This miracle was made possible by, you guessed it: Grammy. She and Grampy took Caitlin and the twins whilst Eric and I sailed off to go see Ironman. Dinner was after the movie, with all the family. We had to swoop in and rescue them from the hour long screaming Emma.
I've gotta tell you, if you haven't seen Ironman already? It rocked. Totally worth it.
And that's not just a sleep deprived, adult time starved mom talking. It's the comic book geek that rests none too deeply under the skin of said sleep deprived, adult time starved mom talking!
Yeah. Woo!
Anyway, with that recommendation out of the way, let me give you the caveat: this movie is not for children.
Hi!
Just because it is based on a comic book character does not mean it's all four colored, zippy dippy and trippy, happy-go-lucky and whatnot. Nooooo. Keep your small kids away.
I'm talking to you people that brought their soon-to-be traumatized child under the age of what? 6? to go see a movie at 4 pm that included a few torture scenes, a death squad and a fair amount of other sorts of violence. Guess what? Sandman isn't for kids either. Should that ever make it to the big screen I hope like heck they give it a higher rating than PG-13.
Oh, but wait, they didn't even give Casino Royale an R rating and there he was, stripped naked and tortured on the screen for all to see. Yeah. It's totally okay for your children aged 13 and under to go see that, is it? The MPAA is perfectly fine with people yelling Fuck you! at one another and that will be fine, but just as soon as that changes to Wanna fuck? it gets bumped to an R rating. Think I'm kidding? From their site:
Any drug use will initially require at least a PG-13 rating. More than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating, but such nudity in a PG-13 rated motion picture generally will not be sexually oriented. There may be depictions of violence in a PG-13 movie, but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence. A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context.So, violence? Just peachy! Sex? No! Heaven forfend if we see a breast! You know, those things that half the human population carries around in front of them all day? Ewww!
[Emphasis mine.]
Yes, I get pissed off at the kind of parent that takes their kid to such a movie and tries to hush their kid when the kid rightfully starts sobbing when the torture scene unfolds. You know what? I know exactly how hard it is to get out, without the kids. I know it. Do it anyway. Is listening to your kid freak out worth it? Do they really need to see how badly humans, even imaginary ones, treat one another? What are you teaching them by letting them watch that movie? (Don't even get me started about movies that include rape. Nuh-uh.)
Grumblegrumblegrumble.
Anyway!
Movie: Excellent.
Stay until after the credits. You'll be sorry if you don't!
Well, if you're a comic geek, that is.
16 comments:
Yeah....I hear you!! DH and I went to something totally inappropriate for little kids, I always space which one - maybe Harry Potter, but probably something else. In walks a family with 2 sons, approximately 3 and 5. Kids started freaking and then the rest of us were forced to listen to the parents threaten their kids with spankings for the entire second half of the movie if they didn't "shut up." I felt the same way a)why traumatize the kids (and then re-traumatize them by spanking them for freaking) and b) why ruin MY child-free night!?
I'm glad you got out!! I want to see Ironman as well. So not going to happen, but I can dream :)
See, in that case, the proper thing for one of the parents to do would have been to leave with the kids. Harry Potter is way too rough for my ~7 year old, so it could have been that. Then again, Caitlin reacts to the music intensely, so she was even scared of Chicken Little! HP would have made her nuts. It can wait.
Even so, person on person violence is too much for my child. Personally, I think we should consider it bad for ALL children. The average number of murders kids see on TV...I didn't even want to talk about THAT!
And some of the G and PG movies are too much for littler kids. The ratings are not done with an eye for intensity and aren't done consistently.
I feel so sad when I see kids at the theatre for an inappropriate movie.
Hey, Do you remember when we went to see the new animated Tarzan and they accidentally started to play Son of Sam, or Summer of Sam or whatever that movie was? The first scene had blood in it before the opened credits even rolled. None of us had kids so we weren't thinking along parental lines but now I totally relate to the parents who were rushing their kids out of there. That was crazy.
Sing it sister!
This is one of my BIGGEST issues with parents.
The number of times I have addressed this issue with the families I work with is inumerable. The things that some parents allow their pre-schoolers to watch is stunning.
I think there is also some heavy blame to be put on those that market such movies as well.
I have said it a million times, parents have to take responsibility...get off the couch and check out what your kids are watching, and get used to the idea that you just may not be able to watch any and all movies TV shows that you want when you want.
In my opinion this is why DVDs were created to address that particular issue.
Scott and I saw it at 1:00 p.m. We didn't see any kids there, and didn't hear any either.
Interesting juxtaposition - today's Penny Arcade (comic) points out that kids can see fifty vaginas every morning before school, on line, for free.
So who are we really fooling with our namby-pamby ineffective movie rating system, anyway?
Do we really want our kids to have their ideas about nudity formed in the context of porn?
Val: you're right. There are many intense scenes in PG movies - think Finding Nemo where his mom and all the other eggs get eaten! Caitlin was kinda freaked over that one. That was her very first movie.
And I DO remember the Son of Sam movie! That was AWFUL! I remember watching all of the parents scrambling to shield the eyes of their children and we were all so confused as to why Tarzan (or whatever it was) was starting out like that? Then the screaming (from the screen) and the rushing of the parents, hustling their kids out the door. Creepy!
Missy: You need a bumper sticker that says: Get off the couch and PARENT! Hee!
Red: You're right, but that is OLDER kids. Caitlin wouldn't have a clue about how to find porn deliberately. That being said, we keep pouncing on her and telling her not to randomly type stuff into the URL line. Who KNOWS what she'd run across!
However, you're absolutely right that having a whole generation growing up with easy access to porn is going to be UGLY. I imagine there's going to be a helluva bill that comes due and it's going to be the girls that pay it disproportionately. We're going to have to teach our children well to make sure they are neither a party to it, nor a victim of it.
i think the invention of the PG-13 was a terrible idea. either it's appropriate for children, or it ain't. movie companies love the PG-13 rating, tho, cause they can just tone down a movie a bit from rated R and get a much bigger audience. that being said, if you look back to when us 30-somethings were growing up, i at least am constantly amazed at movies that got a PG rating. case in point... JAWS! boobies, bad words (including g-damn and sH!t), violence and blood out the wazoo.
ya gotta love that!
Was Jaws PG?! HOLY MOLEY! That movie was terrifying! You were traumatized by it, weren't you? I was!
Parents just don't think, sometimes. I understand the desperation to get out, but the ratings are there for a reason.
I've heard good things about Ironman. I love Robert Downey, Jr.
Don't get me started about people who talk on the phone during a movie...
Jaws: PG
Jaws 2: PG
Jaws 3 (in 3D): PG
Jaws 4: The Revenge: i cannot find the rating on the box, but i remember seeing it in the theater in 1987, and i was not 18 then.
Yeah i love the Jaws movies like an alcoholic loves booze. Scared to death of it, but just can't get enough. Don't even get me started on acutal shark attacks!
All that being said, wow! that's so great you were able to get for awhile. our anniversary is in a couple weeks, and i'm hoping we'll be able to get grandma to sit so we can go see ironman. i'm so jealous!
i was at a soapmaking class on saturday (ala SCA). and everyone was talking about how hard it was to wake up that morning (and by "morning" they seemed to mean 9 or 10 am), because they had all gone to the late night ironman showing the night before. and then to a late dinner! i felt like smacking all of them! ah, the joys of parenthood....
oh.. and can i add, about kids at inappropriate movies.... when i lived in the BIG CITY, there was THAT movie theater, the really urban one. i loved going there because everyone would yell comments at the movie. that part was awesome! un-awesome, tho, was the little kids running all around crying (for real), up and down the ailes. i remember going to see a late night showing of Hellraiser 4 (the one in space). it's called hellraiser, for peet's sake! it was 10:30 at night! yet, there were still crying kids in the theater. parents yelling at them to shut up.
This is why I don't go to movies anymore. Too many people just annoy the fuck out of me. Bringing a child to see a movie filled with violence, language or sex is uncalled for. I know it's hard to get out of the house, and sometimes to do so one must bring their children. But to IronMan?
Glad you enjoyed it, annoyances aside.
And then there is the other side:
I am a huge proponent of appropriate movies for kids, and I have been very careful to limit what Monkey has been allowed to see, but Lee took Monkey to see Ironman, and she was all right with it. He looked up the details about it beforehand and it didn't appear to be too dark for her.
Of course, her favorite film character is Darth Vader and she absolutely love the Harry Potter movies.(Which she was exposed to against my will at a friends house)
Granted, the WereBunny is Wallace and Gromit freaked her out beyond belief, but Ironman was, according to her, "Rockin."
However, if she had freaked, Lee would have left with her, instead of threatening her with pain and endless groundings if she kept being noisy. That is simply not okay, no parent should make their kids stay in a scary situation.
I f you have not seen "This movie is not yet rated" rent it at the first opportunity. It will really piss you off!
And BTW, that Mom/those parents should be reported for some sort of abuse...
Oh, yeah, if you want to read about a scary real generation of boys raised on porn culture, read "Our Boys" by Bernard Lefkowitz. It should scare the sh!t out of any parent raising a boy in this "culture"...I know it made me hold onto it for my sister, for when she has a brain (post-nursing!)
Alessa: I totally want to see that movie but I now have no interest in reading Our Guys. I read an excerpt on Salon and a few other things related to it. ACK! I suddenly feel like I've got the whole story. And it's ugly. That poor girl!
Oh and CPS would laugh at calls for Movie Abuse. They are loathe to take kids away even when there appears to be darned GOOD reason.
Misty: Clearly you guys have the responsible parenting thing going on. If you feel she was up to it, and Lee was prepared to hightail it outta there, you're good in my book.
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