“Educational” Movies

Growing up, my mom always insisted that, if my sisters and I wanted to see a movie that was rated higher than G or PG, she had to see it first. I have always understood why…but perhaps I should modify the rule to say I need to re-watch any movie I haven’t seen since becoming a parent.

*Spoiler Alert*

In 2017, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” was released. I happened to have enjoyed the original and thought this remake looked fun. I also happen to be a fan of Duane Johnson and Jack Black. Anyway, since my husband often opts out of activities that are a little too “people-y,” my daughter (then 6 years old) and I would occasionally go to the movies for mommy-daughter dates. I figured my mom’s rule of “mom has to watch the movie first” could bend a little…it did, but there were consequences.

There is a scene in which Jack Black’s adult male body is inhabited by a teenaged girl…and she has to pee. My (very observant) daughter, was laughing hysterically when the female character inside Jack Black’s body says “Martha, come look at my penis!” and “Oh, this is so much easier!…yeah, because you have like a handle!” But wait, there’s more.

In a later scene, again featuring Jack Black, where the teenaged-girl-inhabiting-Jack-Black’s-body receives a grateful hug from a boy she likes for having just saved his life, her new male body gets an erection, visible to and pointed out to her by the other characters. After looking down, she says in amazement “These things are crazy!” Of course, my six-year-old girl asked me why everyone in the theater was laughing. I told her I would tell her after the movie, not-so-secretly hoping she would forget by then.

Being the little elephant she is, as soon as we got in the car, my daughter promptly remembered to ask me why everyone had been laughing at that particular scene. (Side note: I spent a couple years investigating crimes, which included the necessity of having to discuss sensitive topics such as this rather bluntly, so I may be slightly less uncomfortable than the average reader at this particular topic…but only slightly.)

I then proceeded to explain to my six-year-old daughter, that after a certain age when boys like girls, their penises get bigger, a fact which she thought was hysterically amusing. As it happens, when we walked in our front door that afternoon, my daughter decided to quote the aforementioned Jack Black scenes right in front of my husband, amidst frenzied giggles. Once he deciphered that she was saying “Martha, come look at my penis!” his panicked face looked over at me, eyes wide and jaw dropped. Now I was laughing at both my daughter and my unsuspecting husband, telling him “It’s okay. She’s just quoting a movie. I will explain.”

When her cackles calmed down enough to speak relatively clearly, my daughter informed my husband that I had told her that when boys like girls, their penises get bigger. The next words out of her mouth were, “Daddy, is that true?”

That may very well have been the best deer-in-the-headlights impersonation I have ever witnessed. Not one to lie, after a few moments of stunned silence, during which I expect my husband was trying to regroup his voice, he replied as tactfully as humanly possible under the circumstance, “Yes, that’s true” and shot daggers at me through his eyes. You’re welcome, honey. At least he didn’t have to articulate the mechanics to our child; he merely had to agree with her.

Lesson learned, right? You would think…but no.

This past weekend, we were looking for another adventure comedy to enjoy as a family…one that my daughter hadn’t seen yet. Flipping through old movies, I said “‘Romancing the Stone’ is a fun one,” remembering that my mother let me watch that when I was younger (yes, younger than ten). Just so we’re clear, this is the 1984 movie with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, which, by the way, is rated PG (I checked). It’s about a romance novelist who travels to Columbia to pay the ransom for her sister. My husband had never seen it before and he trusted my judgment…that may have been a mistake.

I remembered that the first few minutes of the movie was Kathleen Turner’s character narrating the end of her current novel.

What I forgot was just how suggestive the cinematography and adult innuendos were, showing a young woman in a sheer, white top – braless, of course – being threatened with rape in not so many words…right before the heroine throws a knife at the bad guy, killing him and running off into the sunset with her love interest. Of course, when you watch something risqué with someone other than your romantic partner – in this case my 9-year-old daughter – the scenes tend to stretch on forever, during which my husband turns to me with very wide eyes that screamed “what the hell were you thinking?” and lips tight together suppressing an embarrassed laugh. What else could I do but reply, “Wow, I guess a lot of things went over my head when I was younger.” Did I mention I was a naïve child?

We did watch the rest of the movie with some of the adult references going far over my daughter’s head (I hope). I am happy to report that I did at least remember that there was a short bedroom scene coming up and, before it played, we made my daughter close her eyes…again, I did not remember just how much the cinematography showed.

As a result of not following the parent rule, my daughter may have received slightly more of an education than we would have preferred…but hindsight is 20/20. Although that does lead me to consider my mother’s movie censorship for my childhood years, since I remember she used to let us watch Dirty Dancing with her. Of course, she told us we had to leave the room for the sexy parts, but we always snuck back in, which leads me to the question… “What was she thinking?!”

Original Post 12/2020