A friend and I were watching The Great Escape recently, and their 10 year-old daughter joined us. I thought she wouldn’t enjoy the movie - she hasn’t yet learned about WWII, it has no female characters and lasts nearly three hours. But she actually stayed and watched the whole thing and even had us pause twice to ask questions. This is the same child, BTW, who got up and left in the middle of The Matrix, complaining it was dull. Maybe she found Steve McQueen hunky.
So it got me thinking… Suppose you wanted to punish a child by making them watch a movie that would be utterly boring to them. Not inappropriate or scary, just of no interest whatsoever to a kid. But it has to be a “good” movie that might be enjoyed by grownups - not just a bad or mediocre film. And let’s say no experimental art films or surrealism. Just solid mainstream movies that your average child would hate.
Looking through my collection I came upon Barry Lyndon but thought no, some kid might be interested in the costumes or dueling scenes. 12 Angry Men? No, they might find it compelling and want to become a lawyer. So here’s what I’ve come up with:
Babette’s Feast
A Danish film about stodgy Protestant sectarians eating a fancy French dinner. Very slow, no action at all.
My Dinner with Andre
I thought of this one because of a joke in a Christopher Guest movie where they had kids’ lunchboxes made up featuring it. But it could work because virtually nothing happens besides watching two guys eat and talk.
Annie Hall
The humor is probably too subtle to engage a kid, but I’m not sure - there are some slapstick moments and stuff about growing up that they might find amusing.
Help me out here - we’ve only got a couple more years before my friend’s daughter is old enough to sit through actual serious movies.
Does it matter if it would also bore any adult in the room? Because my suggestion is Paint Drying; ten hours and seven minutes of “a static view of white paint drying on a brick wall.”
I doubt many children would enjoy a sluggish “surrealist neo-noir mystery art film” (I may be prejudiced, because I thought it stank).
And I’ll bet few kids today could tolerate the original (1962) version of The Manchurian Candidate. I saw it in the theater as a child with my parents, and was bored as hell (much of it probably was incomprehensible or went over my head).
There’s way more boring films for a kid than this, but nobody here will have seen them.
But, for a film that everyone knows, but would certainly bore most kids to tears, try: Citizen Kane.
Does that last condition rule out 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bonus points if the title makes kids think they’re getting a sci-fi action adventure in the vein of Star Wars.
This isn’t a movie, but when I was a kid my mom would watch the CBS news on sunday morning and it was unbearable. So maybe something like that. A movie where people talk about complex adult subjects that go over the head of a kid. No action, no comedy, no good looking people.
Just complex discussions that won’t make sense to a kid. I’m sure that’s like watching people speak chinese for an hour.
I considered that one too, but worried that if they made it past the opening ape-man segment, they just might be interested in the space scenes, slow though they are. The Sound of Music was mentioned earlier and I’m very concerned that kids would enjoy the singing of Julie Andrews and overall family-ness of the movie. Even an old black and white like Double Indemnity strikes me as risky because if they manage to understand the premise, a kid could actually enjoy that one.
Let’s not take any chances with this - I really want to make some kids reliably suffer for a good 90-120 minutes.
As a teen, I actually fell asleep in the theater during either Out of Africa or A Passage to India. Don’t remember which and I’m not inclined to find out.
When I was in 7th grade (I was 12 that year, some classmates turned 13 during that school year), my class (very small school) went to see “On Golden Pond”. I’m amazed I stayed awake, and still can’t figure out why the teacher thought this was a good choice for that age group.
The Great Escape is an extremely well-paced movie with just enough quiet intervals to punctuate the ingenuity, conflict, and drama. It is the antithesis of boring despite the length and more classical staging, and collects together many of the best male actors working in films in that period playing expertly developed and characters. And while it is set during WWII and loosely based on an actual escape, you really don’t nee to know any of that; essentially everything you need to know in terms of setting and backstory is presented in the film (which is good because there are a number of things that are anachronistic and ahistorical in the film).
Also, I do not get people who think that Citizen Kane is a boring film; it moves along at a brisk and sometimes frenetic pace. It slows at the end because, well. so does Kane, but it literally jumps through the epic and tragic scope of a media tycoon’s life in under two hours.
The Bridges of Madison County; I don’t know how this film got made, I can’t comprehend why Eastwood elected to waste such talent on this inane story, I don’t understand what compelled it to be 2 hours and 14 minutes long, and I cannot fathom why critics and viewers liked it so much. Just so much “why” about this dumb movie about people I could not bring myself to give a shit about.
My dad miscalculated and took us to 2001 Space Odyssey when we were all under ten.
Although I loved Westerns, My Darling Clementine bored me, mainly because John Ford inserted scenes to set the tone rather than simply advance the plot.
That leads me to suspect that my attention span and depth has been set by Looney Tunes and Little Rascals. Today’s kids might be entirely different.
