**Warning: this entry contains movie plot summary.
So, here we are on a rainy afternoon, the perfect kind of day to go see a movie with my kids in the theater, but no one can agree on what to watch. Or rather, the kids can’t. Ty and I think Star Trek would be fun, but Leah doesn’t like sci-fi, so she decides she’ll invite a friend to the mall while we go to the movie (at the mall). Alas, no friends are to be found. So Ty decides he’ll play with a friend instead while Leah and I go see The Proposal. Again, no friends. The obvious solution is we all go together, my preference anyway, but what to see?
This is how a nine-year-old boy ends up at a PG-13 chick flick.
I’m not opposed to him seeing The Proposal, necessarily (an updated version of Green Card). He’s seen Mama Mia and Baby Mama and Tootsie. But when we run into three different neighborhood families here to see Up, I feel a little sheepish. “We’re seeing The Proposal,” I admit, and they all chuckle. And when I notice, in the theater, the audience is comprised almost solely of adult women, with a couple guys hiding in the back, I feel self conscious. My kids are the only kids here, and Ty is the size of a seven-year-old. I know nothing about this movie except Leah wants to see it and the preview on YouTube was funny.
But when the lights go down and the movie rolls, we settle in and start to laugh. The plot? A magazine editor, played by Sandra Bullock, is the boss from hell who takes her bossiness to new levels when she orders her underling male secretary, played by Ryan Reynolds, to marry her so she can retain her work visa and thus her job (she’s Canadian).
“I feel sorry for that guy,” Ty stage whispers. He gets it. Not that Bullock is subtle. So far, so good, though—nothing Ty can’t handle.
When they head to Alaska for a weekend with his parents, the movie gets funnier. Ty’s favorite quote? “You touch my ass again, I’ll cut your balls off in your sleep.” (The assistant is sort of helping Bullock climb down a ladder in stilettos, and, well, but he's really a sweetie and that's obvious to all and he's just getting a little revenge. He deserves it with all he's put up with.)
How is it, Ty wants to know, that those little body scrub cloths can cover up Bullock’s nether region so effectively, when in real life you really can’t cover up nearly so easily. (She’s wet from the shower and trying to escape an invasive pesky puppy, while the underling has taken his clothes off to change and neither knows the other is in the room. They literally collide, to Ty’s wide-eyed delight. But you don't really see anything except naked profiles—okay, yes, full body profiles, but no boobs whatsoever.)
And then there’s the male stripper at the local Sitka bar who’s not much of a dancer but does take it off down to his black Spandex undershorts. (But he is pathetic after all, and it's totally supposed to be funny and, anyway, I’m not sure Ty knows what a stripper is, although I think he did get the dance moves.)
Um, yeah.
On the other hand, what’s so bad about a boy watching two people fall in love (because of course they do) through a series of comic errors, even if there are naked bodies? Personally, I’d rather he watch a little kissing than tank after tank getting blown to smithereens? Hey, maybe I’m grooming a sensitive boy who will happily head off to chick flicks with his girlfriend someday and actually enjoy them, no eye rolling involved. She’ll thank me, don’t you think?
Still, I feel self conscious again when the lights go up and we all exit the movie together, Ty the shortest audience member by about two feet. As we clear the mall and stride toward our car in the rain, Ty trotting next to me, he says, “That was really funny, Mom. Totally inappropriate, but really funny."
Thanks, Ty. Way to rub it in, buddy.