Leave the little kids at home, you fucking ass-weasels

The BBQ Pit
1

So we’re sitting there enjoying The Ring, and all of a sudden there’s this terrible racket: some inconsiderate bastard has brought a small child to the movie theater. And, as children are wont to do, it is bored and cranky and crying. I sit there for a few moments, getting more and more angry that my theater-going experience has been tarnished.

And then it hits me.

who THE FUCK brings a little kid to a fucking horror movie! Did you somehow fail to notice the R rating? What, did you think that the movie’s tagline: “Before you die, you see the Ring” was actually just meant to frighten others, thus granting your precious an exclusive on the whimsical joy and noble but free-spirited animated creatures contained within?

Maybe after you saw the first gruesome corpse, you figured: “Oh, what the hell. Little Jessica needs to learn about decomposition somtime. And anyone can clearly see that those hideous sores are the result of careful makeup artistry. It’ll be like fun little game to note the erroneous minutia in this portrayal of fear and death.”

Maybe you also misinterpreted the glares of hate and pity directed at you and your child by the audience near you as admiration for your refusal to bow to any societal concept of propriety. Next time we’ll throw sharp things at you until you get it.

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m still up because I know that, when I go to bed, I’m going to have nightmares. How dare you subject a child to that out of your own selfish desire for entertainment. How dare you.

2

Reason #258 Why I Hated Jurassic Park*:

I’m walking out of the theater. In front of me is a father with a four-year-old daughter. “Did you like the movie?” he asked her. “It was scawy,” replies the now traumatized child who probably will never like dinosaurs again.

Hey, a movie with di-no-saurs! Le’s take the chilluns! What? Rated PG-13? Hell, I’ll be with the kids, there’s the PG. Screen it first? Where you from, son? I SAID I’d be with the kids!

Ratings: Your friends. Parents, please use them as a guide.

3

A relative of mine took her 4 year old to see The Patriot. “It’s educational.” said the mom. “Baby sat quietly through the whole movie, fascinated.” the mom continued.

I talked to Baby and got this about the movie. “He chopped off the head-- CHOP! an’ he burned them in the house an’ the kid, he died. That man was mean.”

So the “education” Baby got was that Mel Gibson was one mean bastard and to be afraid when the door was slammed too hard.

I have mentioned before that a large portion of my relatives are idiots.

4

wierd - Saturday night I happened to be at a showing of the Ring where the same thing happened… Just after the first chick dies this poor kid starts BAWLING…

5

Yeah, that happened to me when I saw 25th anniversary of “The Exorcist”- a little baby start bawling during the initial scene in Iraq- the statue of the demon Pazuzu…My thoughts? “Wow, if you think you’re scared NOW…”

Although I sort of think of Jurassic Park as a kid’s movie, because I was about nine when I saw it, with my cousin (7) and my brother (4). And we still really like the movie. I don’t know, maybe kids now aren’t tough enough…because I really wasn’t all that traumitized and it didn’t leave any horrible emotional scars. Or maybe it did and there’s a sad crying Zoggie deep within. Who knows? But when I have kids, I’ll be the type of parent who throws out the Barney/Disney in favor of the Jurassic Park trilogy.

Besides, PG-13 is pretty mild if you think about it- the R rating is what you have to watch out for.

Hmm. I think I’ll start a thread about kids watching movies 'intended" for adults.

6

Well, Zoggie, I think that would depend on the kid. SOME might be able to handle it. Others would be terrified.

That’s why said parent should watch it first, and then watch it with the child on video/dvd. That way, they can stop it if it gets too scary.

But you never know.

Hell, I remember having nightmares in fifth or sixth grade because our teacher brought in “Miracle of Marcelino”. It was about this little boy staying at a monastery back, oh, before the 2nd World War, at least. And the miracle is that the boy goes into the attic, and there’s this huge crucifix up there-and the Christ figure moves and talks to the boy. They never show the face of the Christ-just the body from behind, and the arms and hands…well, it freaked the living shit out of me and my friends. We were so unbelievably creeped out.

7

Hey, and it’s not all kids. I went to a showing of The Fellowship of the Ring and was really worried when, a few minutes before it started, a mother and her ~2 year old daughter came in.

She was quiet and good natured the entire time. I would have thought that such a movie would scare little kids, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. The only time she made any substantial noise was when the Big Tentacled Thing came out of the lake and she exclaimed, in happy surprise, “Dinosaur!”

Few children are like that, though.

8

My absolute favorite are the parents that complain to the management or fellow patrons about the content of the movie. If it is rated R and reviewers have been calling it the most erotic mainstream movie in years you have no one at all to blaim but yourself for exposing your children to what amounts to soft core porn. Blindly wandering into movies, especially those with PG-13 and R ratings, with children, especially young children, is not a great idea. It is especially not a great idea if you are a shrill psycho, object to certain things being shown to your children or both. The manager should be legally allowed, no obligated, to smack you and say “Shut the fuck up. Take responsibility for your own family. If you give me any more lip you get another smacking.” The theater will of course provide, if you desire, someone to cover the eyes and ears of your child while you are dealt with by the manager.

9

And then there are children like me. I’m still not old enough for Jurassic Park. (I know at the time I wasn’t because my mom and I went as a date. We were alternately trying to fit under the seats and trying to pry each other’s hands off their eyes, crying “If you don’t watch it you can’t tell me what’s happening!” Yes, I’m still traumatised. I do apologise to anyone in the theatre during that showing, we honestly thought that if we stood up to leave the dinosaurs would eat us.)

Luckily, my family and friends will, for the most part, watch out for my peculiar sensitivities. Everyone who has gotten to know me well has vetoed having me watch Silence of the Lambs. I trust their judgement.

So The Ring is a miss for me, eh?

10

Oh wait, I should add that I’m currently 21.

11

Watcher in the Water, I believe.

12

May I be permitted a slight hijack here?

**Guinastasia, ** I didn’t realize there was ever a film of the Marcelino story. But in Spanish class, in high school, we were assigned to read a short book titled Marcelino, Pan y Vino, and I remember the Christ figure talking to the kid. Doesn’t he express a wish(as an orphan) to see his mother, and falls asleep(dies) in the arms of the statue? Ugh.

13

Incidentally: The Ring is not rated R, as the OP says. It’s rated PG-13. I suppose the rating makes sense if you consider that there’s no dicey language, nudity, or even blood, but in my book, the movie is way way too freaky to be rated PG-13. Yet, that’s what the MPAA gave it.

14

My almost five year old is a Buffy addict. She knows many of the episodes and has memorized all the songs from “once More, With Feeling”… the musical.

Demons, vampires, and creepy things don’t frighten her as she understands that it’s make believe and that it’s just makeup.

Her favourite movie when she was two-ish was “The Dark Crystal” or as she called it… “The Dark Crisco”. It has played here countless times over the past three years.

She’s a well adjusted little girl who loves everyone she meets, her favourite activity is drawing pictures of her family and her favourite cartoon characters… her depiction of Mike, Sully, and Boo from Monsters.Inc is incredible. I am tempted to post it since I now have a working scanner.

Our biggest concern is that she has no fear of anything except…

clowns.

15

I had a similar experience, but it was teenage couples and an apathetic management that nearly ruined the movie for me. I posted the a longer version of the following in one of the Ring threads in the Cafe:

Every time there was one of those “jump” moments, people in the theater would scream, and then there would be some giggling and a bunch of talk all over the theater for the next minute or so. The first time this happened (“I saw her face”) I could hear the couple behind me:

Him (laughing): You’re going to leave a bruise on my arm!
She says something back, he whispers something to her and she laughs again. This goes on for the better part of a minute.

We moved to another spot in the theater, where the same thing was happening. Then a third spot. It seems like every damn teenage boy in the place had to prove to his girlfriend that he wasn’t scared by making fun of her and making jokes about the movie.

Then there was a girl who, on several occasions, shouted advice at the screen (they can’t hear you, Miss Clueless), each time getting a shouted response from someone else.

I left and complained to a theater employee, who shrugged and told me every showing has been like this, and what are we supposed to do, kick everyone out? After the movie (as obnoxious as the other patrons’ behavior was, I still wanted to see the movie I’d paid for) I asked to see the manager, who told me that every showing had been the same, that I was the one being unreasonable, and that it must not have bothered me very much if I went back into the theater instead of asking to see him right away. I told him that my wife and I, who see around 40-50 movies a year at the theater, would be patronizing his competitor a few miles down the road from now on for new movies (about half our theater going is at the art house/revival theater), and he didn’t seem the least bit bothered.

Last week we saw a horror movie (Red Dragon) in a packed theater and the whole crowd was reasonably behaved (ie, quiet) the whole movie. This was, of course at the other theater I mentioned.

16

I have the ultimate leave your fucking kids at home story.

Way back when Alien3 came out I went to see it the weekend that it opened, the 12:00 PM saturday show.

The theater was probably 85% full.

Of that 85%, I’d say 80 were kids who were WAY, WAY younger then 16, more like 8-9.

Did the kids shriek and screech and scream endlessly?

OH MY, YES.

Did any of the parents take their screeching/screaming/shrieking kids out into the lobby?

FUCK NO.

Was the movie utterly ruined for me?

/Ed Mcmahon/

You are correct, sir!

/Ed Mcmahon/

After that travesty was over I went over to several of the parents and said in a very polite voice, "Thank you for helping me to utterly waste $12 and make me lose 95 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Thanks to your bad parenting, my weekend is ruined. Hope you’re happy!!!

However, I was slightly ameliorated by the manager refunding my money and giving me some free passes.

17

My goodness. And here I’ve been wondering if I should take the Kidlet to see “Jonah.” (Obviously, we should go see “The Ring.”)

“Ghostbusters” scared the bejeebers outta me when I was 10 (the librarian ghost part). Yes, I am pathetic.

18

I’ve heard the anecdotes about people taking their kids to Monster’s Ball when they thought they were going to Monsters, Inc.. Okay, people get titles confused occasionally. But some of them stayed! I mean, first off, you see that it’s live action when you were expecting animated…is that not the first hint that this might possibly be something not appropriate for children? And then when the story goes where it eventually goes, they’re still there! Why? Because they paid for the ticket? Jeez, they expect to get everything else that they want; couldn’t they have requested a refund or a pass to a later showing of Inc.?