Alex Carrick’s Blog

There are few things in life much more fun than taking the kids to a movie in an actual theatre. You load up on popcorn, Pepsi and Twizzlers; the lights go down; the sound starts to reverberate; and the fun begins. You look over and your youngest ones are looking up at the screen, wide-eyed and enthralled.

But that’s when we’re out on the town and the movies are blockbusters. These are the big-name films, full of action and comic-book characters. Based on reviews and the ratings system, you pretty much know what you’re getting into beforehand.

Watching movies with the kids takes on several different dimensions when this takes place at home – as a result of renting DVDs, downloading videos or simply watching an old movie that fortuitously appears on TV.

I would say that the problems of home viewing can crop up in four main areas:

      (1)  bad, and I mean really bad, language;

(2)  way too much gory violence;

(3)  odd unexpected porno moments; and

(4)  over-hyping of an old favourite.

Beginning with point (4) first, this is something that I am often guilty of. I’ll mention that such and such a film is so great, based on my memories of it and we’ll sit down to watch it with eager anticipation. The problem is that the new generation expects to see special effects that are seamlessly realistic and action that is lightning fast, due to editing that cuts between scenes at a strobe-like pace.

Movies that blew me away with their special effects on first viewing – because they were groundbreaking then – often look clunky and unbelievable now. You wait for a big scene as you remember it and it now elicits a groan and cries of “lame”. You feel slightly foolish for having ever said anything about it.

The Christopher Reeves Superman movies are prime examples. The foregrounds and backgrounds in the flying scenes obviously don’t mesh. Nowadays, with digital computer enhancements, whatever the director imagines can be put up on the screen.

Even the original Godfather, arguably the greatest movie ever made, has several moments that are simply bewildering, or even laughable to the kids. Both of my sons have asked why Marlon Brando talks the way he does, as if he has a whole hard-boiled egg in his mouth.

And there’s a scene in the Godfather where Sonny is beating up his brother-in-law out on the streets of New York, after he discovers that his sister has been abused. One of the punches he throws so obviously misses its target that both of our boys, upon first viewing and years apart, said in almost identical words, “Did you see that? That was so phoney.” I just cringe at such sacrilege, but I have to admit that they are right.  

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I’ll continue with this discussion about the perils of watching movies in the house, with the kids, in my next lifestyle blog…please click here.

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