Mama's (and Daddies) don't let your babies go to grown up movies. Please!

If we take the kids to a family movie at the regular theater, it's usually fine. We expect some noise but it's usually not bad. If my wife and I go to the movies together, we usually go to movies that don't have large audiences of kids/teenagers and we can usually enjoy the film.

We have sworn off going to the on-post theater, however. At the family movies people just let their little kids and teenagers run all over the theater being as loud as they please. And people just don't care what movie they take their kids to, either. We went and saw Couples Retreat, just the two of us. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs had played the night before and some people thought they were playing it again. When they found out the movie had changed, they still took their 2-5 year olds to the movie anyway. Sure, it was PG-13 not R, but did your 3 year old really need to watch Jon Favreau get an erection on the massage table? I don't think so (I don't think I really needed to see it either, actually).

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I went to see Terminator Salvation in a theater. There was a child who balled their head off through the whole movie.

When i went to see jackass and machete there was like 10 year olds in the theater.

I went with my parents to see The Graduate. That was a real racy movie for its time. The cenorship restrictions had just been lifted and there were no movie ratings yet. But my mother iknew what the movie was like because one of her sisters gave her a detailed synopsis. My parents never cared what movies I saw.

First and foremost, it's awkward for the kid. I don't know what kind of stuff would actually be "scarring", but even the littlest raunchiness makes me feel uncomfortable when around my parents. I can't think right off hand why this would be... some psychoanalytical theory, I'm sure.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

I was quite young when I saw Kentucky Fried Movie at the drive in... of course I should not have been there, but that dmn talking cocknballz should not have been there eyether - yes i said eyethere - or did i??

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I wanted to ball too seing how awful it was and tarnishing the legacy of the first 2 Terminators.

Don't blame the kid. He recognized that debacle.

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"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter." - Ernest Hemingway

I say kids should stop being a pussys and learn to deal with the emotional trauma of violent films. Half are just going to wind up wacked out murderers anyway, ya dig?

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My mom stupidly watched Swordfish in front of me. I was scared of everything from the Wicked Witch to my shadow when I was little, so seeing bullet ridden bodies haunted me for years.

I was always amazed the number of my friends in elementary school that watched horror movies. Everyone was always saying it was good thing because then they weren't always scared of movies. Doesn't seem so to me.

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The way I see it, being exposed to all that violence and sex at young ages, if it doesn't traumatize them, it desensitizes them to it. Maybe not every kid, but many of them. They see violence as fun and sex as something inconsequential. The real life acts hold no emotional sway over them. I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated films as a kid unless it was one my parents saw first and decided it was ok. I have the same rules for my kids. My teenager has gotten around the rule a couple of times by watching movies at a friends house where they didn't have the same rules, but mostly he's accepted it and is a perfectly functional kid. The older he gets (16 now) the more movies he's allowed to watch, although we don't tend to watch a lot of R-rated films anyway so it's not too much of an issue.

^ It's pretty much the same at my house, Mikey. My dad was pretty much more lax on the violence and language because my sister and I understood what was expected of us. I'm 16 and I still avoid movies with sex scenes and overly graphic dialouge.

Hahaha agreed! at least the kid could recognize a awful movie.

Kids balling in a theatre? For shame.

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