Why do so many Adults watch kid's films?Interesting article about Kid's films in the paper, it covers most of the bases explaining how kid's film full of post-modern adult friendly jokes have muscled into the formally childrens’ world. The main point missing from the article is that the reason these films get made is not just the fact of entertaining adults with kids but simply that adults go to see them without kids.
A straw poll in a mixed group the other day showed that in the group of 5-8 adults of 21-45 year old’s (mostly without children) at least 6 had been to see Ratatouille. The rest had been to see some really grim torture horror films. One woman got really defensive as she had only it seemed been to see children’s films (without any kids). I ended up feeling like some ivory tower elitist intellectual having only been to see No Country for Old men and Juno (ya know adult films)!
The kidult group are the same types who only read Harry Potter et al. All the time Hollywood can draw in these high spending individuals as well as the family crowd these films will get made.
My view is that the good children's films should be written for children forget the post modernism, if a film is well made and thoughtfully written it will engage adults. The fact that they weren’t knowing and were just good stories, well told is why Wallace and Gromit and the first Toy Story are great films, full stop. School of Rock is on the boundary but I think it works because its innocent and playful and just good fun, the plots not super complex, there will be others I'm sure.
The list of great films I liked as a kid are all predictable really anything with animated skeletons or swords fights, star wars and fantasy films, I don’t ever remember sitting through a whole children’s film foundation film.
A straw poll in a mixed group the other day showed that in the group of 5-8 adults of 21-45 year old’s (mostly without children) at least 6 had been to see Ratatouille. The rest had been to see some really grim torture horror films. One woman got really defensive as she had only it seemed been to see children’s films (without any kids). I ended up feeling like some ivory tower elitist intellectual having only been to see No Country for Old men and Juno (ya know adult films)!
The kidult group are the same types who only read Harry Potter et al. All the time Hollywood can draw in these high spending individuals as well as the family crowd these films will get made.
My view is that the good children's films should be written for children forget the post modernism, if a film is well made and thoughtfully written it will engage adults. The fact that they weren’t knowing and were just good stories, well told is why Wallace and Gromit and the first Toy Story are great films, full stop. School of Rock is on the boundary but I think it works because its innocent and playful and just good fun, the plots not super complex, there will be others I'm sure.
The list of great films I liked as a kid are all predictable really anything with animated skeletons or swords fights, star wars and fantasy films, I don’t ever remember sitting through a whole children’s film foundation film.
What are people's favourite kid's films?
3 comments:
I cry at ET, and saw Toy Story 2 for work and blubbed too. But I don't watch kids films any more as I no longer have children in my life of an age that want to go to the pictures. Never seen a Harry Potter, don't care.
As I am a big cool teacher who couldn't possibly lose any street cred with the kids at school I don't go to see kids films without the kids. No I wait til they are on video and then watch them at home....wink!
Lessons learnt from Beethoven 1 to 3;
DVD is a good way of testing the success of a kids film; i.e. how many repeat view it has at home. If my daughter is therefore a fountain cinematic taste, then the top 5 films of alltime would be:
1. Polar Express (all year round and only in 2D)
2. Beethoven 1 to 3
3. School of Rock
4. Stuart Little 1 to 2
5. Shrek 3
You'll note that there's no room for Battleship Potemkin or Citizen Kane in there.
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