26th March 2008

Dis-Enchanted

posted in Family, OmegaDotter, Pop Culture |

A recent Disney film is now available on DVD.  So, since we’ve instituted "family movie night", wherein we watch a movie together and eat dinner in the family room, and since it’s a Disney movie, a fairy tale, we figured we’d get it and watch it and have a pleasant evening.

It’s a fun movie!  Really!  See, there’s this princess locked away by a prince’s evil stepmother, who’s very Snow-White-esque, singing to all the birds and animals and daydreaming of her handsome prince.  The prince hears her singing…he searches out the beauteous voice…he finds the princess…she’s swept off her feet…

And then the evil stepmother, trying to keep her away from the prince, dumps her into a wishing well that has, as it’s other end, New York City.

At which point, the movie turns from a cartoon into real life.

All well and good.  Lots of hilarity ensues when this dewy-eyed innocent Disney princess tries to cope with real-life NYC.

She meets a man.  She starts falling for the man.  The prince and a henchman of the stepmother also go through the wishing well to rescue her/keep the prince from rescuing her…

And then the evil stepmother, deciding her henchman is worthless, jumps into NYC herself.

At which point, the dotter crawled up into my lap.

And then the witch, foiled in various connivings, busts loose with lots of flames and witchery and turns into a very well-done CGI dragon lizard thing, big and scaly and scary.

"Scary" being the operative word.

Really scary for a six-year-old who has only encountered scary stuff in The Wizard of Oz (which is banned from the house for a few years) and in cartoons.  She’s quite the adept at the scary stuff in cartoons, because she’s well aware that it’s Not Real.  But CGI that’s presented in a realistic way?

Really, really scary.

I spent quite a bit of time last night in the dotter’s bedroom before she fell asleep, having to explain how it was all Make Believe.  How it was all done with computers.  How it wasn’t a real dragon lizard thing, and the witch wasn’t a real witch, and it wasn’t real fire, and it was all pretend, and everything was okay.

I felt blindsided, frankly.  I didn’t even think to research the movie beforehand–after all, it’s Disney, fer cryin’ out loud!  A Disney children’s movie.

So:  Make sure your kiddos aren’t quite as innocent about scary special effects as mine was before you show it to them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Family, OmegaDotter, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 7 responses to “Dis-Enchanted”

  1. 1 On March 26th, 2008, lizard said:

    Oh, wow, I am so sorry to hear this. I might have thought to mention it, but my DD is so not scared by any of this (”it’s just pretend, Mom”) that I sort of forget to even think about the scary parts.

    We love this movie. Especially the cleaning scene. Really love that, and how funny the song is and how sort of making fun of all the disney stuff.

    here’s the thing: this movie would be fine without the CGI dragon, so I sort of wish they’d just left it out. It would make it unscary altogether. Do you think OD would like to watch it without the dragon scenes, because the movie loses NOTHING except for the statement that the princess is doing the saving and the man has become the damsel in distress. Which is nice and all, but not necessary, especially with OD being scared of it and all. Still, if you could promise to skip from the kiss to the end, she would LOVE it.

    Oh, I am just so sorry she was scared of it. So sorry.

  2. 2 On March 27th, 2008, Blog Antatonist said:

    Poor Omegadotter!

    We once got blindsided by a wolf in a Harry Potter movie for the same reason. Big Hairy Giant Spider? Not scary because they know that no spider could ever grow that big. But a wolf? That’s a real living breathing thing and it scared the bejeesus out of both of them.

  3. 3 On March 27th, 2008, Spacemom said:

    Oh man, I forgot to warn you about that. Soleil was up worried about that too. Here’s what I told her
    1) it was done by computers
    2) It was a movie
    3) even if a dragon did appear, it wouldn’t fit in her room
    4) If it appeared in the hallway, its claws were too big to open her door knob….

    Besides, wouldn’t anyone be afraid of Susan Serandon?

  4. 4 On March 27th, 2008, PAgent said:

    What worked well with my kids was so show them the DVD extras. Once they saw the actors walking around and joking, and getting into makeup, it really reinforced that it was pretend.

    Also, the featurettes that include long explanations of how they did the special effects can help take the mystery and (most of) the scariness out of the CGI beasties.

    This was a particularly good strategy for us when we decided to try the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Once you’ve seen all those Uruk-Hai putting on their fake teeth and clowning around between takes, they’re a lot less intimidating. Ditto with the CGI Shelob.

  5. 5 On March 27th, 2008, Theresa said:

    Funny we just watched it today since we gave it to dd yesterday for her birthday. I was actually surprised she wasn’t scared but she did sit right next to me while we watched it. We also watched the extra “making of” DVD that came with our DVD and I think that helped. She was on the phone before bed telling her 5 year old cousin about it.

    This is the same kid who up to now has only watched Cinderella from the Disney films because she was too scared to watch the others. Last year I had to take her out of the Princesses on Ice show because of the scary witches.

  6. 6 On March 28th, 2008, vanessa said:

    I’m bothered by the fact that — scratch that, apparently it is NOT a fact. I just looked up the ages of Amy and Patrick (Giselle & Robert) because I thought that she was in her early 20s and he was 40 something and it creeped me out the entire film. However, apparently Amy is 34. So once again, I will eat crow. Mmmmmmm.

  7. 7 On April 1st, 2008, 3cmum said:

    My 6 year old started watching it on a flight last Sunday. Got scared and turned it off. I had chosen it for her!

    Not sure when she’ll be ready for itt..and we haven’t yet started on harry potter. She can watch those after she reads the books!

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