Release schedule: when to wee and when to wait during this summer’s biggest movies

The Odyssey

You will almost certainly need to urinate during Christopher Nolan’s epic. Do not make the same mistake I did, and sneak off after the big cyclops setpiece. You might assume that the plot will relax after this, but you will be wrong. If your cinema’s toilet is as far from the screen as my cinema’s, you will end up missing most of the Trojan Horse section. Much better would be to cling on until after the horse, because then you’ll only miss the Laestrygonians. These are the giants depicted on the film’s poster but you pretty much get the gist of the scene from the poster anyway.

Minions and Monsters

This feels bizarre to say, but do not go to the toilet at any point during the first half of this movie, because it is somehow the most lovingly observed tribute to the early days of Hollywood in recent years. It almost exclusively deals with the bumpy transition from silent films to talkies, with such carefully observed tenderness that it is genuinely quite moving. If you think that sounds a lot like Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, then you would be right (including the elephant). However, since that film didn’t have minions in it and this film does, this is better. Anyway, this element burns out after about an hour, at which point you can wee at will.

Toy Story 5

Plenty of choices here, depending on why you went to see the film in the first place. If you want to find yourself emotionally engaged with the heart of the film, then get up and go to the toilet whenever the army of Buzz Lightyears arrive on the screen. Until close to the very end, these scenes are just superfluous fan service that have no bearing whatsoever on the plot. However, if you went purely because you love superfluous fan service, then you should probably get up and go as soon as Jessie unearths the lunchbox full of Emily’s memories, you heartless monster.

Backrooms

Look, Backrooms derives a lot of its power from the sustained eeriness of its tone – which is to say that the film essentially bores you into terror. As such, any trip to the toilet has the potential to ruin the effect. But needs must, so perhaps try to go about halfway through when Renate Reinsve enters the shop. You’ll miss a long scene of her wandering around. If you’re invested in the film, the scene serves to ratchet the tension even higher. If you’re busting for the toilet, though, it will feel so endless that you’ll convince yourself that the film is punishing you for having a bladder.

Disclosure Day

At two-and-a-half hours, Disclosure Day feels a little longer than it needs to be, and this will go double if you managed to slurp down an entire large Sprite before the trailers finished. I checked the trusty RunPee app for this, and I am in broad agreement that the best time to go involves some counterintuitive thinking. A little over halfway through, there is an action sequence where Emily Blunt’s car gets pushed on to some train tracks. What follows is a long and not particularly interesting sequence, the likes of which you will have seen many times before.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a 98-minute pee, but nothing in this film is good or memorable, so why not try? Heck, you may as well walk all the way back home and use your own toilet. You literally won’t miss anything.