You Know, For Kids

I think a lot of kid movies now try to get some laughs out of the adults too, so the parents will be more likely to take their kids to see it. Sometimes this works. It makes the 2 hours spent in the theatre a bit less painful for the guardians. However, I don't think parents should, on the whole, EXPECT kid movies to be fantastic from their point of view.

A problem with Star Wars is that, while it is a big budget movie for kids, the people who saw the originals in the theatres when they were kids were expecting to be gratified on the same level as they did back then. The dialogue in all of the original star wars movies is crap. The acting is often embarassing. But many of us have a fondness for the original films because they filled us with awe and wonder (and we had crushes on Luke).

Sort of and not really. For example you wouldn't judge 'Aquarium' on the same terms as 'OK Computer' would you? On their own terms they're surely regarded as great successes wrt what they're trying to achieve.

This doesn't give kids entertainment a free pass by any means. I wouldn't know how to defend Beyblade as good kids entertainment, though the assumption one tends to make is that it's not as good as, say, Thundercats but perhaps that is not actually the case (it may be easy to argue the opposite).

Honestly, I'd rather a child play an imaginative video game than watch an "imaginative" movie. And Disney movies suck now... man, do they suck. Even if your kid likes them, you're lame for taking them to see Sinbad or some such septic, boring crap. A Shark's Tale was stupid, too, but at least it had a veneer of hip to it. Kids who like Disney movies nowadays get beat up on the playground. I digress.

I wonder if the problem is that some critics expect ALL entertainment to appeal to ALL demographics, and can't be bothered to consider that some entertainment might be more niche-y. Or their approach is so rigidly set to say that This Is So, And So It Shall Be that they can't bend around anything that might not fit their view. (cf. an adult appreciating Britney Spears' music apart from the TEENYPOP taint)

I don't know if critics need to try and cover all bases when talking about, for instance, ROTS, as long as they're upfront about where they're coming from. Piss on it as a discriminating adult, or fall in awe of the grandeur and the flashing lights, or find a happy middle ground. And I see no problem in saying that the flick will both appeal to the kids and infuriate the adults.

Personally, I (age 30) adore the Harry Potter flicks (and no doubt the flicks, as the books, were made with a wider spectrum of readers / viewers in mind), while Star Wars gives me hives (tho I'm pretty sure I was all about it as a kid - had the toys and everything).

(I might be talking around all the questions. If so, my bad.)

Star Wars and other whizz-bang movies/etc. are in their own category, maybe? When I saw ROTS, the theater was PACKED with kids and they were eating the shit up with a spoon. And, even though I was enjoying myself for the most part, a lot of that enjoyment came from smug chuckling at bad acting which was probably irrelevant to the younglings.

Probably because there's no literary equivalent of Darth Maul doing batshit double-ended lightsabre tricks. Or Deathstars and lazers, for that matter.

Coraline

Some day I want to visit this weird strain of sci-fi/horror kids movies that followed the success of ET. Where Spielberg had affection for the kids, filmed scenes from their eyeline, most of the hacks hated them and put them in harrowing situations (so many had kids being shot at) cuz, like, it was drama.

x-post they call it a kids movie because the adults might feel embarassed to watch it as adult entertainment. instead of saying stuff like that and LEG are "good kids movies" they should just be called "kids movies." They shouldn't be rewarded for not transcending their niche.

also, is this thread too boyish? have any of you read anything by Francesca Lia Block? the nyt profile of her a few months ago sounded really interesting.

xpost: really? why?

I don't have a kid yet but no matter how much I might agree with you in theory, I don't think it's that simple when you have a child screaming to see something because everyone else has seen it.

I took my friend's 8-year-old son -- a Star Wars maniac -- to the 1940 "The Thief of Bagdad" recently, figuring the content was similar but the setting and trappings different enough. He loved it; you can bet if he was 14 he'd complain the special effects "sucked."