Honea Express

Atticus and I went to see Ice Age 2- The Meltdown. It was really cute and funny. What wasn’t so cute and funny were the previews for upcoming features that they ran before our movie. Over the Hedge, The Wild, RV, A Tale of Two Kitties, any of which may or may not be a good film, were all reduced to burp, fart and poop jokes. The only film advertised that managed to stay above such cheap antics was The Simpons Movie which did have Homer on the couch in his underwear, but isn’t he always on the couch in his underwear?

What bothered me about the other “gags” is not that they were crude, I can get behind crude if it is well played and actually funny, but these were neither. In a theater filled with families and teenagers there were very little laughs at any of the body function jokes. There were a few cases of “that’s gross” and similar comments, but few chuckles.

Am I getting old? Of course. That does not excuse my distaste for poor taste. I still appreciate teaching my 2 year old the “pull my finger” bit and other classics. The sad fact is, that four major movies from big studios, are all lined up for spring and summer release and their respective trailers, which usually contain some of the funnier scenes from the film, are all resorting to cheap attempts for cheap laughs. Attempting and failing. This does not bode well for our summer fare. The movie industry is constantly crying about the lack and constant decline of ticket sales, and yet they expect us to fork over our hard-earned money so our kids can watch squirrels burp and bears soil themselves.

Children have enough opportunities to learn bad habits and bad timing, that’s what television and uncles are for. As for our boys, we’ll spend our money elsewhere, where the jokes are jokes, burps are accidents, and maybe, just maybe, someone will pull a finger and it will actually be funny.