Unless I am mistaken, children under 17 are allowed into “R” movies with adult supervision. Should this rule be changed? I’m not a parent, and I hate the idea of someone else (in this case, the MPAA) deciding what is and is not okay for someone else’s kids. However…
We went to see “Swordfish.” It’s rated “R” and the guy behind us brought two young boys, maybe 4 and 6 years old, by my estimation. Not only did I find the movie to be inappropriate for them, but they were bored through the whole thing, and kept kicking my seat, talking, and getting into fist fights with one another. We would have moved, but the theatre was very crowded. The dad did nothing about the kids’ behavior until I turned around and whispered, “Shh” and “Please stop kicking me.”
A few weeks earlier, we went to see “The Mummy Returns.” A couple brought a little girl in. She was maybe three years old. The movie started, and the kid started screaming bloody murder. Now, that film was “PG-13,” and most people wouldn’t think of it as being scary. But this little girl obviously was freaked out about it. I didn’t notice if they left the theatre (again, large crowd), but the screaming stopped after ten or fifteen minutes.
So, to get to the point…should the MPAA restrict kids from getting into those films, even with parental guidance? Like I said, it’s insulting to think that parents wouldn’t be able to judge for themselves, but apparently some people just don’t get it.
I don’t like the situation either but think manditory age restrictions reguardless of parental guidence seems unlikly.
I try to catch shows that start after 10pm.
I sit in the back row.
If I wind up sitting next to a small child or a group of(loud) teenagers I move.
If I get anoyed enough in the start I ask for a refund.
I’ve found that asking the ushers to step in is usless and it’s better to get a refund and catch another showing.
Well, I don’t have anything to add except this recent incident where me and my friends were going to watch “Swordfish”. Me and my friend are both over 17 and my other friend is close enough. We try to get in and (for some crap reasons we don’t have our IDs) and they turn us away. We ended up watching it at another theater but that guy sure pissed us off.
There is already a rating to prohibit kids from seeing a movie. When a movie is rated R, who are you to tell me my 5 year old can’t go in? That’s MY choice. If you have kids I’ll allow you to choose what movies they can see.
I got carded once as well. I was 18, had my license, and showed the clerk my “Photon” (a type of lasertag game from the 80’s) ID card. They accepted it. The damned thing has my pic, my gaming name, and a barcode. I have no idea why they accepted it, but they did.
On the subject of people yapping and talking during the movie while at the same time being too young for the movie, I went to Aliens3, and there were a bunch of rugrats yelling and talking loudly about 10-15 rows away. I was pissed off at first, but then I realized the best revenge for the parents. Seven weeks of hideous nightmares by 4-10 year olds waking their parents up every freakin’ night. I’ve seen the Aliens movies previously, and this one did not disappoint in the gross, gore, and freaky categories.
They left within the first 15 minutes of the film. Can’t say I blame them.
Jeannie, it sounds like you were annoyed both times because these kids were being, well, annoying kids, not because they were being scarred for life from watching something inappropriate. I believe the MPAA ratings are to prevent the latter: from adolescents sneaking into “adult” movies and learning “bad” things, not to prevent kids from being annoying. After all, even adults manage to kick the seats, chew with their mouth open, and generally be a nuisance.
I suppose in the case of the Mummy, you could say the child was yelling from fright. But I’d argue that she was yelling because she did not see that action as inappropriate. If she were a well-behaved child, she’d know enough to simply cringe with her eyes closed and bite on her father’s arm whenever she becomes afraid in a movie theater.
I hear some theaters don’t allow children into grownup movies after about 9pm, so’s you can get some peace and quiet. I, personally, would give these people my money, if there was a theater like that in my town.
It horrifies me when I hear about small children being taken to scary R movies (heck, I don’t go see scary R movies), but it is up to the parents. If they want to scare the pants off their kid and have everyone in the theater hate them, I guess there’s not much I can do about it.
WTF is with these people who think its okay to bring little kids to horror movies? I remember seeing The Exorcist III in the theater and there was this bitch with a couple of kids, neither one of whom could have been older than 10 in the theater! WTF, I mean WTFF (what the fucking fuck) is this woman thinking? Both of those kids were obviously weirded out by the film and shouldn’t have been there to begin with! Then, when they rereleased the original Exorcist, there was some dickwad with his kids who couldn’t have been older than 8! Again, WTFF is this asshole thinking? He was also old enough to have seen the film when it played the first time, so he should have known what was in it!
I have no problem with a parent bringing a kid to see an ‘R’ rated movie if they feel that the kid can handle the subject matter, but in both these cases, it should have been freakin’ flamin’ obvious to the parents that the kids couldn’t handle the movie before they ever went into the theater.
Besides, do you really want to have to explain to your little kid exactly what was going on in the infamous “Crucifix” scene?
A film with sex in it, is one thing. Many parents are open about sex with their children at a very young age (and I’m sure nudity in a film is NBD to a naturist family), but violence and things of its ilk are a different matter entirely.
And people wonder why our society is so screwed up. :rolleyes:
First off, any parent who allows a child to misbehave in a theatre is not being fair to the rest of the audience. Age is irrelevant.
As far as younger kids going to see R rated movies, it really depends on the child. I have a 10 year old and a 12 year old. Both of them are very mature for their ages, and I have no problem taking them to see most movies. I do usually watch the movie myself the first time if I think there may be more stuff in it than I want to have to explain. But on the whole, there are very few movies that I would want to see that I would have a problem with my children seeing.
Sure, I was annoyed those times, just like I am when adults are rude during movies. The reason I bring the subject up, though, is because parents (not all, but quite a few) don’t seem to realize that they should get their kids out of there when needed. I didn’t want to take up loads of space with a dozen examples. I have been in theatres when I can hear kids asking the parents if they can leave, because they’re scared, or tired, or whatever. It seems to happen most often (in my experience) at PG-13 or R rated films. If I was annoyed by kids being kids, I wouldn’t go to see kids movies (i.e. “Shrek”) on opening weekend.
In response to a couple of other comments:
I know what NC-17 is for, but that has prettymuch gone the way of the “X” rated film, and is used primarily for pornos. Roger Ebert has been asking the MPAA for some time now to institute a rating (he calls it the “A” rating) that would be for adults only, but not have the stigma that NC-17 has. (yes, yes, that rating might then develop a stigma, I know…)
We’ve tried going to later movies (after 9 or 10 pm). It doesn’t make a difference. My in-laws always go to late shows when they go out, and they’ve seen very small children there as well.
Like I said, I don’t like the idea of anyone, least of all the MPAA, telling anyone what they can and cannot do with their kids. But it really does make me wonder what some people are thinking.
Maybe the MPAA needs to have something like an “R-12” rating, where children under the age of, say, 12 are not permitted regardless of whether they are accompanied by an adult or not. It could replace NC-17 and be applied to only the more disturbing and violent films out there. Or use the old prime-time TV thing and restrict R-rated films beginning after 9:00pm to 12 and older.
Not that I am suggesting more regulation, but it’s a pity that there always seems to be at least one clueless parent in the audience when I see a particularly disturbing film. I was amazed at the number of pre-school age children present when I saw Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow”. Several had to be taken out, others were forced to sit & whimper or cry throughout the film. Some people just ought be have been sterilized at puberty.
I don’t think there’s really any point in restricting access to movies more than it already is. It seems that more and more parents are passing more and more responsibility for raising their kids on to other people (Read: They’re to LAZY to do it themselves!). One of the local theaters around here particularly annoys me; Apparently their definition of “parental consent” is that the parent HAS to be there for the whole movie, period. Notes from parents don’t work, and the parents can’t go see a different movie or do something else. They enacted that policy because, even though it’s beyond what is required, movie theaters have faced lawsuits for it…
I certainly don’t see any reason to mandate a minimum age for viewing movies. That’s something better left to the parents (And in most cases, it should be just fine).
(Story time!) The first R-rated movie I can remember seeing… Was Nightmare on Elm Street. I was… Somewhere around 8, I think, maybe a bit younger. It scared the CRAP out of me! Of course, the movie was helped out by the fact that I was in a dark cabin, way out in the woods, at night, in the middle of a 3-day-long rainstorm, and the adult was… Off somewhere else (I think he was sleeping by then). Of course, being the young kid I was back then, I quickly recovered and was back to my typical childish self. I’ve never found a movie since that could scare me
And despite that and various other “bad” movies, I turned out rather normal… Well, okay, maybe not -normal- plain-old, everyday normal, but that can be a good thing, right?
In the “What were they thinking?” category, we have the couple who brought their two kids, aged around 9 or 10, to see TRAFFIC. Perhaps they thought it would be educational.
TRAFFIC starts with a five minute segment in Spanish. The kids couldn’t keep up with the subtitles, so they asked their mom (in normal sitting-in-front-of-the-TV voices) to read them. Which she did, in a normal speaking tone.
The next sequence shows a girl shooting up. Of course, the kids had plenty of questions about that, which the parents did their best to answer. A lively four-way discussion ensued.
At this point, the audience arose en masse and informed the family that they’d be better off watching the movie on video. The family slunk out, looking embarassed but baffled. I don’t think they had a clue what they had done wrong.
You never know what will upset kids. My Mom took me to see “Fantasia” and I guess I really freaked during “Night on Bald Mountain.” A friend couldn’t stop crying when she thought Dorothy left Toto behind. Both of these were ‘wholesome’ kids movies, and we know how terrifying “Bambi” can be to a little kid.
There are laws and there are laws; some ignored more than others. Last thing I’d want to do as a minimum-wage teenage ticket taker is confront some idiot father dragging his kid along to see a movie that the dad really wants to see. I notice on the weekends that the non-custodial parent will take the kid to movies - guess they don’t have to interact as much.
When Jaws was still in theaters, I was about 6 or 7. My parents went to see it and, strangely, asked me if I wanted to go. Somehow, in a moment of total clarity, I realized that I would be scared poopless by such a movie at my young age and found the strength to say, “No, I don’t think I should go to that kind of movie.”
Whenever I am particularly offended by little kids in grown-up movies, I remember that little boy and think to myself, “Damn, if the parents didn’t have the sense to keep that child home, why didn’t the child know better?”
The one time I talked to an usher about a disturbance, they ejected the offender from the theater. A friend and I went to see The Phantom Menace and there was a woman with a few kids, ages seemed to range from 4 or so to 10, seated behind us. Her youngest asked questions incessantly, ‘Who is he?’ ‘What is that?’ etc. every 5 seconds and the mother would answer him each time, in a normal speaking voice. I asked her if she could please keep it down as I was missing what people were saying and it didn’t seem like it was going to let up after about 5 minutes of constant questions and answers, and she just glared at me and kept talking. I went and found an usher, explained the situation, and he asked the woman to leave.
I felt a little bad about getting these kids kicked out of the movie but I tried to be nice and there was no way I could have taken that for a whole 2 hours.
(hmm…I thought I quoted handy’s post, but I don’t feel like waiting for it to reload to fix it…oh well)
handy, we normally do move in situations like I mentioned in the OP, but the theatre was too crowded that time, and there was no where else to go.
I appreciate everyone giving me advice on how to avoid annoying movie-watchers (I have an anxiety disorder and mild social phobia…I know how to avoid people if I want to…trust me :)). That wasn’t my intent in starting the thread. I was really just looking for other people’s opinions about the subject. Like I said, I don’t like the idea of anyone telling anyone what to do with their kids, but it really does bother me when parents are willing to bring their kids to experience something that the kids may not want to see. I just wondered what other people thought about the subject. That’s why I posted here instead of the Pit or GD.
