Rat-a-2-e

I decided not to count today as my first day of retirement. I'll save that for Monday, because today was no different than any other Saturday.

Sneedlet One spent the night last night and is doing the same tonight. Sneedlet Two's family is moving to the McMansion this weekend, so I took both little boys to the movies. We went to see Ratatouille, which turned out to be a bit beyond their understanding. With about fifteen minutes to go in the movie they decided that they had seen enough, so we left. Sneedlet Two's dad picked him up from the mall and they went home.

Ratatouille was disappointing from the grandfather perspective. It got good reviews generally, but it was too sophisticated and therefore hard to follow for younger moviegoers. I understand that Pixar and Disney are trying to widen the appeal of the movie as much as possible and that they have tread a fine line, entertaining the kids as well as the parents. In that respect they failed, I think.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses this idea in his book, The Tipping Point. He talks about how research has shown that kid's learn better by watching Blue's Clues, a show that will drive an adult to distraction, than from Sesame Street, which is written with much more sophisticated content, while still directed at preschoolers.

One of the things I remember from my days as an education student was not to use sarcasm with younger children because since they are concrete thinkers, they won't get it. The same is true with entertainment content. You have to keep their attention and when it gets too clever, they lose interest. But as I said, Pixar has to entertain the adults too.

The Sneedlets had "movie snacks" which is what they call the kid's pack, so they felt the day was a huge success. That's really all that matters.


Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky


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