As a parent of a young child, I have the privilege — nay, the duty, to watch children’s movies. Sullivan will lead me into the living room, point to the DVD player (high up on a shelf) and say “wah-brih?” which I’m pretty sure is a near-homophone of “Labyrinth”, one of his favorite movies.
Kids’ movies are often very whimsical and a suspension of disbelief is a necessary requisite.
I tend to get very flustered by catastrophic misuses of science in adult movies, but I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to these wild journeys through fantasy-realms. (Just so we’re on the same page — Sullivan loves Jim Henson movies like Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Neverending Story, The Muppet (anything), and also some Disney movies. Typical kid stuff.)
I do, however, have a problem with movies that ask you to suspend your disbelief in a certain way, but then are internally inconsistent with their own rules. I’ve been collecting my thoughts on this topic over the past 3 weeks or so, and I believe that many children’s movies could be significantly improved if small changes were made that made them more internally consistent.
In this part, I’m going to discuss Curious George, with other movies to follow on alternating days.
[Fair Warning: there will be some spoilers, so if you are the type of person that would be upset to find out that Snape kills Dumbledore before seeing the new Harry Potter movie you might...um...my bad.] Read the rest of this entry »
