhere right in your living room…
