A Rant About Movies and Kids

This story doesn't relate to this picture except they both happened in Austin, Texas. In the old part of Austin you see a lot of murals on the side of buildings. I liked the combination of painted flowers with the real vegetation. But on with the story. Actually, as the title says, it is a rant!

We don't go to a movie theatre in the States very often but while we were in Texas, we invited the Austin grandsons to pick out a movie and we would take them. Their parents usually get them Netflixs to watch so they were excited to be going to a movie and getting to buy popcorn and a drink. The cost of popcorn and a drink could be another rant but I'll stick to the original plan. They choose the latest Shrek movie because they had seen all the previous Shrek movies. Fine. We load them up and off we go. We get the popcorn and drink and we are pleased that we are getting into the movie just a few minutes before the movie is to begin.

We find theatre #10 or whatever number and right then we should have picked up on what might happen. There was a Dad and two kids outside. The girl, who was the oldest, had peeked into the theatre and told the Dad, "The previews are still on." The little boy was hanging on to his Dad's hand looking very hesitant.

When we go through the doors the movie is pitch black. You can barely see the seats much less the stairs but we stumble along trying to help the 5 year old so he doesn't spill his popcorn or drink. That would be a disaster of major proportions. The noise/sound from whatever they are advertising on the screen is deafening and coming at you from all sides.

We manage to get into the seats. Just as we are settling into the seats there is an animation on the screen that looks like real people sitting in a theatre eating their popcorn but suddenly with lots of weird noises the floor below them starts to crack open and roots start to go up around the seats and legs of the people and the front of the theatre starts to drop into an abyss. All of this is accompanied with the appropriate and terrible sound effects.

Dexter, our five year old grandson, isn't crying but he is scared and he wants his Mom and Dad. Ned takes him out of the theatre. It takes sweet, gentle, pawpaw about 15 minutes to convince him to come back into the theatre. Once he is back, he settles into his seat and enjoys the Shrek movie.

I was so concerned about Dexter that I didn't see the rest of the stupid advertisement so I don't know what the purpose of it was but it was frightening to little children and Shrek was suppose to be a kid friendly movie.  I've always thought that this pre-movie stuff was aggravating but now I think we should get a group together and go picket the theatres to stop this assault on our senses and to protect our little children from psychological damage. The parents of frightened children should be interviewed on The Morning Show. We should write our congressmen to request a congressional hearing about the damage it is doing.  Something needs to be done. Cut out all the crap and just show the movie that we paid to see.