“No, there is too much; let me sum up.” - Inigo Montoya, ‘Princess Bride’

Nope, they sure don’t make films like they used to.

“To start with, though, an archetypal example of my idea of an awful family film: I give you a movie with no few defenders: Babe: Pig in the City.”

“Awful” You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.

Seriously ... no, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY is not a family film. I don’t even think it’s as good as the first BABE. It is still a very good dark fable, on the grimm side of the coin.

Let’s just say I know a big ole pile of rancid spinach, hold the spoonful of sugar, when I see it.
 
To the pain!

Just to clear the brush ... you think BABE 2 is a bad film, absolutely—not a film inappropriate for children or (relatedly) a film tastelessly marketed?

Victor, the controlling category regarding my view of Pig in the City is “sequel to Babe.” As it stands, I am unable to critique it in isolation from its predecessor. (FWIW, Miller believed he was making a family film, and said things like ‘You can’t soft-pedal, especially with kids.”) If essentially the same movie had been made with different actors and voice talent and it were called, like, David Lynch’s Pig in the City or Pig in the City: A Spike Lee Joint, my response would be utterly different.

P.S. Hat tip to Saint Jimbob!

I have to admit to liking “Babe 2: Pig in the City” at the time I watched it, but that was before I had kids and my high-watermark for a film was Kevin Spacey in “Swimming With Sharks”. I’d probably find “Babe 2: Electric Boogaloo” dreadful now.

I didn’t watch “Aliens in the Attic” but I accidentally inflicted it on my family (Netflixed it, they watched it while I was at work) and was warned off if it by everyone. It sounded just dreadful.

“Bee Movie” was also pretty terrible, with the whole inter-species romance angle. But I guess now that Prop 8 has been nullified, we’re going to see a whole lot more of that.

“Enchanted”, “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, and “Underdog” movies were also pretty bad; “Mr. Magorium’s Boredom Imporium” put me to sleep. I also forgot before showing it to our kids that in “Bridge to Terebithia” the girl dies in the end, so my bad on that one.

I have to admit, it’s really hard to wind up watching a bad family film now, though, with SDG on the case. Some movies I didn’t expect to be good but actually were okay (but not mindblowing) were “Opal Dream”, “Nim’s Island” (though they really should have kept in the deleted scenes), and “Meet Dave” (written by MST3K alumn Bill Corbett).

I also really liked “You Kill Me” with Sir Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic Polish-American hitman, but that’s probably not a kid’s movie.

Three words, “Marley And Me”.  IMDB says it’s only 115 mins, but it seemed like three hours of shoving bamboo under my fingernails.  While maybe not a family movie, it sure was marketed as such.

Posted by Victor Morton on Thursday, Aug 5, 2010 2:19 PM (EST):

“To start with, though, an archetypal example of my idea of an awful family film: I give you a movie with no few defenders: Babe: Pig in the City.”

“Awful” You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.

according to Dictionary.com it means

1.
extremely bad; unpleasant; ugly: awful paintings; an awful job.

this is not what the author meant?

“FWIW, Miller believed he was making a family film, and said things like ‘You can’t soft-pedal, especially with kids’.”

Wow ... that’s ... surprising.

Particularly since the exact moment during the first BABE film when I said to myself “this could really be something special” was a moment that indicated the film’s mastery of a fairy-tale’s tone. I was now sure BABE would avoid boring saccharinity and not soft-pedal things (Miller is correct, in the abstract) while keeping the subject broadly appropriate and enchanting. The voiceover said something like (paraphrasing from memory) “and then the elder pigs went off to paradise on the other side of the mountain” while the image showed a truck from a sausage factory.

Denise:

I was just messing with Steve by using PRINCESS BRIDE quote to throw at him the equivalent of the old “stinks ... you mean ‘awesome,’ don’t you?” line.

The worst famil ymovie is Steve Martin’s “Cheaper by the Dozen” just an aweful portrayal of large family life!!

Sorry for multiple quotes in a row, but I remembered I had BABE #1 on my 1995 Top 10 list. I looked up what else came out that year—#2 was TOY STORY.

That, my friends, is what they call an awesome year for family films. (Of course, I have SEVEN at #3 and CRUMB at #4, so feel free to ignore me.)

@Other Victor:
I’m guessing “Batman Forever” and “Waterworld” were your #5 and #6?

Victor Zwei:

Oh please.

Actually, I’m 90 percent sure you’d dig the film at #5 and 80 percent sure you’d hate the one at #6. And even if you don’t like them (and SEVEN and CRUMB are both easy films to hate, given their surface subject matter), they are too accomplished to dismiss a la BATMAN FOREVER and WATERWORLD.

And so I don’t COMPLETELY veer this off topic ...

Basically, I think nearly all the DreamWorks cartoons are awful family films, and I’ve blessedly only seen some. Po-mo scripts full of snarky pop-culture in-jokes, celebrity voice actors basically playing themselves, nudges at cleverness, with no heart at all.

BLECH!

@Other Victor: I agree with your DreamWorks assessment for the most part (you might find this infographic from a few years back amusing). I did like “Flushed Away,” “Chicken Run,” and “Wallace and Gromit: TCOTWR” though (though you’re probably noticing a theme there). “Prince of Egypt” was really good, too, but you need to go way back for that.

Always happy to see Princess Bride get its propers.

Ha Ha, We loved Babe: Pig in the City. Some of us *enjoy* a different sort of film, and yes, some of us live in places where people are mugged. 

We can’t all live a whitewashed suburban existence.  Now can we?

Like I said in the “good family films” thread, I would nominate “Madagascar”, “Madagascar 2” and “Happy Feet” as best “family films” for homosexual partnerships.

And I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the godawful “Twilight” series as seriously bad family films. Yeah, I know they’re mostly geared towards tweens and teens, but considering the high number of kids that went to see this crapola, I’d say they deserve a dishonorable mention. Seriously, what can be more lame than a glittery emo vampire being passed off as the hottest thing since Tabasco sauce? What’s worse is the toxic message about the “perfect man” that is being sent to the minds of already deluded teens. Sad AND lame.

My choice for the worst family film I’ve seen is “James and the Giant Peach.” After all, what parent wouldn’t love to see their child accept some “magic” pills from some stranger and go tripping over hill and dale merrily enjoying the company of friendly catepillars and assorted (giant) insects? I know it’s been about 12 or more years since that thing was put out, but that’s when we as a family quit going to movies. Mr. burton’s subsequent releases have done little to change my opinion of his lack of talent.

“Some of us *enjoy* a different sort of film, and yes, some of us live in places where people are mugged. We can’t all live a whitewashed suburban existence.  Now can we?”

 
Um, wow. Strawman much, Laura? Cheers.

Two other movies that were huge disappointments were “Thunderbirds” and “Speed Racer”.  As my dh and I both had fond memories of both shows from their TV days, we had high hopes for both.  “Thunderbirds” with both Bill Paxton and Sir Ben Kingsley should have been much better.

But the worst for us would also be the remakes of both “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Yours, Mine and Ours”.  They both were awful in their writing, acting and a complete departure of their true stories.  But, worse, they ridiculed and demeaned the large family life the original stories celebrated and valued.  ?
For months after both movies’ debut, I endured friends who would wonder aloud to me if my large family was anything like those.  NO! I wanted to scream (and occasionally my dh did) and I would remind them Hollywood rarely gets real life correct; this case in particular.

Both movies are truly bad family movies in every sense of the word - not only bad to watch but bad depictions of family life.

Me-Don:

So I’m guessing you don’t much care for Lewis Carroll.

Laura:

There are ways to handle really “tough” subject matter in kids’ movies. I talk about some of them in my review here (http://vjmorton.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/i-hate-spunk/) of KIT KITTREDGE, which is set during the Great Depression and has the family go into a downward economic spiral. It’s fine to present difficult subject matter if you do so in a slightly unrelistic way, so as to respect a child’s innocence.

James and the Giant Peach: Yep, pretty bad.

Victor: Yes, Kit Kittredge presents hardship in a kid-accessible way. Other films in that category include Akeelah and the Bee, Chaplin’s Little Tramp films, Lilo & Stitch, I Am David and Bridge to Terebithia. Oh, and Old Yeller. Nobody gets mugged, but it’s a lot franker about the hardships of life than CSI: City Pig.

Ha Ha, We loved “James and the Giant Peach”. Some of us *enjoy* a different sort of stop-motion/live-action film, and yes, some of us live in places where people are given magic pills, transformed into a puppet, meet a bunch of giant anthropomorphic bugs, and then go flying around the world with them on a giant peach.

We can’t all live a whitewashed non-fruit-encased existence.  Now can we?

(PS. “James and the Giant Peach” may have been produced by Burton, I can’t recall, but it was directed by Henry Selick who went to go on to make the excellent “Coraline” so I’m willing to cut it some slack. Also, if the rumor is true, “James” was originally envisioned as an Elvis Costello rock opera (similar to how “Coraline” was originally intended to be They Might Be Giants’ “Yellow Submarine”), before Disney nixed that idea.

Since Steve mentions Chaplin’s Little Tramp films, let me put in my regular plug for silent comedies as kid-friendly entertainment. (I thought the other thread was dominated by cartoons.)

The best works of Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Larry Semon, Laurel & Hardy, Fatty Arbuckle, and others really appeal to kids who haven’t had their brains destroyed. The subject matter will always be appropriate without being saccharin or sanitized, the comedy is simple, elemental and hasn’t dated (I deliberately left off some great silent clowns whose appeal I think kids will not get—Harry Langdon, the Drews, Charley Chase). They also come in short subjects of 10 and 20 minutes, which will be easy on the attention spans.

For the three pantheon figures, the feature titles I would recommend to START the kids with (not necessarily the best) are THE GOLD RUSH or THE KID (Chaplin), STEAMBOAT BILL JR. or THE NAVIGATOR (Keaton), and THE KID BROTHER or SAFETY LAST (Lloyd).

Props victor :) Could you send me some of those magic pills you speak of? I want to grow a giant peachstalk in my backyard, and slay the giant centipede that lives at the top. This will hopefully prevent any more of the nasty things crawling into the house.
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I would add Home on the Range to the list, what a waste of animators’ talent.
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Conversely, I loved Bee Movie. I just rolled with the ‘rampant stupidity’ and LOL’ed almost the entire time (though I still think it’s kind of sad that the Smurfette Principle is almost always applied to fictional insect colonies).
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Addendum:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectGenderBender

Since you’re classifying bad family films (partially) by studio, it should be pointed out that “Happy Feet” was a Warner Bros. release, not Dreamworks.

“Since Steve mentions Chaplin’s Little Tramp films, let me put in my regular plug for silent comedies as kid-friendly entertainment. … For the three pantheon figures, the feature titles I would recommend to START the kids with (not necessarily the best) are THE GOLD RUSH or THE KID (Chaplin), STEAMBOAT BILL JR. or THE NAVIGATOR (Keaton), and THE KID BROTHER or SAFETY LAST (Lloyd).”

 
Spot on. Spot on.
 
And if I could pick just one to start with as a first introduction to silent film—for kids or adults—it would be THE KID BROTHER (unfortunately only available on DVD in a box edition, I think, but you can Netflix it). One of my top 10 films of all time. Seriously.

Edward Curtis, thx for the catch, fixed. Cheers.

For a true stinker that the whole family can hate together, I submit the 2007 New Age schlockfest “The Last Mimzy”.  Sorry guys, but that whole hidden-structure-of-the-universe thing just looks to me like a bunch of triangles.

Josh and S.A.M. I never saw it, but I remember the day my mother said the producer had called wanting to cast my older brother for the lead role. He was an inch too short. We were all disappointed until my mom saw the movie and said it stunk! Not being selected may have saved him from certain embarassment, but alas, he still stopped acting years ago.

Sorry to go slightly off-topic, but I’m guessing this weekend when I tune in to “Reel Faith” Steven will anounce THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT as one of the most poisonous films about marriage and family in many a moon. Will I be right? We shall see!

Side note: I have not seen THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT but I have heard nothing about the film that sounds promising to me, so far!

Shark Tale was the worst…for some of the same reasons as Happy Feet.
Robots was pure rubbish, full stop

I’m not familiar with any of the movies mentioned.

Now about Suess. Of course the live action isn’t going to be as good as the original cartoon-or the book for that matter-we all grew up with. 
Same with The Flintstones (stick with the classic Hanna Barbera cartoon, people).

Sequels and remakes very rarely (if ever) match up to the original.

I submit Problem Child and Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT.  Watch The Who’s version if you must be morally corrupted.  I hope Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry sue the bajeebees for misusing the title.

+1 for the “The Last Mimzy” being on the list. That was the movie that convinced me that Rainn Wilson could play Dwight Shrute and only Dwight Shrute—though I doubt that even John Michael Higgins could have saved that movie. Truly awful and boring and boringly awful.

On the subject of the “Honey I [Committed Some Grave Transgression Against Science and Nature]” movies, I have to say I enjoyed the first sequel, “Honey I Blew Up The Kid” the most. It took the whole 1950s B-movie premise and gave it some real heart. I have to admit to getting misty eyed near the end when the kid is rampaging through Vegas and just wants his mommy.

You are correct about Babe: Pig in the City.  We can put that behind us now.

I have a similar disdain for a movie called Sandlot, which struck me as degrading effort in the genre of movies such as A Christmas Story and Stand By Me.  It seemed a vulgarization of what was tolerably nostalgic and innocent and good in the other films.

I completely agree with everything @Veronica said about Twilight. There is not enough space in this comment box for me to say how bad Twilight is. I’d have to write a book in order to fully address all of my complaints.

On the subject of bad family films, a lot of those slapstick/potty humor laden movies from the 90s are ridiculous. It might be a matter of personal taste (even as a kid I liked movies where things actually HAPPENED), but looking back, “Home Alone”, “Flubber”, and others like them were just…stupid. I mean, where’s the plot? Where’s the character development? No? You’re just going to show unrealistic violence a la Itchy and Scratchy in the name of “humor”? Okay, then. :/ Oh, and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”. I only saw it once when I was 5, and thus didn’t remember it, but I recently watched a video review of the movie. In short, Ferngully is just an environmentalist rant wrapped up in a cartoon package. LAME.

Probably it is too new to make anyone’s best or worst list the film entitled “Kick Ass” makes my “ungood” film list for any age.  Have we truly descended so far into callow puerile sensibilities as to actually make this the title of a film?  Just that name makes me cringe.

LOL at STM’s mention of “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”. I though nobody else besides me remembered it! Yup, it was so bad, that even *I*, the most clueless kid on the planet, could see the New Age ideology behind it. Big surprise, considering Ted Turner and his then wife, Olivia Newton-John, where behind the idea… oh, how time flies!

I think Turner was married to Jane Fonda at the time. I know he was never married to Olivia (or I would have boycotted her records).

But let us remember the joyful films: anyone who can watch TITANIC and BRAVEHEART, especially the endings, without tears of joy streaming down his cheeks has no soul.

This thread got me thinking about the films my daughters (now 13 and 18) have enjoyed over the years, and those films that didn’t connect.  The wonderful “March of the Wooden Soldiers” with Laurel and Hardy still a favorite here, but not “Babes in Toyland”; “Finding Nemo”, but not “Shark Tale”; “Monsters Inc”, but not “Monster vs Aliens”; “The Pebble and the Penguin”, but not “Happy Feet”.  A few years ago, we discovered “The Little World of Don Camillo”, which we rented to help our then 11 year old with her reading skills (it’s subtitled).  We now own the video, and our daughter has read almost all of Giovanni Guareschi’s very entertaining (and surprisingly relevant)novels.  Mr. Greydanus’ reviews are always a go-to site for our family’s film viewing.

“I think Turner was married to Jane Fonda at the time. I know he was never married to Olivia (or I would have boycotted her records).”

You are absolutely right, mea culpa! My only excuse is that it’s been a LONG time since I watched “Ferngully” and my memory played tricks on me. :)

Santa Claus (1959), in which Santa joins forces with Merlin to fight Satan. It’s pure brain numbing nightmare fuel. I dare you to watch it without the MST3K commentary. Or, watch it on a double bill with Santa Claus Conquers The Martians and thank God your religion counsels against killing yourself.

@Veronica: LOL no one’s called me STM before. :D What’s funny is that I only just recently found out that Tim Curry was in Ferngully. Yes, Tim Curry. Because God knows that having Pennywise the Transvestite Serial Killer Dodo-clown (to sum up some of his roles) in the movie makes it better family entertainment. *shudder* Good lord, how did I survive my childhood?

@Screech: Tim Curry actually has had a great career as of late in providing voices for numerous cartoons. What’s even funnier is that on the (awesome!) cartoon series “Phineas and Ferb,” not only have Tim Curry and “Rocky Horror Picture Show” co-star Barry Bostwick contributed voices in guest spots, but the voice of the Flynns’ dad on the show is provided by Richard O’Brien, who didn’t just play Riff Raff in RHPS, he actually wrote the musical. I guess they just need to get Susan Sarandon on P&F now to call it a full house.

@victor: Valid point. I guess it just feels weird for me. I’m still used to him as the green-teethed guy in Criminal Minds/the Dodo in SyFy’s “Alice”. And then I saw clips of him as the cross dresser and part of me died. Of course, he *did* do the audio books for almost every “A Series of Unfortunate Events” book, so that redeems him a little.

I guess it could be worse. Cillian Murphy played a cross-dresser too once, but he actually looked like a girl. D:

“The Santa Clause” film. I found parts amusing, but the ‘family’ part was cynical pap.

“Probably it is too new to make anyone’s best or worst list the film entitled “Kick !@#$%” makes my “ungood” film list for any age.  Have we truly descended so far into callow puerile sensibilities as to actually make this the title of a film?  Just that name makes me cringe.”

See, I was sorely disappointed after I read the plot summary and discovered that the film could in no way live up to its name. The term seems to have be much milder among fanboys/gamers (though I prefer kick-awesome, which better describes its current usage).

Oh, and I’ll add the ABC version of “Once Upon a Mattress” to the list of bad films.

I think this might be a good place to bring up the Home Alone sequels. My favorite is Home Alone 11: Milking a Franchise.

“I think this might be a good place to bring up the Home Alone sequels. My favorite is Home Alone 11: Milking a Franchise.”

Exactly! And what do they do when the kid gets too old? It’s so weird when they just introduce a new kid. Besides, you’d think his parents would’ve learned after the first movie NOT TO LEAVE THEIR KID ALONE LIKE THAT.

I love how a good portion of parents in these movies are morons. Can we spell unrealistic, children?

“But let us remember the joyful films: anyone who can watch TITANIC and BRAVEHEART, especially the endings, without tears of joy streaming down his cheeks has no soul.”

Titanic was a joke. I was begging for Jack to die from the moment the iceberg hit. So…tears of joy at the end, or perhaps tears of boredom.

Braveheart, on the other hand, is a moving classic well worth watching, and it always stirs me greatly at the end, though never to tears. As good a moment as it makes at the end when the princess tells Longshanks that she carries Wallace’s child, I hate that they bothered to bring something like that into it. That and a few other crude instances keep it from being anything but an adult movie, with possible exceptions for mature teens.

My worst family movie wasn’t made for the whole family, but I remember our whole family (teens and above at that point) went when it was billed as a touching movie about a boy at an orphanage. The Cider House Rules was by far the sneakiest deception of billing and advertisement I’ve ever seen coming from Hollywood. The previews painted a moving story about a boy moving away from the orphanage out on his own, having put his semi-siblings to bed sweetly and lovingly for years as the oldest orphan among them. When we saw it, the only reason we didn’t walk out was a shattered hope for redemption when this oldest child returned him to murder the unborn youngest of his would-be orphanage siblings. Despicable. Michael Caine and Toby McGuire make me cringe to this day when they appear in movies.

Micah,

“Michael Caine and Toby McGuire make me cringe to this day when they appear in movies. “

It might interest you to know (if you don’t already) that the original “Alfie,” which starred Caine, featured a subplot about an abortion, and I don’t think it was meant to be sympathetic. (FYI, I haven’t seen the film, I am only aware of this being in it.)

David, I’ve never heard of Alfie and had to go look it up. I doubt though, that he is pro-life now, even if he had been in the 60’s. If I recall correctly (and it’s been years because I’m not the type to record these shows), his Academy Award acceptance speech for the movie was also politically charged and, I suspect, politically motivated, since I think the popular favorite that year in the minds of most Americans was Haley Joel Osment for his role on The Sixth Sense.

Yes, it is unlikely that Caine is pro-life, but the contradiction is interesting.

G-Force is not only the worst family movie of all time, it is the worst movie of all time. Not only does it star Nicholas Cage, it feels like it was written by a Drunken Proctologist. Also on My list
Any Scooby-Doo movie other than the original series
Stuart Little 2
The Santa Clause 3 (Save me!)
Eragon (Not awful, just mind-bogglingly boring)
The Land Before Time (Yes, I know. I used to love it.)
Pokemon: The First Movie
The Pink Panther (Steve Martin. Ohh, please, no!)
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command- almost as bad as G-Force. A hokey, derivative, PC blasphemy of Toy Story
I’m sure I’ll think of more

“Buzz Lightyear of Star Command- almost as bad as G-Force. A hokey, derivative, PC blasphemy of Toy Story”

Hokey, derivative, etc., I’ll certainly give you. But why PC? And why blasphemous of Toy Story? It allows Buzz to be more than he was in the original film, not less. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. You don’t have to take it seriously.

These movies are barely watchable as a movie buff bachelor, but are just too much as a Father.  Between Netflix and Pius Media, there are tons of decent,wholesome, moral movies, and many in B&W. Intelligent dialogue, no nudity nor on-screen light-porno, action, etc. Why subject your kids minds to todays nonsense.

I’ll probably get my head handed to me for saying this, but I was very disappointed in two recent, highly recommended films - “Where the Wild Things Are ” and “Ponyo” .
I could not force myself to finish “WTWTA”. By the time the Wild Things showed up, I was so sick of that bratty kid I was half-hoping they’d eat him.
I did finish “Ponyo”. I will say one good thing - the animation was lovely. It was such a shame that such incredible skill would be wasted on such a disjointed mess.
Worse, the plot, such as it is, is awful. A 5-year-old girl deserts her family for a 5-year-old boy she’s just met. She gets approval for this from her absentee parent mother, and her father, who has apparently been taking care of her and her sisters, gets mocked and abused for wanting her back.
Even more disturbing, the mother of the boy leaves the two kids alone in a house where flood waters are rising !

I don’t even have any children, but it seems very irresponsible to promote this as a ‘family film’.

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was a TV series, not a movie (though they may have put out the pilot as a direct-to-DVD), and was a faithful (to the Toy Story movies) recreation of what the Buzz Lightyear cartoon Andy would have watched would have been like, if they’d made one (which, actually, they did… meta!). Plus, Patrick Warburton played Buzz, which automatically makes it awesome.

Also, Stuart Little 2 was way better than the first one. Plus, it had Hugh Laurie in it, which automatically makes it awesome.

I think anyone who is upset by the 5-year-old puppy love friendship in “Ponyo” should be absolutely mortified by the fact that Sosuke is DATING A FISH. In all seriousness, though, it might not hold up with Miyazaki’s best, but the wave-running sequence more than justfies its exsitence, and that sequence alone deserves to be in the animation hall of fame along side with anything Disney ever did (say, in Pinnochio).

Yes, the wave running was cool.
It was not the ‘puppy love’ in “Ponyo” that bothered me, but the way it was exalted above the love of a father for his child. We are already pushing the idea that life revolves around instant romance to teenagers, (i.e. “Twilight”). I find it even more disturbing when such a pernicious idea is being presented to the tinkertoy set in such a pretty package.

Anyone remember Return to Oz?  My mom took me to see it when it came out in the theatre, and I’m still having nightmares.

Except that the Sosuke-Ponyo relationship was one of friendship. They are just both young enough that they can use the word ‘love’ without the connotations we attach to it as teens & adults. Also, Ponyo is part goldfish, part human, part sea wizard, and part sea goddess, how do we know what the proper place for her to live is? She doesn’t dislike humanity like her father, but she isn’t part of the sea like her mother. She can’t spend her whole life in an aquarium with her sisters, which seems to be what her father would want.
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It’s a bit of a Space Whale Aesop really: “Remember kids, friendship with members of another species is more important than spending your life in an aquarium.”

Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Leslie Ann Warren was a great version, complete with beautiful music.  The Walton’s Christmas Homecoming, one of the originals with Patricia O’Neal was a classic too.

I hated Home Alone when I first saw it.  I thought that it was completely violent and not so much slap-stick.  Movie makers think that they can throw in catchy music and they have an instant hit!  Unfortunately, sometimes it does work like that.

My kids always complain when I bring out an “oldie but goodie” but they usually enjoy it.

We watched The Count of Monte Cristo lately and loved it.

@ Pachyderminator: I think it had some sort of women’s libber message in there. It’s been so long since I’ve watched it. Toy Story is in my top five of greatest films of all time, so anything that demeans it is utterly wrong.
@ Victor: I think there was a direct-to-video movie, and the TV series came afterwards. I was a child when I watched it, so I don’t know. The only good part that I remember was the beginning where Woody and Buzz are looking at the movie case, and Woody says “You don’t look so fat when they draw you that way.”
And here’s some more worst movie contenders.
The Swan Princess and The Swan Princess 3. Fake Disney movies are awful. Period.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Words do not describe how much I hate this movie. I’m still trying to decide whether this or G-force is worse. Dick Van Dyke couldn’t act, couldn’t sing, and wasn’t even a good chimneysweep. And for goodness’ sake, how many times do they have to sing that song. Ughh

Please, the entire premise of Bee movie is a fallacy.  Bees make so much honey, they don’t care if people take it.  I love movies that misrepresent reality to my children!  Sure, as long as there are no boobs in it. 

Ponyo is not Miyazaki’s best film, but children being alone in the world without parent is hardly a new theme in Children’s literature.  Narnia? If the parents were there then there would be no story.  Stories are a safe place for children to imagine what it would be like to be independent. 

And Dear Mr. Steven D. Greydanus, what is fallacious about my assertion?

Fun story: my second cousin was taken to see “The Witches” (based on the book by Roald Dahl) when she was a kid. She was so traumatized that she started having panic attacks every time she saw an elderly woman that she thought could be a witch. Her parents eventually had to take her to a therapist at the local church who armed her with a crucifix-bracelet and assurances that God would not allow witches to harm her.

So yeah, don’t show “The Witches” to your kids. :S

Dear Laura,
 
Thanks for asking. I’m happy to say that nothing is fallacious about your assertion. It is incontestably true that some of us enjoy a different sort of film, that some of us live in places where people are mugged, and that we can’t all live a whitewashed suburban existence.
 
Not only are all three assertions true, I think I can comfortably say that they all apply to me. I definitely enjoy a different sort of film, and I live in a place where people are mugged, not in a whitewashed suburban existence. I am not at all against movies in general or even family films in general that depict people living non-suburban, non-whitewashed existences or even being mugged.
 
The reason I hate Babe 2: Die Harder is not that it depicts people living living non-suburban, non-whitewashed existences or even being mugged, but that it stains the world and characters of Babe with grotesquerie, perversity, freakishness, menace, chaos, degradation, and yes, mugging.
 
All of this is, I contend, an abomination in a Babe sequel—but that’s not the same as saying that I don’t want to see any movie, or even any family film, that includes menace or mugging or non-whitewashed, non-suburban existence, or that I don’t like movies that are “different.” That’s why I felt your comments were addressed to a straw man rather than my actual position. Hope that helps.

Well, Steven, can I remind you of another great story that had 2 people made perfectly who also had to leave this perfect garden?  Oh happy fault.

And if the story you refer to, Laura, were to end, like Babe 2, with the mere restoration of the status quo, putting its character through hell with no more glorious restoration or redemption in the offing, it would be a dreadful story too—almost the worst story imaginable, in fact.
 
Felix culpa, I can deal with. Babe 2 is no felix, no culpa. No culpa, because Hoggett just suffers a catastrophic accident through no fault of his own. (I know, accidents happen, but this one is gratuitously rough and violent, more like a live-action Road Runner/Coyote catastrophe than anything resembling reality. Don’t tell me some of us live in places where things like this actually happen. We don’t.)
 
And no felix either, because it doesn’t lead to something greater and more glorious than what already existed or was possible without the suffering. Like I said above, it’s just one damn thing after another until it stops. Babe and the Hoggetts are no different than they were in the beginning. They’ve just stopped suffering, is all. It stinks.