Old Enough For The Movie Theater?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hubby and I went to see Matrix Reloaded yesterday, and saw a preview for Finding Nemo. The animation looks phenomenal; it looks like a “whole family” kind of movie. The only thing is, our youngest daughter is 3 and a half. I cannot for the life of me remember how old my older kids were when I first started taking them to the movies. My little one isn’t good at sitting still, but I’m hoping that the animation and sheer size of it might hold her attention, especially if we talk ahead of time about sitting down, appropriate behavior, etc.

So, how old were your kids when you first took the to the movies, and what are your experiences?

2

Mine were a bit older than that. If she is not good at sitting still, expecting her to do so for a full-length movie might be asking too much. After the discussion, if you still want to take her, my suggestion would be this:

Try it out, but warn her beforehand that if she cannot sit still quietly, no matter what anyone else in the theater is doing, that you will all have to leave. Then, be sure your word is good. This is not a punishment, just recognizing what is and is not within her ability at this stage of development. If she gets too restless, realize that you have just asked too much of her, and leave. You could do it in the sense of, Okay, I think we are done watching the movie now, it’s time to go home.

3

Kind of echoing MLS. You know your kids, I don’t. Go for the pre-movie talk and if you think she’s up for it, try it.

At first disruptive moment, go for the quick reprimand - and you know far better than I how to do that with your daughter. If there’s a second - bail, and find out how the movie ended (perhaps years) later.

Go into it knowing you might bail at a moments notice. Should that come to pass, you know a little more about your daughter’s tolerance for a public presence and she knows a little more about what the limits mean.

Good luck!

Uh…, what night are y’all goin’?

4

Why? You planning on avoiding the theater that night? :slight_smile:

No, really, we’ll probably go on a weekday in the afternoon, when it will be less crowded (because our older two are homeschooled, this is an option), and also the audience will probably be other little kids and parents of little kids, who will be more tolerant and understanding. I think what we may do is take both cars, so if I have to leave early with the baby (I’m not having any more kids, so she’ll be “the baby” til she’s at least 32), hubby can stay there with the older two. No need to spoil everybody’s fun.

5

You know though, given that it’s a kids movie, the audience will probably be pretty understanding if they’re parents or not. My best friend and I saw an afternoon showing of Treasure Planet* and there were other people without kiddos with them there as well. The only unhappy adult noises came from the talking kids’ own parents. I’d like to think that the type of person who would enjoy the sweetness of a family movie isn’t the type to get upset by kids acting naturally, but…YMMV

6

Maybe this will help.

I worked at a movie theater for 3.5 years. I was a large one, (16 screens) and we saw our fair share of childrens movies pass through.

I saw several thousand customers a day, so here’s what I noticed from the majority.

2 and under was free, so the parents weren’t losing anything if they took the kid. And most of the time if the child was crying, one of the parents would take it out to the lobby and lull it to sleep.

3-11 are child price tickets, which I believe are $4.50. Unfortunately for you, statistically, 3 & 4 year olds were the group we had the most trouble with. A little to young to really be hypnotized by the movie magic, but too old to be willing to just sit there or be lulled to sleep. These were the age groups that we had the most complaints about. Usually one parent had to take them out and miss the whole movie, or they didn’t care enough about the rest of the audience to discipline their child, and therefore the entire family was removed.

I’m not suggesting that your child is a little hellion, or suggesting that you are the kind of parent that wouldn’t care, but I think most kids really start enjoying the experience when they are 5. That’s when I saw the first movie I remembered and enjoyed (E.T.) My grandparents took me to see Empire Strikes Back, but I don’t remember a thing about it, and my grandmother said that I was quite a handfull.

In short, unless your child is in the minority, I’d suggest at least another year before the entire family could enjoy taking her to the theater. Not to mention the rest of the crowd who have spent $25 on a bottle of water and a medium popcorn.

7

On a side note, some theaters do have special rooms removed from the rest of the audience, in which the parent and child can watch the film, and the kid can make as much noise as it wants. If you can find a theater with one of those, then there’s really nothing to lose.

8

mr. splitfoot, your input was quite valuable! Unfortunately, this is a rinky-dink little town, and the movie theater certainly does not have a family room! If we did take her, as I said in an earlier post, hubby and I would each take our own vehicles so that if I had to leave with her, he could stay with the older two. However, based on your input, I’m considering leaving her with a babysitter and just renting it for her when it comes out on DVD.

9

Heck, we took our daughter MilliCal to see Tarzan when it first came out. She must’ve been two, since it came out in 1999.

She loved it. She was transfixed from the very first scene (a burning ship), and didn’t lose interest through the entire movie.
YMMV.

10

Finding Nemo has a running time of 100 mins. Add another 10 or so for pre-show.

You can take that into consideration.

I’m sure there are some Finding Nemo products available. Maybe get the little on the coloring book now and start talking up the idea of the movie. That way, maybe, she will want to sit through the movie.

Anyway I think a weekday matinee is a safe bet. You may end up out in the lobby but maybe not.

11

I would give her at least another year or two. (It DOES look like a charming little movie!) But if you’re going to try, I like the weekday afternoon idea; there will be fewer people, and any who are there will probably have small kids of their own in tow.

Personally, I’d wait for it to come out on video. IMO and experience, no child under five – with rare exceptions – can handle sitting through a whole movie. Plus if you watch it at home it’s not all loud and dark and possibly scary, and if she gets restless you can turn it off and finish it later, or whatever.

12

Thanks for entirely confusing me :slight_smile: From reading the OP I thought that they had made a baby-matrix movie called Finding Neo.

:smiley:

13

Yes, it features Baby Neo, Baby Trinity and Baby Morpheus with big heads and sporting black jammies and booties.

I’d watch it.

norinew, I wish more parents would be as considerate as you to wonder if their toddler/baby is old enough for the movie theater experience. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve attended evening shows of rated PG-13 and even rated R movies and seen kids as young as 7 in theaters. I know I’m not their parent and can’t dictate what the kids should/should not be watching, but when they don’t make sure their children behave in the theater, it really kills it for everyone.

Of course, I generally have more trouble with the over-18ers who insist on MST3King the whole thing and get mad at me when I tell them to be quiet. (Of course they return to chattering almost immediately.)

mr. splitfoot, any idea of there are theaters that have a secret button on seats to notify theater personnel when a neighbor is being rude and should be removed? Or better, a stun button?

As you can tell, I’ve had too many bad theater-going experiences.

14

I wrote this for some friends and my livejournal after my son’s first movie experience. Take from it what you will. He was a little older than 2 1/2 at the time.

I have for some time been curious as to how well Kirk could do at the movies. I know friends who have taken their similar-aged kids to G-rated movies will good results, so I’m willing to try. However, I am not convinced of success beforehand. Therefore, I have vowed to attend a movie that is:

**Cheap. If we have to leave ten minutes into it, I don’t want to be bemoaning the ticket cost.

**Enthralling to kids. Kirk has to be hooked like Mike TeeVee from the get-go to have any hope of him sitting still.

**Not Going to Drive Me To Commit Suicide. I’m sorry, some of those kids’ movies are just godawfully painful to watch as adult. I do not wish to suffer near brain death at the plot line.

**Poorly attended. I don’t want to worry about a theatreful of glaring moviegoers if we have a noise/behavior problem.

Enter this weekend. It is Sunday, and Mr. Cranky was playing tennis. I am bored out of my skull and need a break from research. Kirk was also bored. I look in the paper at the cheap-seats theatre and lo and behold! Shrek is playing! Since it’s been out on VHS and DVD for months now, everyone has seen it. The only idiots who are going to pay good money to see it on a Sunday are people like me, grownups desperate to occupy their kids for a few hours. Besides which, I’ve only seen part of it so I am interested. And since it is a cartoon, I think it will get Kirk’s attention fast. So it’s got the price, the presumed clientele, and the content I want. I grab the keys and a sippy cup and off we go.

We pay our $2.50 apiece (well, I pay for both of us; Kirk never carries a wallet) and I buy a ridiculously expensive soda and we go into the theatre where the film has already begun.

Problem #1. I have NEVER been in such a dark theatre. It’s pitch black. Not even the light reflecting from screen is penetrating the suffocating darkness (it doesn’t help that the opening scenes of the movie take place in a dark swamp). I have no idea where the seats are, much less whether anyone’s butt is already sitting in them.

I fumble my way to a pair of seats in the last row, close to the door. When the screen lightens for a village scene, I note that there are two families in the rows ahead of us, both with little kids. Good.

Problem #2 The door keeps opening to allow other latecomers in. Kirk thinks the door is cool and wants to open and close it himself. I manage to dissuade him.

Problem #3: Folding seats! Here’s a new one on Kirk. Get up, get down. Get up, get down. Get up, get down. Fun!

Problem #4: Kicking the seats in front of us makes a cool noise! I manage to get him to stop, but it remains an intermittent problem.

Picture me, at this point, leaning forward in my seat, nerves stretched taut, with one hand poised to grab our coats, the other poised to snag Kirk at the first major disturbance. I fret intermittently about how I can grab my drink and purse too.

I suddenly think, Hmm, maybe some popcorn. So I whisper to Kirk we should get some. He happily trots out after me, we get a huge bag for more big bucks, and go back in. This works, he sits down quietly and chomps away. In fact, it’s working great for awhile.

Problem #5: It suddenly hits me that my friend Sheila knows someone who knows someone who knows someone whose toddler died from choking on a popcorn hull. How far is the hospital from here? Why didn’t I bring my cell phone? Why haven’t I speed-programmed 911 on my cell phone? I bite my nails and ponder this.

Problem #6: We’re spilling popcorn. Kirk, who never has cared before about anything being spilled and messy (you should see my living room for proof), notices and becomes obsessed with picking this up. I try to discourage him by kicking it down a few rows, but I also step on some and he scolds in a conversational voice: “Don’t break it mama! Don’t break the popcorn!”

Problem #7: He’s not just picking it up. He’s putting it back in the bag. And eating some. From the theatre floor. This is disgusting beyond measure, yet if I restrain him he’ll freak. Normally I wouldn’t hesitate to stop this, but geez, we’re in a movie. Holy mother of god. I think about the sorts of the things that are on the floor, dropped and tracked in on shoes. Oh my.

I manage to solve this one by offering him some crackers we bought at the same time I bought the popcorn. Once he’s chomping those, I remove the bag of popcorn (or shall I say, the bag of popcorn, dirt, hair, gum, and canine fecal matter) and hide it.

Problem #8 becomes the deal breaker. Kirk picks up his sippy cup and it slips out of his hand. I lunge for it, but it is too late. It rolls down the aisle beside us (slanted floor) and then under the long row of seats and just keeps going with a nice noisy rolling clatter all the way down the theatre. Uh oh. Kirk howls “My juice!” and I hear someone in a nearby row snicker. Oh boy. Kirk doesn’t seem overly upset but god knows whether he might get himself worked up into thinking this is a tragedy. I figure this is enough. I grab our coats, my purse, the little plastic fishing pole Kirk brought with him, the bag of popcorn/fecal matter, and Kirk. Out we go.

All in all, though, it wasn’t a total failure. We were there for an hour. He has now seen the mysteries of a theatre, so next time that won’t be so distracting. Of course, that’ll be when he’s fifteen.

This experiment cost me $5 for the movie, $8 for the food, and $4 to replace the sippy cup (I considered it GONE–I did not ask management to save it for me when they clean the theatre). I am not calculating the cost of Kirk’s possible bout with e. coli or intestinal worms because that hasn’t materialized. Yet. So that’s $17 for an hour of entertainment with my toddler, and hour which wasn’t even all that fun for me since I was coiled like a cobra ready to strike the whole time.

But you know what? On a boring Sunday winter afternoon, trapped inside with a rascally toddler, it still woulda been worth it at twice the price.

15

Cranky, that’s a great story! Unfortunately, this little backwater I live in doesn’t have “cheap seats” theaters. If they did, I’d take her to a kid-friendly movie at one of them, just to see how she does, before trying to take her to see a full-priced movie. Also, I never buy snacks at movie theaters, cuz they are just too expensive! We go to a store that sells bulk candy, and the kids are each allowed to get a small bag of candy to take in with them, then we just buy sodas at the theater. If I decide to try to take her to the movies in spite of everything I’ve been told, plenty of snacks will accompany.

16

Count me as another vote for “it depends on the kid.”

I took my son to see his first movie – The Lion King in IMAX – when he was 37 months old (3 years, 1 month). While he was a bit curious about the whole theater experience, for the most part he sat quietly and watched the movie without any difficulties. He did get a bit squirmy near the end, but having my wife and I hold him on our laps helped settle him down. I was ready to take him into the lobby if he became a nuisance, but that didn’t happen.

Note that we decided to “try the movie experiment” only because we felt he was ready for it; at home, he can watch his favorite movies (mostly Pixar’s stuff) for an hour or so, and we felt that a theater wouldn’t be too much of a difference. But again, it all boils down to knowing the child in question, and seeing what activities he/she is capable of handling.

17

If you decide to take your 3 1/2 year old daughter to a children’s movie during an afternoon matinee, you can do whatever you want. Cheer, clap, sleep, eat Cheerios, take 18 bathroom breaks, whatever. That’s what kid movies are for at 1:30.

If you show up for a 9:00pm showing, you should duck out at the first sign of tears.

18

I first took my daughter to a movie when she was about six weeks old. It was the Truman Show, and she breastfed under my coat the entire time. Once she started moving around I stopped taking her with me, though.

I think we first went back when she was about 2 and a half, to see Toy Story, only to discover that at 3pm on a Saturday she was the only child in the cinema! Every time she said anything the adults in the audience shot her dirty looks. She did speak now and then (calling out ‘Buzz!’ every time he came on screen), but didn’t run around or have a tantrum or anything. and yet the adult patrons made me feel like the Worst Mother on Earth, for taking my child to a kids’ movie.

However, every other trip since then has been great. It’s funny, my daughter is slightly hyperactive in general, and doesn’t sit still to watch films at home. but at the cinema she sits quietly, whispers if she has to say something, and is a model of good behaviour. Now she makes me look like the Best Mother on Earth. And she really enjoys going to the cinema too - it’s one of her favourite treats.

I hope your outing with the family goes well, and since it sounds like you’re planning well, it should :slight_smile:

19

I just saw The Matrix Reloaded today at 3:15.

There was a couple there with three kids. An infant (who was adorable and silent the entire time), and I guessed a 3 and a 5 year old.

In the middle of a rather adult scene with nudity: “Mommy, what are they doing?” Quite loudly.

Don’t bring 'em to anything R-rated. Other than that, good luck. That’s the only advice I have to offer.

20

Cranky- $2.50 for tickets? In this day and age? My god, what midwestern haven do you inhabit? Don’t answer that, I know it’s Michigan.

And that’s the first time you’ve graced us with Cranky Jr.'s name. I never figured him for a Kirk. I always thought of him more of a…well, I’m not sure what. Just not a Kirk.