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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Protect the child from that nasty movie!
Many people commonly cite a crying child as one of the worst annoyances in a theater, especially if that child is at an R-rated film. However, when I saw Step Brothers last week, I witnessed something even more disheartening.
A small child was sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. Knowing that Step Brothers was rife with crude humor, I thought “Oh, crud. The kid’s folks probably think this is going to be a relatively safe comedy like Talladega Nights.”
I expected the parents would have some ‘splainin to do when they got home, but I was amazed at what they did right there in the theater. Whenever something raunchy happened in the movie (and this was quite frequent), the parents/guardians would actually cover the child’s eyes and/or ears.
When Will Ferrell attempted to touch a drumset with um … part of the male anatomy, one adult covered the child’s eyes with her hand. When John C. Reilly engaged in a wild sexual romp, with a lot of screaming, an adult on one side covered the child’s eyes, while the adult on the other side covered the child’s ears.
Poor kid. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and watch one of the adults cover the kids’ mouth so he/she wouldn’t breathe anything harmful. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. As far as I was concerned, it was the ignorant adults who were truly deaf, blind and dumb by taking the child to an R-rated comedy in the first place.
How to deal with such a problem? I have some advice.
Look, I’m all for shielding a child’s eyes from Will Ferrell’s antics, but there are ways to get an idea of what you’re in for when you see a movie.
There is, of course, the Motion Picture Association of America, which has a Web site that explains the reasons for their ratings. The MPAA also spells out what got the film that rating on all the posters and other ads. In Step Brothers’ case the movie was rated R “for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language.”
A little vague, perhaps. And I know all too well the MPAA’s ratings can be less than helpful when a gentle movie like Once gets an R-rating because it dropped a few too many f-bombs, while something truly scary and unsettling like The Dark Knight gets a PG-13.
There are other sites on the Web that provide much more specific and helpful information for parents. One of the best is Screen It, which provides detailed breakdowns of potentially offensive or scary content. (Be advised this can lead to spoilers.) Most admirably of all, they review films based on artistic merit. In other words, Screen It does not condemn every movie with sex, profanity and violence as inherently evil like some sites do. Here’s their page for Step Brothers.
I hope this helps. What encounters have you had with children at R-rated movies? And how would you handle such a situation?
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Today’s DVDs: Doomsday and Guantanamo Bay
Isn’t it just a wondrous coincidence that movies called Doomsday and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay come out on the same day?
Actually, I can’t speak much about either movie, having seen neither. Doomsday looked promising, being from the director of The Descent, but by most accounts, lightning did not strike twice. I am also automatically suspicious of any movie that Harry Knowles says is “bugnuts.”
As for Harold and Kumar, I can only guess it is what it is.
However, I can talk about Shine a Light, the new Rolling Stones concert film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is not the best concert film from either group. For the Stones, that’s still Gimme Shelter, and for Scorsese, that’s still The Last Waltz. Regardless, Shine a Light still boasts many great moments that make it well worth seeing. See my full review here. GRADE: B+
