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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?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Moviegoing
Comments
By Socialwrkr
July 30, 2008 12:28 AM | Link to this
Wow, what a shame. I have a 9 year old I take to alot of movies, including some PG 13 ones. He can handle and understand most the violent situations in those. However, I know the sexual situations are more than he can, so before we make any plans, I wait and see what YOU have to say, what other’s say and I research the specifics of the film. I wouldn’t dream of taking him to one where I’d have to cover his eyes or ears. And he’s not going to be seeing “The Dark Knight” either, because it’s just TOO dark! He’s sad, but that’s what responsible parenting is, doing what is right for your child, not what is popular. Personally, I don’t think any child under 13 or 14 should be admitted to R movies, even with their parents there. There is a reason for those ratings!By SRCputt
July 29, 2008 2:12 PM | Link to this
Part of good parenting is understanding your child and knowing what he or she can handle and what she or he cannot. I had to have a conversation with my nine-year-old to explain that I did not think he was old enough for The Dark Knight. And that was complicated by his friend’s parents asking him to a show, and his friend’s parents taking their four-year-old with them. And that he didn’t think it was fair that I took my 15-year-old to see it, as well. But my wife and I know that if our nine-year-old son had seen The Dark Knight, he would have had nightmares.By Allie D.
July 29, 2008 12:42 PM | Link to this
Perhaps my most memorable experience with kids in an R-rated film was The Passion of the Christ. There was a girl who couldn’t have been more than six sitting a few seats down from me. She was absolutely traumatized by what she saw and her parents not only didn’t take her out of the theater, they were coaxing her TO watch. It was enough to make me want to snatch that girl and take her out of that place myself. If they were attempting to solidify her faith as a Christian by having her watch that movie, it very well may have backfired. Associating something with mental trauma doesn’t go very far toward creating a preference for those things. I have come to the realization that when parents take their kids to movies like this, it’s not so much that they are ignorant of the content of the movie. It’s that they simply do not care what their kids see. The adults’ desire to see the film in the movie theater instead of waiting for the DVD outweighs whatever sort of strain or damage it will inflict on the child for whom they refused to hire a babysitter. Their selfishness is magnified when they refuse to accept that their risk in taking a kid to such a movie didn’t pay off. If you decide to take your child to an inappropriate movie, then you have to accept the possibility that you might only end up seeing half a movie. It’s the people who refuse to identify this risk and stay at all costs who infuriate me. The fact that they are traumatizing their child for what is ultimately an empty endeavor is also just sad.