June 25, 2007

Surf's up! Er, maybe not.

I haven't seen the movie Surf's Up, because my kids are not young children, but my friend Kate has two young daughters, and she took her daughter Olivia to see it on June 20th.
This is her review of Surf's Up.
Parents, consider this before you take your little ones to see it.
It's not exactly appropriate language for them.

Olivia and I attended an afternoon movie show while Moira was at a birthday party. We stood in line for Shrek 3 but it sold out right before we could get the tickets. Man, I was so bummed. The only other show that was available was Surfs Up.

So, I grab two tickets, pick up a $4.50 small soda and we rush into the show. Let me tell you that we got the last two seats in the very back row. The theater was mobbed, humid, and smelled faintly of dirty diapers. Not the wet kind, if you know what I mean.

Eww.

Well, the show starts and it's a bit violent and dark. As the movie goes on, I am more and more dismayed at the language that was used through this movie.

There was a penguin says "it tastes like sh...,"
A chicken says "I can feel it in my nuggets,"
Name-calling (loser, cocky, jerk, snowflake, bum, blubber-ball, fish sticks, "dirty trash can full of "poop")and the winning phrase of pecker face. Pecker face!*

I was shocked. Here's the kicker: not only did the character clearly call another character a pecker face, the theater was running the closed captioning so everyone got to read the words "pecker face" as well as hearing it. I'm sitting in the theater with my seven year old, watching this movie. The theater is full of children of all ages, some even as young as four or five.

Lovely. Just lovely.

So all you readers out there looking to take your young children to this movie, I'd have to definitely suggest you stay home and save your money.

*All the other name calling didn't bother me too much. Olivia's heard them before but I still maintain that pecker face was over the top for a childrens movie.