Kid movies and other randoms

My daughter is obsessed with the Mary Poppins movie. I've now seen it, or parts of it, approximately 2 million times. It's awful. I used to like the movie - it's my fault - I introduced it. Now have the lyrics to "Let's go fly a kite" in my head 24/7. Hopefully this period will pass soon. She knows all the characters, including the dog. I never knew the dog's name until I had an obssessed almost 2-yr old (it's Andrew). I admit, the Uncle Albert part still makes me giggle - ah the joy of the old Disney movies. I do still have trouble with Dumbo - I skip the separation part (it upsets me and S) and the drunk baby elephant part is way over her head, but silly more than anything. Now it looks to me like the Disney animators back then were all high at the time they wrote that particular part...

The new kid movies are so focused on being "entire family" movies that they are full of adult humor. The old ones do have adult themes (death, separation, etc...) but you don't have to worry about everything being over their heads (like all the sublties in Mulan - which I love, but S won't "get" for a long time).

I can't believe parents took very young children to the last Harry Potter. Talk about adult themes - scary movie for a little one. My take - if you haven't read the books, DON'T ASSUME it's okay for your child. People are stupid when it comes to movie hype. If it even has an inkling of "kidness" (animated, kids in the movie), they'll bite. Unbelievable. No 4 yr. is ready for Harry Potter 4. When we saw it in the theater, there was a whole gaggle of what loked like 7 yr. olds and under. (It looked like it may have been a class outing.) 3 adults to 11 kids. Horrible. 1/2 way through, the kids starting walking around and goofing off. The special effects were amazing and we came away very impressed, but it was not apprpriate for the kids, as they obviously weren't interested 1/2 way through. And my kid will not see it until she is old enough to read and fully understand the book.

Take all this with a grain of salt. I was a very impressionable kid. A bookworm who came out of her shell with a vengenace. (Reading is still one of my fav pastimes.) On the farm, we only had 3 tv channels. We rarely went to the movies, and my parents never let us watch scary ones. I saw a made-for-tv movie once about a girl who was kidnapped, and I had nightmares for weeks. I remember my mom saying she never should have let me watch it. Ghost story books completely freaked me out. I still dislike horror flicks (unless they are cheesy B movies). I don't think it's a bad thing to want to keep my kid from seeing what really amounts to a waste of time, energy, money and brain power.