Yeah, I thought it was a great idea to rent The Secret of Nimh for my sensitive two-year-old daughter. Talking animals! What could go wrong? Cue dark-and-creepy scenes of lab rats being experimented on…and she watched the rest of the movie from my lap.
Why oh why didn’t I consult Commonsense Media before I rented? The San Francisco-based organization runs a sort of Consumer Reports for kid media, and would have told me that The Secret of Nimh contains animal-torture scenes. I will never again rent my kid a video, buy a game, or watch a TV show without checking Commonsense Media’s highly specific, darned high-quality reviews. In fact, I may stick to their lists of recommended media picks. Let’s see, I’ll start with Smart Movie Girls and then move on to Best Movie Moms…
Thanks for this! Our bad movie choices with our daughter started with us watching “War of the Worlds” with her only half-asleep in our bed when we were co-sleeping with her as an infant. My husband argued that she had no ‘context’ for the noises & screams, which i went right along with because i wanted to see the movie. Now she’s 2 1/2 and she’s watched Harry Potter (scary in many ways, though i think she’s so besotted by harry himself that she ignores the action), Willie Wonka (scary boat scene), Hook (scary hook hand!) and Lion King (just scary, in my opinion). So this will help me, a lot.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:54 pm