Taking kids to movies

On IMDB a lot of people were seeing 8-12 year olds at the new movie "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which I can't wait to see, but why would parents bring their kids to a dark movie, with lots of violence, sex, nudity and rape. Do they look at the R rating, or why its an R rating. It just something I would never do, I dont want to show them a rape and a really dark movie. So what do you say, do you think parents should take the R seriously and read up on R movies, or just go in without looking up why its an R

I work at a movie theater so believe me when I say that alot of parents just don't care. For example, I didn't see Superbad but we had a file containing why it was R-rated and had to warn parents about how sexually explicit it was and they would still drop off 8 year olds to watch it by themselves. They either don't care what their kids want and bring them because they, the parents, want to see the movie or they want cheap baby-sitting for an hour. It's ridiculous how many little kids, even younger than 8, I've seen in R-rated movies.

The problem also has to do with the fact that the MPAA's moral compass is really messed up. An R rating means that a kid can go see the movie as long as he/she is supervised by a parent. An NC-17 rating means that anyone under 17 is prohibited from seeing it, no matter what. But if you look at the way things actually unfold, movies in which people get chopped up and eviscerated still get R ratings easily, whereas NC-17 ratings are reserved for movies that are sexually explicit rather than violently explicit. The message this sends is that it's okay for kids to see people getting hacked to pieces, but God forbid they get to see a penis or a vagina. For the record, I don't think kids who are 8-12 should be allowed to see EITHER of the two things, but it boggles the mind that, in the MPAA's list of moral priorities, it's apparently better for kids to see something as reprehensible as an evisceration rather than frontal nudity.

Notice how tersanay says that the one time she was given instructions to WARN parents was with a movie that had a lot of sex-driven dialogue. I bet that, when a Saw movie comes out each year, she's not given a file instructing her to explain to parents about all the actual graphic violence that went on in those movies.

I really think parents should really go on IMDB and look at the explicit content, it tells u right on IMDB. Im sure kids saw the remake of Last House on The Left which has a pretty long rape scene.

We're only given the files for movies that aren't clearly inappropriate for teens and younger just from short previews and posters. Most people, whether they care or not, know that Saw is violent and graphic, but some of these funny movies that are R-rated parents don't know how bad they can be. We also got files for the first Hangover movie and Knocked up. I thinks it's cause our bosses who don't actually work in a theater so don't know crap think that parents are more aware of violent movies. But in my experience parents don't care. They just want to get rid of their kids for a little while. Some of them even got mad cause they thought we were trying to tell them how to parent.

But I totally agree with your point about violence versus sex.

And sometimes I wish they'd just watch a preview. It's amazing how many people come in and don't even know what the movies are. We get so many phone calls from parents asking us if we think the movie is appropriate for their child. Just be a parent and do your own research.

For some reason I like seeing over the top violence, but kids see more violence in movies then they would in their lives

What's worse sex scenes for kids or over the top brutal violence

I think it depends on the scene. When I was little I was at a friends house and saw that rape scene from Eye for an Eye and it still haunts me to this day. But I never saw any other sex scene. My dad always did the "Teresa, turn away he's gonna kill her" trick till I was in my teens. So maybe a more loving gentle one wouldn't have been a big deal.

But violence is tricky. I was raised on Die Hard and Mission Impossible and Steven Segal movies but never anything gruesome like what they put out today. I can't really say from experience that violence is worse cause I don't even watch them now. I think a movie that is continual violence from one scene to the next is probably worse than a movie with one sex scene.

If I was going to take my 8 year old niece to a movie I think I'd just pick that We Bought A Zoo and be done with it.

I saw Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and since @tersanay works at a Theatre, why do they show commercials now, they showed more commercials then previews, whats the story

I work at an old fashioned theater that was built right around 1910 so we still have old school projectors and don't show any ads other than the ones to remind people to turn off their phones and the usual 3 or 4 previews. But I know what you mean about bigger theaters and it's because they get paid to show them just like if it was a commercial for a tv network. It's the newest way to reach people and it's a way for theaters to make money since it's mostly a dying industry. It's not like you can channel surf. You have to sit through it.

Yeah I thought of that, half the commercials they show we see everyday, they can waste it with 3 previews instead of about 8 commercials and one trailer

A few years back I was at my local multiplex waiting for the auditorium to be cleaned in readiness for the next presentation. I was standing near the open doors to Screen Six and I could clearly hear the audio from the trailer for a Jack Black film. To say the language used in this film was strong would be an understatement.

Standing next to me was a man and a young girl of about six or seven-years-old waiting to see some kid's film. The girl said, "Daddy, what does f*** mean. I just saw the man's face turn beetroot red. Next thing I saw was the same man giving a piece of his mind to one of the cinema's managerial staff.

They shouldnt show a Jack Black film like that for a kids film

It wasn't a kid's film, it was a trailer for a Jack Black film and as the main feature hadn't started the doors to Screen Six were open, which is why you could hear the dialogue of the trailer. The girl and her father were waiting to go into Screen Five.