Then there are the many, many, many characters:
Characters in the past, characters in the future, characters in the weird alternate future that has to be rectified... characters on top of characters. I still don't know who that lady with the skyscraper hat is, or the big kid in the chair. But who cares -- it's Disney! They can do anything they want and kids will love it, right?
Actually, RIGHT. Both of my children love it. They had no idea what was going on at first, but they are slowly processing it. Yesterday at the playground they spent a long time playing time travel on one of the climbers, with Benny explaining in depth about how the future and the past are connected, and spinning out various scenarios to illustrate his points, and Sadie nodding sagely and lying down to pretend to travel someplace where everything was pink. They engaged with the movie. They truly, truly liked it. I cannot for the life of me get how this happened, but, it happened.
This is kind of like coming to terms with "Chicken Little," which to me was a frenetic, glaring mess, but to my children was hilarious and engrossing. In fact, that movie and this one have much in common, including the vast array of characters, the laffy-taffy colors, and the kid who wants to succeed in baseball. I guess at times like this I just have to shrug and say, "Whatever" and wait for this infatuation to pass. This is good practice for ten years from now when they're deeply in love with whatever awful (to me) music is popular then. Whatever, dear, whatever. Eat your peas.
Labels: meet the robinsons, movie reviews, movies
We went to see Deep Sea 3D, one of the IMAX movies showing at the aquarium, and I have a few thoughts.
1. Children do not appreciate overarching themes and ideas. Children appreciate jellyfish apparently floating out into the audience. If the movie spent a bit less time hammering home the whole predator/prey/symbiosis idea and a bit more time wafting through jellyfish forests, they'd be doing us a favor. Everyone waits for the jellyfish. No one waits for the really unusual behavior of small fish at certain parts of the reef.
2. We get it. Predator. Prey. But sometimes, they help each other. Do you really need a thesis statement, to make a movie like this? Can't you just move us around in some kelp and make us think the sea turtle is about to leap into our row?
3. I forgive Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet for all the repetition of how predator and prey help each other. Why haven't these two done a movie together, besides this one where they placidly discuss giant squid? One wonders.
4. You never get through a movie about things underwater without some villainous behavior and some inflammatory language. "The ultimate killing machine" and "ravenous jaws" and whatnot. Perhaps that helps to wring a little interest from the teenage crowd, but the six-year-olds found it overdone to the point of absurdity.
5. Actually, the six-year-olds really liked the movie, and even the squeamish one was not disturbed at all, even by the dramatic music and obligatory "scary parts." We didn't see the shark movie, because we thought it'd be too scary. This one was just scary enough, without being traumatizing.
6. Sadie Grace, my two-year-old daughter, has never actually worn glasses and watched a 3D movie before, although she's had a few opportunities, notably at Disney World, in the one where Donald Duck shoots out of the movie at the end and then *can be seen* with his tail hanging out of the back wall of the theater as you leave. She wouldn't wear her glasses for that one. So, all she usually sees are blurry shapes and she doesn't actually watch.
7. She wore her glasses all the way through this and REALLY loved it. It was well worth the price of admission to see her gasp, and ooh/aah, and reach out for the bits of floating things in the ocean, and stuff like that. A nice helping of childlike wonder for all in attendance.
I exchanged a look with the mother of the small toddler sitting next to me, who was also saying "Ooooh!" and reaching for the jellyfish, and the look said, "This is why we came here. Because they will say OOOH and make that face, and reach for jellyfish."
In conclusion, I thought the movie was just fine. Kate and Johnny need a feature film together. The squid were really not all that scary, in spite of the accompaniment, and Sadie wore her glasses.
More jellyfish! It's what we all liked best!
Labels: deep sea 3D, field trips, movies
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