I lived on movies when I was a kid. It was the 80's. Michael J. Fox ruled the teen scene and I could not tell the difference between Helen Hunt and Jodie Foster. John Candy made me laugh and a little Bill Murray went a long way. That's still true.
Recently I started digging up those old movies and attempting to watch them with my youngest. Just the PG ones so why not? Holy cow! It's hard to believe it, but I really am from a different generation. Oh the swearing! Back to the Future, that wonderful, funny, exciting time travel movie with Marty McFly skipped the f-word but that's about it. That doesn't even touch on the big high school bully being far worse than a jerk. Biff, no means no.
So where are we now with family-geared movies? I recently read The Martian and loved the hell out of it. The first line of the book hooked me, the line with the f-bomb so perfectly placed it cracked me up right there in the book section of the grocery store. I couldn't wait for Matt Damon to give me a whole new take on the story because that's how I feel about books to movies. It was good, great even, but it felt watered down. The tempered language annoyed me and stood out as blatant rating chasing. I imagined a school of persnickety old looking ladies who aren't old sitting around a table pointing their fingers at each scene that needs to be cut in order to keep a PG-13 rating. At the same time, I want something my son can watch that won't give him nightmares or rob even a minute of his childhood.
I'm thinking we're fighting the deluge of information we can't control that pummels the kids of today with cherry picked hardships...or we're just holding onto their childhood by our fingernails. I love visiting the movies I couldn't get enough of when I was a kid, but the old line "You can't go home again," sneaks into my thoughts now and again.
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