Monday, March 17, 2008

Helps to have a blog for reasons like this...

...because I get to vent without making a fool of myself in public. I know, it's only the whole Internet.

Saturday night Pete and I went to see the movie Vantage Point (PG-13). The basic story is the President goes to Italy to speak publicly about a new effort to fight terrorism. In front of thousands of onlookers, the President is assassinated. The story then unravels by viewing the events as seen by several different people there: tourists, Secret Service, the President himself, and the bad guys.

The movie wasn't extremely graphic, but there were a lot of people getting shot and of course the President's chest jerking when he was shot, etc. And the bad guys shot a hostage point blank. But the good news is they were brought to justic in the end. With some more shooting.

What had my blood boiling by the end of the movie is that there was a child in the movie theater. Maybe five years old. Old enough to sit there quietly the whole time, but for one time when...get this...he had a question about the movie.

I was horrified when I heard his tiny voice. I nudged Pete and he just shook his head. I know, not much I can do without making a scene. I just wanted to ask that parent why he NEEDED to see a movie like that so badly that he didn't care about what his child saw. Isn't it hard enough to keep little kids from viewing violence on TV without PAYING for them to see it?

Lucky for the parent, I took the easy way out and chose to whine about it to Pete and post here instead of saying anything to him. Not that it would have done much good. Probably would have just confused the little boy, plus, the parent isn't going to change based on the rant of some stranger.

But I'm curious, would any of you said anything? Why or why not?

1 comment:

Jan Ross said...

I would LIKE to say something about it because I see that all the time. It is annoying as a parent to see young children in a movie that is completely inappropriate for them and also as a spectator who must put up with children talking, crying and kicking your seat. But I would never actually say anything. There are too many crazy people out there. Sad, but true. On another related note - I am often appalled as a teacher when I find out what movies very young children watch at home. It's amazing what people let their children watch.