Sorry, kid, I heard it sucks. Pick something else?

Well, the arrow seems to be pointing in the right direction, at least.

Pop quiz, hot-shots: You hear a movie your kid really wants to see is bad. What do you do?

No, that isn't meant to be a belated tribute to Dennis Hopper. It's a real question in light of the collective retching that has greeted M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, based on the much-loved Nickelodeon cartoon.

You don't have to have kids to know that parenting involves a lot of sacrificing - and for many moms and dads, that means putting up with  kids movies in which the adult appeal is, shall we say, limited.

With Airbender, however, the situation is a little different than usual. This isn't something like Marmaduke or the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, which usually don't resonate with anybody who got past middle school. For one thing, I've heard a number of adults talk about how much they enjoy the show. For another, Shyamalan has a fan base that is mostly adult.

Unfortunately, that fan base has been steadily dwindling since The Village, and the reviews of The Last Airbender indicate the spiral continues to swirl downward. Consider:

The Last Airbender keeps throwing things at you, but its final effect is, in every way, flat. - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly.

The story is a much more serious problem, a run-on, overstuffed narrative that feels like a very long prologue for a climax that never comes. - Liam Lacy, The (Toronto) Globe and Mail

If ever a film was born under a bad sign, "The Last Airbender" is it. As the blues lyric goes, if it didn't have bad luck, it wouldn't have any kind of luck at all. - Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times. 

And those are some of the KINDER notices. Also consider:

This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 — gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. “I See Dead People’s” career gurgling down the drain. - (the other) Roger Moore, the Orlando Sentinel

The Last Airbender is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic that makes the 2007 film “The Golden Compass,’’ a similarly botched adaptation of a beloved property from another medium, look like a four-star classic. - Ty Burr, the Boston Globe.

The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. - Roger Ebert

Now, I can guess what some of you are thinking. Kids don't care what a bunch of grumpy old men critics think. Many adults don't either, alas. Still, there is a dilemma here.  With this property, and with reviews this bad, you can't chalk this up to a "kid-view vs. adult-view" dispute.


So what do you tell a child who has been chomping at the bit to see this? I expect many parents to take the kids, let them make up their own minds and hope for the best. A colleague of mine saw the movie with her family and reported that the film, while not great, was not nearly as bad as the critics have said.


But there are two sides to every story. At this time of writing, its Yahoo users grade (Read: Average Joes)  is C+. That's not too good for graders who tend to be generous. They give Knight and Day a B+, for Pete's sake.  And A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote: 

"An astute industry analyst of my acquaintance, who is 9 and an admirer of the Nickelodeon animated series on which the movie is based, offered a two-word diagnosis of its commercial prospects on the way out of the theater: 'They’re screwed.'"

But right now, the only person who could persuade me to see the movie is an utterly charming niece of mine. Were it my own kid, though, I would gently but firmly suggest, "Why don't we see Toy Story 3 again, OK?" 

Adults like animation? Who'd-a thunk it?

Normally by this time I would have written a review of Toy Story 3, but I am waiting so I can see it with my favorite young artist and her fine folks. Rarely has my patience been so steely. ;)

In the meantime, I came across this post on EW's Popwatch blog, in which writer Josh Young marvels at the fact that a showing of Toy Story 3 drew - GASP! - mostly adults!?!??!?!

Really? You're just NOW finding out that adults can enjoy animated movies without the company of a child, EW? I've been aware of this fact for decades. About as long as your magazine has been around, in fact.

And I'm not talking only about myself, an admitted sucker for animation. I was noticing that adults were attending animated movies as far back as Beauty and the Beast. I saw that movies 6 or 7 times in theaters and noticed a number of adult couples there without any kids in tow. It was a date movie for them. And this was 19 years ago

Granted, the always high quality of Pixar's productions probably has  increased adult willingness to view animated movies without kids. But this is hardly a new phenomenon. And Pixar isn't even the only party responsible for this. As Young does point out, the works of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Ponyo, etc.) have had an impact as well.

There's also something to be said for the fact that many people who saw the original Toy Story as kids in 1995 are flocking to the third chapter as well - they grew up along with Andy. In fact, the voice of Andy in all three movies, actor John Morris, is now a 25-year-old graduate of UCLA's Theater Arts program. (I hereby apologize for making some readers feel old.)

But really, anyone who has paid attention to Pixar knows the studio doesn't make films for children - they make films for everyone. If they made films solely for children, they wouldn't be nearly as successful as they are.

It is true that a lot of people tend to ghettoize animation as being "just for kids." I often hear fathers complain they don't get to see anything in the theaters except for "kids movies." If they're talking about crap like Marmaduke, I sympathize. If they're talking about Pixar, I don't feel sorry - and neither, I suspect, do the fathers.

Brad Bird, the writer-director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, once said in an interview (by EW, as it happens):

I can't tell you how many times somebody will come to me and say, ''My kids really love your work.'' And then you go, ''But you like it too, right?'' And they go, ''Oh, I love it.'' But they don't ever lead with that. It's like the kids are their beard to get them into the theater. Or people will say, ''I'm happy about this film because I have a 5-year-old.'' And I'm like, Well, congratulations, but I didn't make this for the 5-year-old. I made it for me, and I'm not 5. I can't think of one other art form that has its audience so narrowly defined. If you work in animation, people tell you, ''Oh, it must be wonderful to entertain children.'' Yes it is. But that's 10 percent of the audience I'm going for.

Yes, EW, adults can enjoy animated movies without kids - and it's time people stop being surprised by that.

Those darned kids movies

After the weakest May in my moviegoing memory, the theaters come back to life with two films I plan to see this weekend - the Judd Apatow-produced Get Him to the Greek and the horror flick Splice, starring Sarah Polley, which means it will have some degree of intelligence.

There is one movie coming out this weekend, however, that I would never see - not even if I had a kid. And no, I don't mean Killers, although I wouldn't subject a kid to that either. I'm talking about Marmaduke.

I turned up my nose at the movie even before I saw one frame from it. I hate to pre-judge films, but the director's name alone was enough to make me roll over and play dead - it's Tom Dey, the hack behind films like Shanghai Noon and Failure to Launch, which are nondescript at best and unwatchable at worst.

Then I read the review by Christy Lemire, one of the film critics of the Associated Press. She describes one scene thusly:

We know we're in trouble early when Marmaduke (voiced byOwen Wilson) climbs into bed with his owners, Phil (Lee Pace) and Debbie (Judy Greer), and promptly passes gas, prompting one of many exasperated, sitcommy cries of "Marma-DUKE!"

I know, I know, kids think farts are funny. "Pull my finger" and all that. Har-de-har. But c'mon - when a movie fills the air with flatulence, it might as well be in Smell-O-Vision.  Fart jokes are a clear sign of a movie bereft of imagination. It's lazy writing that offers nothing to kids other than a cheap laugh that any fool could get with the old armpit routine. Raise your hand if you're sure.

What bothers me even more than the fart jokes are parents who take their children to any piece of junk movie with bright, pretty colors and people who fall over each other. Sure, the kid may like it. Young kids aren't very discriminating. But parents should be. It drives me up the wall when I hear some parent say "Well, it wasn't very good, but little Joey liked it."

So let me get this straight - it's OK for a movie to be lame as long as a kid likes it? What does that say about us as parents? Isn't that essentially the same principle as feeding kids a bag of cotton candy instead of even a pizza?

If/when I ever have kids, I don't intend to subject them to junk just so they'll be quiet for 90 minutes. That can be done just as easily with a quality movie. If I had a child now, I would tell him or her to wait a couple of weeks until Toy Story 3 comes out.

I know not every movie can be Pixar quality. But Bridge to Terabithia quality would be nice. Or even Diary of a Wimpy Kid quality. The latter may not offer much for adults, but it at least tries to have some imagination. I want a movie that would make my son or daughter draw pictures immediately after seeing it - not just make them laugh mindlessly.

Maybe that makes me a curmudgeon. And maybe this is all too easy for me to write, not having had to deal with the Puss in Boots "Pleeeeeeeeze?" expression, or, on the other end of the scale, the temper tantrum.  But I would want my kids to have the best, and that includes the movies they watch.

Lemire puts is beautifully at the end her review: "The 7-year-olds in the audience won't know or care. But they deserve better."

Worrying too much about kids at the movies

There's been an awful lot of fuss in the media lately about whether Spike Jonze's film Where the Wild Things Are (reviewed here) is too intense for kids. USA Today devoted this much-commented upon article to the subject. A blogger at EW seemed a bit surprised that she took her kids to the movie and it caused them very little consternation.

And the talk isn't just about Where the Wild Things Are. This post on the (mostly) Disney-devoted Web site Jim Hill media wonders aloud if Robert Zemeckis' animated version of A Christmas Carol is too intense for the little ones.

The overriding problem to me seems to sheer parental laziness.  Where the Wild Things Are and A Christmas Carol are both rated PG. That should be your first clue that these aren't the sorts of movies design with a yippy-skippy! attitude. But (cue deep trailer voice) in a world where parents blithely take their kids to R-rated features, such ignorance is not exactly surprising.

News flash, folks: There's this amazing tool called the Internet that makes it really easy to find out information about movies. One of the most helpful I've seen is Screen It, which gives you very detailed information about the content of a movie, and most commendably, reviews the movies APART from whether they're appropriate for kids or not. Here's their take on Where the Wild Things Are, which I find I cannot abbreviate to Wild Things without conjuring up images of a movie most inappropriate for children.

Second  tip? Trust your child. There are always exceptions, but generally speaking, I think kids are made of sterner stuff than we often realize. So many expect them to crumble into bawling blobs at even the slightest provocation, and more often than not, it doesn't happen. After all, Disney has been traumatizing children for generations with its G-rated fare, and I don't think the mouse has created TOO many strait-jacket models.

While I'm loath to give Access Hollywood kudos, I loved this quote in USA Today:

"(Where the Wild Things Are) shouldn't be a surprise to anyone," says film critic Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood. "You can't hire a visionary director and expect his movie to be another Alvin and the Chipmunks."

Do a little research. Know your kid. Trust your kid. It's called being a parent.