An Educational Film

A bit of parenting advice: if you want to watch a movie with your young children, but discover it's rated PG-13, don't rely on your memory for why it might be rated that.

Our family rule is that the girls can watch PG-13 movies if we've approved them first.  The approval list currently carries such titles as Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean.  We mostly stick to PG and G ratings.  We've both seen MIB, it's just been a while.  A really, really long while.

Probably just the comic-book violence and gross alien guts, maybe a little language, we thought.

We thought wrong.

Try a LOT of language.  My girls learned some very interesting words last night.  We carried on with the movie, but we had a little discussion afterward about how Men in Black is probably not the most quotable movie we've ever watched.  In fact, how about we just don't quote it at all, okie dokie?

But apparently some of us got more out of it than just a new vocabulary.  Right before the end of the movie, Ellie leaned over to me and said, "Mom, he's really cute."

Whoa, what?  "You mean Will Smith?  The one who looks like Uncle Scotty?"

"Yeah.  He's really cute, with the eyebrows...and the mustaches."  She was practically swooning.

And so it begins.