Movies and Parenting

I think it's safe to say that with the arrival of our daughter Josephine approximately ten months ago, my movie watching habits have changed dramatically. Where in the past I would be watching almost a movie a night, with more on the weekends, now it's a lot less.

I don't write this to say that I miss watching movies. I'm writing this to point out a few things that happen when you have kids in your house. Granted Josie is only ten months old at the moment, so I'm sure additions to this list will appear in the future. But so far, these are the things that I have noticed.

1. Parental Discretion

There might not be more room in hell, but the dead can't walk the earth just yet and the Terminator will have to be back after 8pm. While your baby is awake, it's going to be something kid friendly on TV. Doesn't explain why we watch reality TV though.

2. Attention

You finally got that movie you really wanted to see? And it is suitable for kids? You won't be able to watch that during the day either. You'll be playing peekaboo and have people crawling on you too much to pay attention to the movie. Rewind will be your friend. For a while anyway. Before you give up and decide to wait till baby's asleep.

3. How Long Is This Movie Anyway?

So now the baby is asleep and it's time to watch the movie. And also when you realise that the length of the movie is not the same as the time it takes to watch the movie. A movie that has a running time of 1h 30min might very well take closer to three hours to finish. With this pace Frodo's trip to Mt. Doom might very well take a week.

4. Volume

Also, when baby is asleep, you can't really have the TV blaring too loud. (Unless you live in a huge mansion where the baby sleeps in his/her own wing, then blare away.) Which can hinder your enjoyment of the movie somewhat. That Inception BRAAM! doesn't sound as impressive with the TV turned down. Which brings me to...

5. Movie-Watching Parent's Best Friend

Subtitles. That's right, kiddies. Less confusion during the movie. Everyone wins. Especially if you're watching the movie with the other parent. "What did he say?" "Something about the woman." "What about the woman, was it important?" "I don't know, I'm trying to watch the movie!" "Me too, that's why I'm asking!" Trust me, subtitles save relationships. If your movie doesn't have subtitles, save it for a time when you're alone. Which will probably be in about 18-20 years.

But these are just my observations, maybe some families are different. And as I said, I'm sure there will be things added here. I'm getting the feeling that in about five years, I'll be able to recite all of Lion King in my sleep.

Paul

What happens when geeks make a movie for geeks? It's should have everything a geek would want. And when it comes to Greg Mottola's Paul, it does have a lot of geekery in it. Written by and starring geek gods Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Paul is a road trip comedy, that pays tribute to almost everything that geeks hold dear. There's references to Star Trek, Star Wars, Steven Spielberg and a lot of other things that don't start with the letter S.

Pegg and Frost star as two English guys, who are visiting the US for the San Diego Comic Con and then go on a road trip to see all the famous UFO sites in the country. Not too much later, they end up meeting Paul(voiced by Seth Rogen), an alien who has escaped captivity after 60 years and now wants to go home. The guys agree to help Paul and end up being chased by the FBI, rednecks and a weird religious guy.

The movie has a lot of credit to it. Pegg and Frost are familiar for having done Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Greg Mottola struck it big with Superbad and Seth Rogen voicing Paul was a perfect fit for the character. Adding to that, some of the funniest comedians currently working, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader et al. Sounds like the makings of a very funny movie, right?

Wrong. Well, mostly wrong anyway. There's a lot of things going for the movie. Main one of these is Paul himself. Arguably the best CGI character since Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, Paul is not a particularly fresh take on aliens, but a very fun one. Which is good, because there's not a lot to the main characters. Neither Pegg or Frost have much to do in the movie and even during the climax of the movie, they're handing the fight to the supporting actors.

Which is where the movie shines the most. Wiig, Bateman and friends bring their best to their roles. To be fair, the supporting characters are written better than the leads, especially Wiig's character, who actually has something resembling a story arc. Bateman does his FBI agent role very well and enjoys playing something a bit against his typical role.

The main problem of the movie is that it's so much geared towards the geek community. It feels like Pegg and Frost took a bunch of classic sci-fi movie lines and built a movie around them. This comes off the most at the last half an hour of the movie, which seems to be littered with said lines. What's more, they don't do anything new with them, they just use the lines as they are and expect people to laugh just for recognizing the line.

Another problem is the tone of the movie. Going from a heartfelt scene to the easy swearing and piss jokes is kind of jarring. It feels the movie has an identity crisis at times due to this. But I have to say, the swearing in this movie is the most colourful I've heard in a while.

There's a classic alien comedy buried somewhere in Paul. It's too bad the script seems to have every idea Pegg and Frost came up thrown in there and the movie itself gets buried after tons of geek references. Added to this very lackluster main characters, and your movie is in trouble. Luckily Paul and the supporting characters save the movie somewhat and make the movie watchable. My rating for Paul: 5/10