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16July
2011

this moment in time

maura @ 10:54 pm

Not too long ago we started to wonder whether Gus is old enough to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. I have to say that even though I loved it, the ending of the movie scared the crap out of me when I saw it in the theater lo those many summers ago. I was 12 and Gus is 9 1/2, but everything’s scarier in movie theaters at night, right? And it’s only rated PG, for goodness sake! (Though I bet it would be PG-13 now, easy.)

The other thing is that he’s apparently already seen at least part of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which I think is perfectly appropriate even with its PG-13 rating, though I was somewhat dismayed to hear that he’d seen it at school. Sometimes they show movies during recess when it’s raining too hard to go outside, and I’m not sure that’s such a great flick for littler kids. I didn’t believe Gus at first when he told us he’d seen it, but then he said: “Yes I have! There was a huge explosion and a man inside a refrigerator.” So there you have it.

In the midst of thinking about all of this we thought, say, what about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Neither of us remembered much about the movie other than it was vastly inferior to #1 and #3 (and #4, too, frankly). But there’s no melty face ending, and since we have the DVDs of 1-3 we decided to fire it up one night and take a look.

O. M. G. You know, I think this is actually the worst movie ever made. For complete serious! It’s both racist (the Chinese! the Indians!) AND sexist (you just want to smack the whiny Kate Capshaw pretty much constantly). The plot jumps around and is ridiculously stupid. And, here’s the kicker: it’s not actually about archaeology at all. There’s no archaeology in it! At the beginning Indy’s in China delivering some relic to a gangster, and then he ends up in India saving people from some sort of ritual death. No. Archaeology. Anywhere.

We still haven’t decided whether to show Gus Raiders, but suffice it to say we will be skipping right over Temple of Doom. The worst case scenario, of course, is that he would actually *like* it. Just ask any 40-ish yr old Star Wars fan with young kids about Jar-Jar and watch for the sad face.

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2 comments on “this moment in time”

Anne (16 July 2011 at 11:39 pm)

We didn’t let Max see Temple of Doom for a long time, based more on the fact that it sucked than on the ick factor (which is huge, don’t get me wrong). He finally did see it and agreed it was stu. He’s seen the other two a million times, probably Crusade 2 million…

Kate Capshaw?! WTF? Karen Allen was so full of amazingness, then we got what, exactly? Yeah, his ex-wife, right? There’s a lesson in there someplace. I think that lesson is “don’t look” because that is the movie that will melt your face off if you stare into it too hard. Sheesh.

maura (17 July 2011 at 9:33 pm)

I know! I ranted for days and days after, then I stopped, then I thought about it more and had to blag this ranty blag. Sheesh is right!

I think he is finally ready for Raiders, melty faces and all, but it’s still hard to know. We watched HP4 for the first time the other day and even though he’s read the book *and* it was daytime there was still a bit of “sit next to me” when Voldemort comes back and just kills Cedric dead. So sudden and dramatic.


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