This is a good thing.
Indeed, there was a time, maybe not even a full generation ago, where there were movies aimed at children, and movies aimed at adults. And they were not considered one and the same. Furthermore, when adults would indulge in their nostalgia and go see something like, say, Star Wars, they were expected to pick up on the joke that George Lucas was doing a riff on Casablanca in the Mos Eisley cantina, or that Han Solo was a tropey scoundrel played to the hilt by a charismatic actor. In other words: they didn’t take it that seriously.
The kids who grew up with those movies did, of course, as many of us are wont to do in our youth. But then each generation has had its own stories that leave their parents confused. In my case, it was probably the absurdly named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or perhaps it was Pokémon, a video game and Japanese anime property that defied physics and logic when its “pocket monsters” were transmuted inside little balls, from which they’d only be released in order to seemingly duel to the death. “Is Pikachu a boy or a girl?” I recall being asked by my folks. Pikachu is whatever Pikachu wishes to be identified as! (Rock on, Wokémon.)
For the record, the first TMNT movie of 1990—and the two that came after—were loathed by critics as well. They warned fellow parents that it “will not enrich your child’s worldview” and optimistically daydreamed that “the cynicism of the motion picture industry will be apparent to any child who is exposed to the many product plugs for a nationwide pizza delivery company.” But that was high praise when compared to how The First Pokémon Movie was greeted in 1999 by the Guardian’s Peer Bradshaw: “This film is humourless, boring, impenetrable and with animation of such staggeringly low quality that it constitutes an insult to cinema goers of all ages.”
None of which is to say those critics are wrong. Pokémon: The First Movie is relentlessly mediocre. The first TMNT has perhaps more going for it than middle-aged critics in 1990 gave it credit for, but that movie also features a scene of a rat puppet performing ninjutsu. There is a high degree of silliness and derivativeness to it that adults with no nostalgic attachments will be able to buy into. Nor should they.
This is not to say kids movies are above criticism or reproach. Demanding more from a family film is what produces true multigenerational classics like, say, E.T. or The Lion King, versus flash in the pan fads like… ‘90s relics of the Pokémon, Powers Rangers, and TMNT variety. What is healthy, however, is the ability for kids to have their thing, and adults to feel the need to not subscribe.
