Halloween is here, and with young kids in the house it can sometimes be a challenge to find something seasonal that we can all watch together. Without long lasting psychological ramifications, I mean. I thought The Blair Witch Project The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton The Corpse Bride and Coraline.
Monsters Vs. Aliens is a fun, computer-animated twist on the campy horror and sci-fi fare found on drive-in screens across the country throughout the ’50s and into the ’60s. Here the movie monster archetypes are the heroes of the film trying to ward off an alien invasion instead of scaring teenage coeds. The above average script is executed by a deep talent pool of voice acting, with the four primary characters, The Missing Link, Dr. Cockroach, B.O.B. (Not the rapper- it stands for Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate) and Ginormica, being voiced by Will Arnett Spirited Away a Halloween kind of movie. Maybe it’s the witches, the various spirits, or the people turning into pigs. Or it could be the masked ghost thingy that eats people, which as it turns out, is really not as scary as it sounds. Whatever it is, there’s no denying that legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki Spirited Away, as well as Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and most every other Studio Ghibli Peter Pan Alice In Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz; A quality that reminds me of childhood adventure and wide-eyed wonder in a place where anything can happen.
Another family movie that reminds me of Halloween, although it may not typically be considered a Halloween movie, is The Goonies. Sure, the quintessential coming of age adventure doesn’t feature an ax wielding maniac, but it does have pirates (dead ones if that’s scarier for you), a piano made out of bones, and a misunderstood monster addicted to Baby Ruths. And while it may not have a lot of jump out of your seat moments, I think that we can all agree that the Truffle Shuffle Ghostbusters. I was worried it might be a little intense for him the first time we watched it together (he’s only recently turned five), but it quickly became a staple in his viewing requests. So much so in fact, that I bought a copy of the first season of the animated show The Real Ghostbusters. As it turns out, he found the cartoon to be far scarier than the original 1984 classic. Same was true about the 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II Gremlins, another well known 1984 comedy/horror movie, is one that I do want to share with the kids eventually. I say eventually, because I was seven when I begged my parents to let me see that movie in theaters, and when they finally relented I chickened out about halfway through. Those little green dudes with their snake-like eyes really gave me the heebie-jeebies at the time. As a father, I do feel a sense of duty to impress upon my kids a respect for the classics, but I think that one will have to wait.
Another example of something I’d like my kids to like is It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I may have played the card a little early however, as neither my son nor my two-year-old daughter had the desire to sit through the entire film. The dialogue-heavy Peanuts cartoons aren’t really what one would call action packed, and at this stage in the game where my son’s favorite activity is building things out of blocks for the sole purpose of destroying them, and my daughter’s favorite activity is hitting her brother, neither really has the patience for the understated genius that is Snoopy. We’ve only made it two-thirds of the way through the movie.