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Friday, July 18, 2008

Please do not beat up on the kids

But you can beat up about psycho guy sitting next to us if you want. On second thought, just leave him be.

That was the conversation this afternoon as Jennifer and I saw one of the first showings of The Dark Knight this afternoon. And wouldn't you know, some idiot parents brought their kids. I mean young kids, like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. This is not a movie for any of these age groups. It's great, don't get me wrong, and will probably get the deceased Heath Ledger an Oscar nomination. However, it is dark, violent and disturbing in some parts. And you might run into creepy people sitting next to you laughing as someone gets a pencil through their eye. Yeah. Real funny.

Now there were some funny lines by The Joker or Alfred for comic relief. But of course weirdo guy didn't laugh at any of these.

Jennifer swore if the kids started to cry, she was going to order the parents to take them out. Not really out of concern for the kid's psyche, mind you, but because she didn't want the noise spoiling "her" Batman movie. She's been obsessed since the opening date was announced.

Plans to buy a t-shirt tomorrow. (her dad later said no) We have two large boxes of cereal going stale on our kitchen counter so she could get the Batman and Joker toys out of the bottom.

4 comments:

MommyCheryl said...

Sheesh. Reminds me of a wacked out mom I know. She let her 4-year-old go see the hyper violent (or so I'm told) Transformers movie, but had a fit that someone showed American Pie to a 13-year-old.

Nudity and sex? Keep the kids away! Intense scenes of violence and or terror? Bring the young'uns! Insane. Needless to say, my 5-year-olds won't be seeing this Batman movie -- or any other -- for a few years. But they might just con me into taking them to see Wall-E again.

Barbara Clements said...

Actually, I wasn't bothered that much by transformers - maybe it was because machines were getting blow apart, versus carbon-based entities.

But I know what you mean. Gary and I were sitting in little shop of horrors once and were horrified when someone brought a two year old to that (remember steve martin in the dentist scene, or when rick moranis chopped up his body to feed to the plant?)

The kid started crying, and I didn't blame him.

I'm wondering if for films like this, they should literally have someone stationed on the outside to say, I strongly recommend you don't bring your kid to this, we'll refund your money, will allow you into another movie, but please think!

Probably never happen.

BC

MommyCheryl said...

LOL. Shows what I know -- I actually didn't know anyting about Transformers except that things got blown up etc. I guess if I'd thought about it, I would have realized it was just machines... Still, that stuff can wait 'til they're 8.

We've lately been thinking a lot about hwo old they need to be to see some "classics." We started to watch the original Indiana Jones with them -- but quickly abandoned the idea of fast forwarding through the stuff that was too violent because the movie woulda been about 15 nonsensical minutes long. (Actally, a bit longer -- but only really boring expositional stuff.) It was more violent and intense than I remember.

We're thinking 7 for Star Wars. Because while it's violent/intense in parts, I don't believe there is any blood.

When I see little ones in movies like Little Shop of Horrors, I have to think, what the hell are these kids going to watch when they're adolescents? And then I see the posters for the Saw movies and I know.

Barbara Clements said...

The folks that see these films at a young age will be sitting besides movie goers like J and I, creeping us out as they laugh at all the inappropriate times.

We let him exit the movie well ahead of us and kept our panic button alarms at the ready on the way out to our car.