Question for the Hivemind.

This post is going to have spoilers. I am going to completely reveal the ending. If this is a movie you're interested in seeing, do not read this post.

Here, go watch Communist Mario Brothers instead.

Or you can go look at the incredible Goth clothes made by Virgil who posted something in the recent "Sex ed is not porn" dustup.







Okay, now that everyone else is gone, I need to tell you that Christopher has been begging to see this movie since it came out last summer, but I kept saying no because I thought it looked too scary. However, in Target yesterday we saw it in the impulse buy section next to the cash registers and I bought it for him because I am a slave to his cuteness.

We put it in when we got home, and Steve and I turned it off five minutes later, over howls of protest, because it still looks too scary. The opening scenes show an angry old man, Mr. Nebbercracker, terrorizing the neighborhood children who dare to tread on his lawn. Then he steals their toys. While I agree there's much humor to be mined from cranky old people, in this case I think Mr. Nebbercracker is maybe a little too cranky.



Don't you think that's a scary face? I do. While he's frightening DJ, the skinny little boy protagonist, I looked over at the kids. Christopher had his face and hands in the Macauley Culkin Home Alone poster pose, little fists pressed up against his chubby cheeks, mouth open. Alex had disappeared entirely, running out of the room at the first sign of scariness. So Steve and I turned it off, and they begged and cried to watch it, but we said no way. Finally we said we'd watch it first, then if that was the scariest part, we'd let them watch it.

I think Mr. Nebbercracker actually was the scariest part, although the house definitely had its moments, and there was a lot of BOO! type of scary stuff in there, too, and a little bullying from the teenaged babysitter and her boyfriend.

In the end, it turns out that Mr. Nebbercracker has been protecting the children all this time, by trying to keep them safe from the house. He turns out to be a sweet old man after all, and is totally redeemed at the end of the movie. So now Steve and I are conflicted about it.



It's a PG movie, so I thought it would be okay. I took them to see Surf's Up a few weeks ago, which is also PG, and it was just fine. Jon Heder played a surfing chicken with a serious pot habit, which is what earned it the PG rating, I think, but kids don't know he's high, they just think he's silly.

So my questions are: Have you seen it? Have your kids seen it? How old are they? How did they handle it? Do you think Alex (8) and Chris (5) are old enough to watch something this scary? Is it, in fact, scary? Is it a movie for kids, or what? All the other kids in the neighborhood love the Pirates of the Carribean movies, but I won't let the kids watch those, either. Am I being overprotective? Christopher says I am, but I don't know.
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h/t to Lindsay Beyerstein for the title.