This is nothing new. I clearly remember seeing “An American Werewolf in London” during it’s theatre release in 1981 & being seated behind a terrified screaming toddler. Even if the toddler in question can’t comprehend what’s going on on the screen, the sheer noise level of these kinds of films - replete with shrieking, screaming, growling, etc. - would be enough to freak them out.
VCNJ~
C’mon,
The old "none of your business line doesn’t hold up for me. Wrong is wrong. A child in a car without a carseat becomes my business - I’d rather speak up than watch a report about a dead kid on the evening news.
Allowing (actually forcing)a 4 year old to see Slither is pretty close to child abuse IMO. Do you think it’s appropriate?
I think it’s up to the parent to decide. And I don’t think it rates as child abuse.
I’m a parent, I never took my little spawn to adult movies, and I must say bubastis is cracking me up.
I’ve never been a fan of other people’s kids, but when I see shit like that I almost want to adopt the poor little things.
What does a carseat have to do with this conversation? First, taking a kid to see Slither is not illegal. Second, it’s not “dangerous” or “abusive”. It’s a movie. As I understand it, it’s a spoof. Kids see blood and guts all the time. I know I did. If there’s explicit sex, I would draw the line there.
People who take small children to inappropriate movies, especially at inappropriate hours, are assholes, full stop. It’s not good for the kids, it’s not good for the other patrons, and it shouldn’t be allowed.
That said, expecting full silence at the cinema is delusional. It would be nice, but it’s not going to happen, and it’s not worth having a fit over. You want to enjoy a movie without having to deal with the reality of other people, rent the DVD, and watch it at home, where you control the environment.
bubastis, I would have thought you’d welcome small children at the theater. At least they’re not usually fat.
Bullshit.
If their attendance in a film that’s too mature for them is ruining my enjoyment, it’s every single bit my business.
The assholes who brought their 8-11 year old children (actually, they didn’t all seem to be their kids - looked like it was an outing with friends) to The 40-Year-Old Virgin won a spot in my Moron Hall of Fame. Several spots, actually.
One can claim that they didn’t know it was an adult-oriented film, but I think the R-rating and the friggin’ TITLE would easily dispute that. They got up and left halfway through. Never mind that the kids were talking and roaming around through the first half of the movie. Gee, I wonder why?
This is why we don’t go to the movies often - more often than not, we seem to be sharing a theatre with rude asswipes. And if we do have a film (like Harry Potter) that we absolutely MUST see opening week, our own baby will stay with her grandparents for a few hours or we’ll hire a sitter - if we can’t do either of those, we just won’t go. And while we might deem an R-rated movie appropriate for our 8-year-old child (which is doubtful), we’ll wait and rent it on video to watch it at home.
I’m tired of the movie theatre being treated like a playground. And it’s becoming an increasing issue, at least in my town.
E.
Honest question here… why do people feel that seeing violence is appropriate for kids, but seeing sex isn’t? Isn’t sex a whole lot more normal than violence? Almost every child will grow up to have sex. Hopefully, most children will *not * grow up to take a machete to their neighbors or shoot up their local Wendy’s.
What’s your point in saying age appropriateness of movies in nobody’s business? That statement could apply to the vast majority of things discussed on this board.
Lots of things are not illegal, but still not a great idea. I do agree that labeling it as dangerous or abusive is going too far, but I think it shows a real lack of common sense. Speaking of common sense, I’m sure glad you don’t mind your kids being exposed to violence as long as they don’t see any sex :rolleyes:
Elza I agree with you on R rated films and most of the time of PG-13 films, but do you agree with Bubatis on The Hulk? It was a PG-13 movie marketed to kids. I don’t think it makes someone a bad parent to bring a child to a movie that was marketed to kids.
I was prepared to bring a 5 year old to King Kong, then I read the reviews on MoviePhone that warned that despite the Dinosaurs the moving had disturbing scenes not appropriate for small kids. If I didn’t read the review, I would have brought him. PG-13 is a judgment call. I wasn’t upset by the parents who did bring their kids to see Kong, I think my son could have handled it fine. He would have been frightened at a few scenes, but I doubt he would have been traumatized. Overall I think it was better for him to not see it, he may have had to leave the theater. I am not sure and I prefer to err on the side of caution.
Jim
Off topic, but it’s a weird damn world when people would rather their kids saw people brutally dismembering other people than having sex.
Why is it okay for your kids to watch oh, say the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, but not okay to watch the culminating love scene of a romance if it’s explicitly sexual?
In either case it’s faked, so the argument that “kids know it’s fake!” should either a) apply equally in both cases or b) not apply at all.
It’s just me, but I’d rather my kids saw fake love than fake torture. I’m just sayin’.
To tell the truth, I didn’t pay attention to Hulk when it came out, so I honestly don’t know - on first thought, I’d probably think it’s in the realm of the Spiderman movies - which I probably would have thought were fine for school-age and up (I didn’t see the first one, just the second one, and it’s something I would’ve taken my nephew to at 6 or 7). So yeah, I’d agree with you there.
Oddly enough, my favorite movies to go to in the past few years HAVE been the Harry Potter movies - we’ve gone on opening night and Sunday afternoons, and the kids who have been in those movies have been GREAT. I will gladly go to Harry Potter with those kids any day. I think it’s one of those things that they’ve been anticipating so much that the behavior just comes naturally to them. And you know, when one of them gets excited over Voldemort appearing, it’s par for the course - we expect that when we go to see a HP movie.
I do plan to take my child to movies when he/she is 3-4, but obviously, we’ll start with little kid movies and afternoon showings. I LOVED taking my niece and nephew to the movies, but they knew that when they went with me, they would behave. And when I warned them for the third time in one movie after they were arguing, we got up and left in the middle. And then I made them pay me back not only for their tickets, but for mine as well 
. We never had that issue again.
I agree with the violence vs. sex thing generally. I personally don’t have a hard time with kids viewing “soft” sex, but porn is where I would draw the line for my child. The point I’m making is that it’s the parent’s decision to let their children view particular film genres…not some guy in the audience who’s legislating what my kid can see based on nothing but his own opinion.
Word. That kind of thinking scares me, at first consideration. Later, after more thoughtful analysis, it scares me a LOT.
Sailboat
Actually that is pretty much the point. Most folks aren’t afraid that their little darlings will be tempted to run amok with machetes after seeing it at the movies, because they do not see the impulse to violence as normal, or at least not as an impulse that is seductive or difficult to control.
But just let the kiddies get a look at sex! They’ll lose their “innocence” They’ll get, you know,* urges * and stuff. You can’t control that. There will be no stopping them.
(I’m not including Kalhoun, who brought the subject up, in this characterization. She has always seemed smarter than that to me.)
Thanks, KayElCee)
There’s sex and there’s “sex.” I wouldn’t have a problem with a very young child seeing most anything (for example, a toddler briefly walking in on a porn flick running in my bedroom) because it’s pretty much meaningless to them anyway. It all depends on the kid when it comes to “disturbing” material.
I’m not including you either Kalhoun - just that you brought it up and I’ve always been curious about this distinction, so you were right there handy to ask
The thing that always sort of pings my WTF meter, though, is that a lot of people make this distinction, but make no distinction between different violence levels when deciding what’s appropriate for kids.
A whole bunch of the violence in R rated movies is pretty much all the way out there on the hard core side. Witness Quentin Tarantino’s whole career, either SAW movie, Slither, etc, etc, etc. To my mind there’s a vast difference between the occasional punch or shooting and a guy having to chop off his own foot to escape from a killer or a woman plowing through a building filled with people chopping them into very small bits in order to earn her revenge on a guy named Bill.
It’s one of the reasons that argument has always sort of baffled me. I’d actually rather my kids saw porn than torture, but that’s a personal judgement call I’m making
I don’t care either way, as long as it’s appropriate for the kid. I saw plenty of violence and plenty of sex as a kid and so did most people I know. We’re all ok. I do think there’s degrees that I’d stop at, but with sex, I’d rather they saw the pretend kind, and with violence, I pretty much have no limit on what is portrayed, depending on the kid. My son always loved a good decapitation! 
Sorry 
I found out last year that this cough I sometimes get when I go to heavily air-conditioned places is allergic. Gotta remember to bring my antihystamine pills (the syrup works better but it’s clumsier). I do carry silent candy, which usually helps.
Apparently, many movie theaters and banks only remember to clean up the freaking a/c when there’s legionella in town and the Public Health Ministry cracks down on uncleaned a/c.
When I went to see Disney’s Aladdin (sp?), the other two people there were a Daddy and his 3yo daughter. I think it must have been his weekly visit or something like that, he didn’t seem to have very clear ideas on how to handle her. She was sweet; it must have been her first movie, so she was a bit scared when the lights went off but once the movie started she fixated on the screen. Daddy had to pull her fingers from the back of the previous-row’s seats one by one. She was just completely stunned. I’m told my own reaction to my first movie (Mafalda; the second one was Snoopy Come Home) was about the same. But - why would you bring a kid to a place where she can’t see unless she spends the whole movie standing up? It’s not like they don’t grow fast.
In good old USA, the ratings mean nothing is a parent or guardian is with the kid. If the parent wants to they can take a child to any (non-porno) film showing.