…because i want to graduate from disney movies!

you watch enough disney channel and nickelodeon fodder as a parent to make you want to sprout a permasmile and lose your mind. while some of the offerings from pixar are actually quite good, any film-loving parent really clamors to watch something a little better than the film adaptation of yogi bear. nevermind i have friends who have let their kids watch all sorts of adult films from babyhood; i knew my kids couldn’t handle the violence. they’re just not ready for clockwork orange. (in all truth, i don’t think i ever was.)

but now that we are 12 and a very hardy 7, i took a leap of faith and borrowed the gods must be crazy from my local public library.  i had a dim recollection of the movie as being very sweet and probably okay for my kids. and, worse comes to worst, a lot of the DVDs/CDs from my local public library are often scratched, so if everyone hated it, we would likely have the opportunity to call it quits prematurely.  so we all settled in for the show.

first came the laughter: the laughter over all the old fashioned cars, that is. oh mom, BC pointed out, these cars are ANCIENT! well, young lady, if they are ancient, your mother walked with dinosaurs. no one cared about people driving on the wrong side of the road; all we could see were the tin boxes racing around.

then, of course, there was the nudity. jools cracked up at all the naked butts. i’m sure the girl noticed more than butts but was too polite and/or mortified to say anything. those bushmen of the kalahari wore loincloths that looked a lot like the forerunner to butt floss/thongs. how they could be comfortable like that, i don’t really know. (i still don’t understand the fascination with thongs.) anyway, after a short while, no one cared about people’s bare butts (or other hanging things) and we moved on…

to the violence. yes, virginia, i had forgotten that there was a small band of terrorists in this movie. they are mostly comical, but when they first show up, they shoot up the cabinet of a small african nation. the boy became fascinated by that, and not much later, he was even more fascinated by the moment when a helicopter was blown up. i try to remind myself that there are a lot of grown boys who love to watch things blow up; but i still am not thrilled by this fascination.  in short, the kids were less bothered by it all than was i.

fortunately, the rest of the movie is charming, with slapstick comedic moments and some occasionally cussing thrown in for good measure. my kids ultimately focused less on the violent parts and much more on the animals, the beautiful people, and the setting.  and once i relaxed and stopped worrying about whether the movie was going to turn my kids into serial killers, i enjoyed it, too.

watching grownup movies with my kids reminds me of how i feel about riding roller coasters. when i was young, i loved riding roller coasters and had little fear. when my oldest decided she loved roller coasters, i was thrilled that she loved something like i did and that we could do this fun thing together. but then, i was frightened — she was still so thin and small — would she be safe on this thing? would she fly out and be crushed way down on the ground below? i would get headaches and couldn’t ride the ride with her at first.  but as she (and ultimately he) grew bigger, i noticed she was safely ensconced in her seat, strapped in and raring to go. i realized that i, too, could just throw caution to the wind.

and enjoy the ride.