| Films... and children... |
[Jan. 29th, 2007|11:14 am] |
I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night, and I am still in the process of digesting it. Needless to say, like my favorites of Del Toro's films (Devil's Backbone and Chronos) it was violent and challenging... a wonderful allegory, beautifully told and rendered in a children's fairytale... I don't have the time to give a full review right now, maybe later...
For those who haven't seen it yet, please do. I was surprised at the packed house, considering it's a foreign film and this was a Sunday afternoon. This film deserves your money. Even if you walk away not liking the film, you will adore sequences and ultimately will not view your time as ill spent.
However, this is not why I am ranting today. An old evil reared it's head yesterday at the cinema... an evil which has not been spoken of since my days in the South... those of you who were there during my time in school will know where this is going... I talk of the height of selfishness, a ridiculous thing that I now take as a personal spite. Of course I mean, BRINGING YOUR INFANT CHILDREN TO FILMS THEY SHOULD NOT BE SEEING BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO LAZY TO POP A CONDOM ON YOUR HORRIBLE MISTAKE AND FEEL THAT EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE NOW A MOTHER THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU STILL CANNOT SEE R RATED FILMS... I MEAN, REALLY, I DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE THE BASTARD ANYWAY, WHY DOES MY SOCIAL LIFE HAVE TO BE PUT ON HOLD JUST BECAUSE I'M SOMEONES FUCKING MOTHER!!!! huh-huh, whoooo... (heavy-breathing, with slight asthmatic wheeze)... Sorry about that guys, but it just pushes my buttons.
Sure, some of the blame should be placed at the feet of advertisers, this movie certainly isn't for young children, but from some of the TV spots I've seen you would think this was a Disney film... However, a quick perusal of the newspaper, movie poster, or Box Office WHERE YOU BUY YOUR TICKETS, would reveal Pan is rated R for Graphic Violence and language... so there you have that. But that is not my sole complaint, for I am no prude and were I a father of I dunno... maybe a ten year old with enough understanding of violence and fantasy, remember, if Mara and I were raising this kid, they would be surrounded by this stuff, I would love for my child to see this film.
The problem here, is that the oldest kid was two at best, and mom was carrying him around like a nappy handbag under her arm, seemingly more concerned with her XXXXXXXL bucket of Popcorn and her 2 gallon DIET soda. I dare say her friend was faring no better with her 1 year old. So right away, you have two kids way too young for this film, when I was there age I was freaked out by Labyrinth (plain ol' from Henson studios... even then I knew why I was a fan of Jennifer Connolly.. but I digress...) and Pan's Labyrinth makes (old) Labyrinth look like a particularly tame episode of Blue's Clues.
Beyond that, they would not stop screaming and running about, but they're KIDS that's what KIDS do. The fact that their mothers did not seem to give a single dollop of shit unless someone else in the audience said something is what really aggravated me. By the way, all this was just during the previews, we haven't gotten to the feature yet.
So let's recap, kids who are too young in the audience for a film they won't understand, seemingly already bored after the Spider-Man 3 trailer, however; I will admit their ridiculously positive reaction to seeing Spider-Man gave me a bit of a thrill. Having a bit of knowledge about the film, I know the violence is going to freak these kids out, in fact, another audience member warned a mother of this to which she scoffed, "D'ell be fine..."
Wondering how this could get any more out of hand(as the older of the two children stood on his chair in front of me pointing at the projector behind us and screaming, "I CAN SEE THE MOVIE!!!", to which his mother mumbled, "That's fine." between herculean shovels of popcorn, if she's as good with snow as she is with food, I can only hope she works for the DPW), I have a clear moment of realization(clarity if you will), look over to Mara (by this point ready to smack the innocence off the mug of the menace hopping on his chair in front of us... ahh maternal instinct) and I realize this entire film is in Spanish... the whole thing is subtitled and these kids are too young to know how to read...
Luckily, before this farce could get anymore out of hand, the manager of the theater came to the same realization we all did, well except for those two loving mothers..., and asked the brood to leave. And you know what, they did. |
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