Tag: toddlers

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Children Drew Humor Movies

Disney Project 2014: Mulan (sort of)

Movie: Frozen Mulan

Release year: 1998

You may be asking, “Why did it take you 3 weeks to watch Mulan?” I’ll tell you why. This is why:

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B watches Frozen at day care, and he enjoys watching the YouTube videos of “Let It Go” and “Love Is an Open Door” (and all the rest). So we thought maybe we’d skip ahead a bit and get him the DVD of Frozen to have at home.

That movie is basically on repeat in our house now.

I literally just have to take him outside when I want to stop watching it. He adores it. He holds the DVD case up to the TV when he wants to watch it. He knows how to open and close the DVD player, plus turn on the TV using the remote. He has gestures and words he says/imitates at different parts of the movie. He is so into it.

It’s adorable.

I’ve been trying to be really vigilant about the TV watching though…because I’m not exaggerating, he would like it to be running on a 24/7 loop. So it’s been an effort to make sure that’s not the case. But it’s really, really cute.

What does this mean for Mulan? It means, sorry, Mulan. It means we tried to watch it. We turned it on. And we watched B run out of the room. Then he came back, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the bedroom. He would rather read Dr. Seuss’s ABC than watch Mulan.

I tried to watch at least my favorite parts (Hello, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and a capella final verse). But it was just like the old days. We were basically watching the movie in 5-second increments while we chased him back and forth through the living room.

But turn on Frozen? He’s stretched out on the couch, blanket in one hand, Mickey Mouse in the other, practically singing along to the opening choral notes.

I kind of like that he’s so into this thing that is world-wide phenomenon. It’s really cute. I can see how parents get sick of certain movies though. Drew and I have seen Frozen so many times over the last month. We are constantly pointing out facial expressions we like on background characters, picking at loose plot threads, making jokes about certain inflections…which is a cool experience for all three of us to be sharing.

I just wish that we could watch a different Disney movie once in awhile.

We’re also still a couple movies behind at this point. But at least I know when we get to the 53rd movie on the list, B will definitely sit still and enjoy it.

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Categories
Children Memoir Movies

Disney Project 2014: Hercules

Movie: Hercules

Release year: 1997

Man, we are catching up to the present-day. We have 18 weekends left in 2014, and 18 movies to go.

I remember when Hercules came out, my bff and I watched it constantly. I remember spending the night at her house and watching this and Mulan back to back. These are great movies. We quoted almost every single line that Meg says. She was such a break from the typical Disney princess, who, although getting stronger and more independent, hadn’t quite yet attained that level of sass and sarcasm.

And WHY isn’t this a Broadway show yet?? It’s perfect for one. It would open with a scrim down, with a Grecian vase painted on it, and the opening lines would begin. When the muses “come alive,” they’d be behind the scrim and then it would rise up and they’d take over. It would be so great. Act I would close with Hercules defeating the Hydra – Act II opens with Zero to Hero. COME ON PEOPLE. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

The best song, hands down, is I Won’t Say I’m In Love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bEWXs_FX4

Did you know LaChanze (the original Ti Moune in Once on This Island) is one of the muses? She’s the second-shortest one. With the kinda spiky hair. Love her!

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Movie: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Release year: 1996

My reaction: I didn’t grow up watching this one, but I have seen it on TV several times recently. The music is pretty great. And there are lots of little Easter eggs, like Belle and Aladdin‘s magic carpet in the opening song, and the fact that the two male gargoyles are named Victor and Hugo.

This one is super religious – all about judgment and heaven and hell. It’s an interesting perspective for a Disney movie. I like that they went there.

We don’t own this, and didn’t get around to purchasing it, so thank you very much, Netflix streaming!

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He wouldn’t sit still for a picture – just kept rolling around and laughing. =)

 

Categories
Children Movies Parents

Disney Project 2014: Pocahontas

Movie: Pocahontas

Release year: 1995

So all year, my dad has been saying how Pocahontas is a lame Disney movie, and how the music is forgettable and weak. So I had this hope that maybe when Pocahontas week rolled around, we could make my parents watch it with us.

It somehow worked out! They were here babysitting last week, so we broke our normal weekend movie-watching schedule, and dragged the high chair into the living room so we could eat dinner during it. I don’t want to speak for them…but I’d say they loved it.

If I had to guess, I would say my dad would tell me, “You were right, this is actually a really great movie. The music is quite memorable and clever. I highly enjoyed my viewing of Disney’s Pocahontas.”

And this picture is totes the best:

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Categories
Children Memoir Nonfiction

Playground antics

We’ve been to the playground every day this weekend (I’m counting Friday as part of the weekend). B is starting to really into climbing on play structures and going down slides, although I still prefer it if no one else is around. Too many wild and crazy five-year-olds running around make me nervous. And you know what’s weird? There’s often no one else around this particular playground.

Friday was a pretty nice day, though, so it got a little crowded. Among the other kids playing there was a little girl with a large ziplock bag full of little plastic trucks. B ran up to her and she handed him one. Her dad started interfering.

“Can you SHARE that TRUCK?” he asked, and I thought he was asking her, but then he said, “Did you say PLEASE? Say PLEASE.” Um, are you talking to my kid? She forced it on him – he doesn’t even want your cheap truck. Except apparently he does, because I had to chase him around the playground and then trick him to get it back. I wanted to give it back to the little girl, because this unfinished transaction was making me supremely uncomfortable.

The dad asked me how old B was. “He’s 22 months,” I said. The dad told me that “Maddy just turned one in May.” Holy cow, I was thinking, she is a huge and much advanced 15-month-old. I stole a glance at Beau. “Oh, two, I mean two,” he corrected. Whew.

I couldn’t handle being around them anymore, with their pressure to have nice manners and their kids with trendy names (their son’s name was like Aerys or something), so I pretended like we had to go home and start dinner (true) immediately (less true) and we left. Luckily we were there before them so they didn’t know we had only been there for about 25 minutes.

On Saturday, there was only one other little girl there, a 4-year-old who said, “Hi, what’s your name?” and when B said something incomprehensible back to her, she just looked at me with a confused look on her face. Adorable. Later, she asked me if she could play with him. Also adorable. Her mom said, “You have to ask him first if he wants a hug.” Then to us, “She’s a hugger.” Later, B went up to her and hugged her from behind. Everyone seemed chill about it.

Today, we met a mom with a 20-month-old girl. The two kids didn’t actually interact as much as I would have expected. But maybe we’ll run into them again. Today was a pretty wet day, and the slides had little pools at the bottom. We decided to go for it anyway, and put B down a slide. I’m glad I was ready for him at the bottom because he shot down that thing like he was greased up. He seemed to like it.

I remember long lazy weekends of sleeping in, reading, watching Law & Order: SVU, and doing not much else. But this is fun too. (Actually yesterday I spent all of naptime ignoring toys on the floor and dishes in the sink, and I lay in bed and read The Clan of the Cave Bear. That was nice.)

Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Oliver & Company

Movie: Oliver & Company

Release year: 1988

My reaction: This is the second time I’ve ever seen this movie. And I’ll be honest with you, I watched maybe 10 minutes of it. I mean, it was playing and everything but we spent a lot of time chasing B around the house.

I think I got the gist though. It’s based on Dickens’ Oliver Twist, with music by Billy Joel. Very 1988. I’m not sure where Jenny’s parents are – maybe they went into that backstory but I missed it. It’s a decent Disney movie, but I get why this is the second time I’ve seen it.

We missed a couple weeks, due to some travel. But we’re ready to jump back into the second half of the year and watch some of the best Disney movies there are.

Seriously though, B was in time out like five times during this one. I guess he just wasn’t in a movie mood.

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Categories
Nonfiction Not awesome

Willy Wonka and the Alarming Ultimatum

I was thinking about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, with Gene Wilder). It’s scary, right? There’s lots of stuff in there that used to give me nightmares. Like for instance:

A bunch of kids and their parents are invited into a creepy factory, led through a maze from which they presumably couldn’t find their way out if they wanted to, and then the kids are picked off one by one. This is like the epitome of the weird, not-really-for-children movies that our generation grew up on.

I was particularly struck by Augustus Gloop. I think I might have a touch of claustrophobia sometimes. Sometimes I (still) have nightmares about being stuck in a small hole or trying to crawl out of a tight space. And I blame that chocolate tube.

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But the other day it struck me for the first time. That would be the worst experience to go through as a parent. And these parents are relatively casual about their kids’ disappearances. Why wouldn’t Mrs. Gloop have jumped into the chocolate river to save her son? I guess Mr. Salt jumped down the bad egg chute after Veruca, and Mrs. Tee Vee fainted when her son had become a tiny television version of himself. But these are really horrible things happening to these kids, and it seems like that would be almost more of a punishment for the parents than for their offspring.

I guess that could be the point. The kids are growing into unlikable and flawed human beings, but they’re still just children. It’s really their parents’ fault for letting these things happen.

I’m not saying every person’s problem is invariably their parents’ fault. But in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, we are shown four different cases of bad parenting that ultimately result in the family being punished. It’s an allegory to warn parents (and those who may become parents) to keep on their toes and raise good, well-behaved, considerate children.

(Conversely, Charlie Bucket is frequently called a “good kid,” and he’s parented hard-core by a mother and four grandparents. He makes the “right” choice, and is rewarded handsomely for it. Parents, take heed.)

This movie came out 43 years ago. I wonder whether it’s working. It’s definitely given me something to think about.

Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Great Mouse Detective

Movie: The Great Mouse Detective

Release year: 1986

My reaction: I don’t think of this as being one of my standard Disney favorite movies, but I really like it. Maybe partly because I love Sherlock Holmes, so I enjoy all the little references. But this is just a great movie.

It does have some of the scariest moments of all the later Disney movies – Fidget is responsible for most of them, from being illuminated by a flash of lightning in the window, to bursting out of a doll’s cradle, to dressing up as Olivia. He’s terrifying. BUT, he’s also goofy.

So is Ratigan, the villain, played by Vincent Price. I mean, he’s scary, and he has a giant pet cat to whom he feeds everyone who irritates him. But he also has plenty of little moments where he’s flawed, fickle, and funny. If The Black Cauldron felt like Disney starting to figure out what the next couple decades was going to look like, then The Great Mouse Detective is Disney feeling confidently along that path.

Drew theorizes that the reason that this movie didn’t become a huge hit is that it came out the same year as An American Tail. Which EVERYONE saw. Right? Can you sing me at least three songs from An American Tail? I bet you can. Can you name a single song from The Great Mouse Detective? Oh well.

The awesome thing about today is that it’s June 30 – halfway through 2014. And with The Great Mouse Detective, we have officially watched half of the Disney movie list!

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Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Black Cauldron

Movie: The Black Cauldron

Release year: 1985

My reaction: Have you seen this movie? Chances are good you haven’t. I don’t know why no one has seen it. The Black Cauldron is starting to feel like the Disney movies of my childhood (which I would say start with The Little Mermaid). The animation looks familiar and the story arcs feel familiar. It’s all there.

This one is kind of a weird mishmash, though. They are constantly introducing new characters, but I’m not sure to what end. To be fair, it’s not like we’re sitting down and quietly watching these movies from start to finish. We miss big chunks of them, when B needs to drag us into another room and show us something, etc. He seems to especially need things during the ends of the movies. Mostly that’s okay, because we are super familiar with the movies. But with The Black Cauldron, there was a lot of “Wait, who are those fairies?” “Wait, why is that sword magical?” “Wait, what happened to Hen Wen?”

Also, this one is surprisingly scary. The villain – the Horned King – is purely evil, there’s nothing funny about him. He has no snarky sidekicks or charming one-liners, like most Disney villains have. There’s  moment early on when the main character, a young man named Taran, is knocked to the ground by some dragons. When he gets up, his mouth is bleeding. You wouldn’t see that in Tangled, just saying.

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The best part about watching The Black Cauldron was the series of selfies I took of the two of us, as I tried to get a good picture for this post. He was in a really smiley mood yesterday.

Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Fox and the Hound

Movie: The Fox and the Hound

Release year: 1981

My reaction: This is yet another one of those Disney movies that I’ve seen maybe once. So I was very emotionally involved in, say, the opening credits, where Tod’s mother sacrifices herself for him right off the bat. Awww! I was also surprised later at the ferocity with which Copper vows to get revenge on Tod for Chief’s injuries. It wasn’t his fault! Just be friends, guys!

I just had to look up The Fox and the Hound 2, which I assumed would be like Lady and the Tramp 2, and focus on the offspring on the first movie’s main characters. But it actually takes place during Tod and Copper’s childhood together (which I thought was only like a week long), during which Copper is “tempted to join a band of singing stray dogs.” LOL, “direct to video” indeed.

Fun fact: Did you know that the name Tod (or Todd) originates from Middle English and means “fox”? Widow Tweed, the lonely crazy old woman who adopts baby Tod and is basically the cause of all this trouble because she doesn’t know that foxes aren’t tame, says she names him Tod because he’s “such a toddler.” But I think that Disney probably used the name because of its origins. They’re clever like that.

Drew says: I don’t think that puppy [Copper] is cute. I don’t like that his eyes are all sunken in.

And here is it. The best picture we could get.

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