The bottom of the Netflix barrel is filled with about a dozen versions of Power Rangers, the various Pokemon series plus imitators, and a Mario Brothers show from the 80s. It's much worse than musicals and loud toys.
a Mario Brothers show from the 80s
The cartoon with live-action introductory sequence? That was a staple of my childhood. At least I remember some episode where King Koopa (I think this was before he was called "Bowser") tried to steal the gold from Fort Knox. It was an homage to Goldfinger, I think, but I was too young to know about James Bond.
Mary snarled at me
Pa-rum-pa-rum-pum
I had the Kid asleep
Pa-rum-pa-rum-pum
You woke Him up, you creep
Pa-rum-pa-rum-pum
Rum-pa-rum-pum
Rum-pa-rum-pum
You and your drum.
2: Yes. Nicole Eggert was on the first episode, but none of the others.
Make them watch Thomas And The Magic Railroad. That is one disturbingly insane movie. Sally was obsessed as a toddler. She just ran across a mention of it somewhere, started watching it (it's up in segments on Youtube), and is horrorstruck that we were bad enough parents to let her watch something that was that messed up. Now she's wondering if all her other early childhood memories are concealing surreal insanity that she didn't process as such at the time.
That was really fucked up. I think we own a copy on DVD.
My main thought was that I want to take whatever Baldwin was taking while filming and avoid whatever Fonda was on.
xelA is watching a lot of this at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouj4udCEc-4
Which is a Soviet era cartoon [it ran for years and years, I think] but dubbed into Czech.
Some of the music is hilarious, as by the time it gets to the late 70s/early 80s they are ripping off electro and Western dance music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrasxY_n2s&t=2m59s
I actually felt blessed that our kids feasted on relatively tolerable fare, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, Aladdin, and the original The Land That Time Forgot. I'm sure there were other worse ones* but I've repressed the memory. I thank timing.
*And also some decent ones that came and went quickly, Thomasina is one I recall.
You dodged a bullet with Frozen, it seems to me. I only know the one song that children are born singing these days, but it's somehow grating and utterly anonymous at the same time. I had to hear it about seven times before I could remember the melody, such as it is.
Frozen doesn't bother me, either. I love the song that the snowman sings.
If one is to believe TWYRCL's tales of her own childhood, little kids love Wagner.
I'm not generally a fan of musicals but I like watching The Nightmare Before Christmas with my kids.
Also we saw Into the Woods recently and that was about an hour too long but it was better than a lot of what passes for children's entertainment.
Here it's Annie or Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, generally. Well, or Adam West Batman. Apparently there's a Madeline movie too, but I haven't watched more than a few minutes while it's been on.
I don't wash out a child's mouth with soap (would have been illegal while fostering, doesn't seem worthwhile now) but just am very disappointed in not being able to trust a child to do XYZ later thanks to the excessive lying. Luckily the one who lies about more serious things is the one who's not very good at lying, and she's working on being more truthful and trustworthy.
Another solution if you don't mind your kid turning out gay is steer him toward the real stuff, maybe start with The Music Man, then My Fair Lady, possibly Grease though you should turn it off before the "nice girl transformed into compelling strumpet" scene unless you are hell bent on raising a little gay. At this point he'll wave his cigarette around like Bette Davis and say "but father, Sondheim is the contemporary master of the form" and you can take him aside gently tell him that Sweeney Todd was cast with people who can't really sing. Cabaret, with Liza, should cheer him up, though. If he insists on things made recently, Hedwig is both a great musical and very affirming of your kid's new pan-queer lifestyle.
7: I mostly worried that someone had threatened Fonda's family. His line delivery seemed as if it was informed by the sight of one of his children bound to a chair with a gun to their head just off camera, and desperately not wanting to startle the guy holding the gun.
16 is such a spot on description of my dear cousin's childhood. Who is now in the biz himself.
My kid is obsessed with the 1980s version of Annie (nb -- my kid is a "feisty"* red headed girl) so we get that all the time, also The Sound Of Music gives you actually great songs plus Nazis. I'm up for the strategy in 16 but so far she only seems to like musicals with heavy doses of little kids in them. She liked but wasn't nearly as into (I think, I didn't go with her) the 2014 "black" Annie, possibly because racism. Also, I've worked on litigation involving 3/6 films Ogged's mentioned, which is the most heartwarming thing of all.
*this is like "husky" sizes; it actually means "badly behaved."
19: Mine were all about Black Annie, which they saw first, but are making do with the other. (Not true, I guess, in that Selah has only watched Netflix White Annie.)
Gold Diggers of 1933 is probably not age appropriate.
16: I have this strategy in full effect. I am routinely compelled to give renditions of "If I Were a Bell I'd Be Ringing." Also big, "Oliver! Oliver! Never before has a boy wanted more!" for some reason.
[Incidentally, he is quite strict with what I am allowed to sing. Any attempt at opera by me (I like to bust out the "Champagne Aria" from Don G just to try to get the Italian) is met with his hand covering my mouth and, "No, mama. No. Don't try. Don't try.]
I had to hear it about seven times before I could remember the melody, such as it is.
Trying to call it to mind just now, I found that it slid rapidly into "Let it Be." Whoops!
Make them watch Thomas And The Magic Railroad. That is one disturbingly insane movie.
I'd be surprised if it's half as disturbingly insane as Dougal and the Blue Cat.
Yeah, the main song is no good. But the snowman song cracks me up.
I even like "Let It Go". Basically, I'm the only parent here who lives their children.
"Loves" their children. Living your children is restricted to aspiring show-business parents.
... also The Sound Of Music gives you actually great songs plus Nazis.
Perhaps that sentence should have been workshopped a bit more before rollout.
"No, mama. No. Don't try. Don't try.["]
[Falls off chair laughing.]
A lot of Sound of Music is incredibly boring -- my daughter always complains all through the romance parts.
95% of musicals make my skin crawl and I have a special distaste for Sound of Music as a result of two wives and one girlfriend (covering the past 25 years) who loved it and would put it on in the background regularly.
Therefore, I'm going to recommend Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Start 'em young.
I avoided Sound all my life until a foul Xmas 2 years ago when our whole house was stricken with plagueflu and Iris wanted to watch it and I lacked the strength to leave the living room.
Oh, and Mary Poppins can go get stuck in a tree afaic. I can't bear any of that shit.
It is making me very, very sad that Hedwig, onstage, starring its creator, is happening 3,000 miles away.
22.2: Can he have a talk with Thomas Hampson about Verdi?
I still haven't seen The Sound of Music and I will not. I don't really like traditional musicals, even though my parents tried very hard and took me to loads when I was little. (I did (do?) like Disney ones; I can generally ignore the songs better.) Oh, and I probably still like Annie, though I haven't tested that.
The worst move in the entire world is The Brave Little Toaster, which my sister was obsessed with for years. For those of us (Smearcase? Heebie?) who have a hard time seeing inanimate objects go unloved - don't ever watch it.
30, 32: I'm just bummed "The Hurt Locker: The Musical" didn't work out.
The worst move in the entire world is The Brave Little Toaster
Just this morning my stepdaughter asked me, "What if they made a live-action version of The Brave Little Toaster"?
This sounds insane, but they apparently actually are make a live-action version of Dumbo (that's what gave her the idea).
This morning my toaster, in live action, toasted some bread, and then popped it up.
The reviews were glowing*.
*as were the heating coils, ZING!
Bollywood works for us if we're feeling musical. Family-friendly, incentivizes reading.
I even like "Let It Go"
AAAAGH. You know who really likes that song? 11-year-old girls. Two specific 11-year-old girls.
O hey, Smearcase and other Bay Areans who might be interested: you should go to hear Matthew Polenzani and Julius Drake in Berkeley Saturday. Really great program; I heard it last night.
Bay Areans
That sounds like a groups of white supremacists from Marin County or something.
Actually, my 7 year old thoroughly enjoyed Gold Diggers of 1933 - Busby Berkeley production numbers are mindblowing for any age.
I love Polenzani but am usually bored by Lieder recitals, or maybe just by Lieder.
The program is unusual: Beethoven ("Adelaide"), Liszt, Ravel, Satie(!), Barber. I thought of you when he sang "Pangur, white Pangur, how happy we are."
If he sings "La Diva de L'Empire" in the Satie set I am at least amused.
38: My daughters' current favorite is Lagaan, a four-hour Bollywood musical about cricket. They've decided to watch it for their birthday sleepover, despite having seen it multiple times in the last couple of months. They want me to watch it with them, but one of them insists that I leave the room during the romantic parts.
45: I think I may still have two copies of the soundtrack from when I got my littlest brother into it and he was super obsessed. I've thought about playing it for the big girls. It might be nice to have such a long block of time to get laundry etc. done, actually.
39: and skip the Fred Frith/Theresa Wong duo? Are you mad?
We pretty much followed 16/22. (Probably 5% of C and his sister's conversations involve "What, fisticuffs?") The inlaws are massive Sondheim fans, so there's been a lot of that too.
34. Never saw the movie but the original story (by Tom Disch) was great.
50: Do you have the book? It's hard to find.
51: Well.. not hard to find, but hard to find cheap.
The Brave Little Toaster was by far the thing I hated watching the most as a child.
A Turtle's Tale is golden. A Turtle's Tale 2: Electric Boogaloo Sammy's Adventure is crap.
I grew up on the frankly bizarre genre of the social injustice/genocide/pogrom musical: Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Oliver, My Fair Lady, West Side Story. My son tolerated Oliver because the leads are boys, and because he started out in an orphanage, but mostly they're too slow for kids these days. The genre could use a revival.
I'm just bummed "The Hurt Locker: The Musical" didn't work out.
Surprising, given that The Wire: The Musical was such a success.
The Brave Little Toaster was by far the thing I hated watching the most as a child.
The first time I saw TBLT, I was in college and crammed full of psychedelics. I may have slightly different associations with the film than the rest of you.
Isn't the Sound of Music and My Fair Lady what having a white MC grandmother is for? Kid can watch that stuff at her house! Happy all around. Also, Singin' In The Rain and French Can Can cover all the ground necessary.
My child's association with jump cuts is bollywood, not godard. Instead of angsty artiness and cool he thinks of instantaneous costume and location changes.
My kids have 3 white MC grandmothers. None of them have shown any interest in showing them TSOM or MFL. It'd have to be a greatgrandmother these days, surely!
AIMHMHB, I was in a high school production of The Sound of Music (my talent level is 'minor Nazi') and to this day I shudder to think of it.
Well we outsourced it for the time he was interested and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I did sit through Meet Me In St. Louis with him off and on napping on my lap one Christmas eve when he was feverish and that was fine, although really its sort of impossible to just simply watch Garland, isn't it? Distressing reflections don't stay at bay.
49: I'd do anything, for you, dear, anything....
The Calabat isn't permitted much TV yet, but he really likes music videos, with Happy and Gangnam Style being his favorites.
One of my sisters picked out Brave Little Toaster from the video store once upon a time, and I still remember how horrible it was.
I'm sure I know all the words to all the songs in Sound of Music and Fiddler on the Roof. Last year, when I was on that ski trip to Austria, a bunch of folks took a day off the slopes to go to Salzburg and visit the SOM shrines there. Sorry, but not that interested.
AISIMHB I too played a minor Nazi in the sound of music. Maybe Moby and I could get together and reprise our parts as a couple of minor Nazis, except who now are middle-aged and repeat themselves. Sort of a Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Minor Nazis thing.
Cala - I may be remembering this completely wrong, but I think you mentioned lingering pain issues post kid? I've potentially a line on something helpful after 14 years of things only getting worse so persist in addressing things rather than letting pain become your new reality and if you have questions get my email from hebbie!
I was the civilian Nazi. There was also a military uniform Nazi and a Nazi male man who liked Liesl in the way a young Aryan boy likes a young Aryan girl wearing curtains.
64: "I am Hans!"
"Und I am Franz!"
"Und ve are here to illustrate that every exit is an entrance elsewhere!"
On the bright side, now he has a deep understanding of how important his tongue had been to his ability to speak.
I keep reading this and I get tripped up on the had been. What, did you cut out his tongue?
When I discussed The Sound of Music with the girls a while back, I asked if they got how ridiculous it was that Rolf was lording his supposedly superior judgment over Liesl, given that he was just a year older and, more to the point, a Nazi. S replied, I know, right? He is not to be trusted.
72: INORITE? I love that there's no interest in trimming it down. Every last little narrative development STAYS IN THE PICTURE.
I'm pretty sure that 3 hours is normal for eighties and nineties Bollywood-- lots of movies have an intermisison.
The guy with a withered arm who is a magnificent spin bowler is my favorite.
That does it. We're eating pizza and watching Lagaan tonight. They'll read what they can and taxes are a math thing so we can count it as homework.
Before this thread, I couldn't have told you whether The Brave Little Toaster was a real thing or some sort of Adult Swim (or similar) joke.
The only bollywood film I've watched is Singham which is gloriously demented. I get the impression that other ones are a bit more reasonable, though, which has discouraged me from watching any others. I should give more of them a try though.
Damnit, did I lend the dvd to a friend or let my ex keep it when I was feeling charitable? Time for a new plan, unless it straps on Netflix.
Shit. I thought I somehow missed the fun part of Netflix.
Only one mention of Singin' In The Rain. I didn't see it until I was a grown-up, but it seems Tex Avery enough that kids would dig it. The whole thing is like that, right, not just Make 'Em Laugh? Isn't that the one with the great psychedelic dance number?
Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont! Nothing better! The psychedelic thingie has Cyd Charisse, who honestly could recruit me to the other team any. time. Yowza.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (musical I absolutely adored as a kid, also featuring Dick Van Dyke!)
51. Don't have the book. (I have other Disch books, but not that one.) I read it in F&SF, and I think I still have the issue it was in, being something of a pack rat collector hoarder.
13: If one is to believe TWYRCL's tales of her own childhood, little kids love Wagner.
Oh, this reminds me of Peter and the Wolf. Also adored as a kid, though of course I didn't know it was Prokofiev. If kids are becoming into music -- and I think Ogged is making at least one of his kids take piano? -- it might be viable. No video, of course.
Now which recording did I listen to back when? That link hilariously notes that among the narrators over time have been Sharon Stone (no, it wasn't her), Patrick Stewart (could be interesting), Jonathan Winters (hilarious), um, Sting, Sir John Gielgud, Ben Kingsley, Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow ...
I would have been listening in the early 70s, probably. Maybe the Sir Ralph Richardson, 1970. I feel like we've discussed this before.
Anyway, it's awesome for kids who might be fascinated at learning to identify the sound of various instruments. It certainly taught me how to do that.
I was Hodel in the community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. Bunch of rural Missouri Germans doing a play about Russian Jews, nothing weird about that!
My school did The King and I. It was when I was in grade school. The music direct went trolling through our halls and pulled out every kid from 6 to 12 with hair that wasn't red or blond. Which is to say, they found a maybe a dozen kids to use as extras.
88: I was the Fiddler when our Catholic school did it, but then I wasn't allowed to be the Stage Manager in Our Town the following year because it was too much gender-bending, although the guy they gave it to instead is gay, so ha. Sophomore year was MASH with some yellowface, mostly Italian-American but I think also one Vietnamese-American girl playing the Korean roles. Thank goodness I wasn't there the year they did To Kill a Mockingbird but had no black actors and so made it about anti-Jewish prejudice instead.
MASH with some yellowface
Jamie Farr did look a little jaundiced in some of the later episodes.
The psychedelic thingie has Cyd Charisse, who honestly could recruit me to the other team any
Amazingly enough, the dance scene in Singing in the Rain isn't my favorite Cyd Charisse dance number.
Not even my favorite Cyd Charisse dance number involving gangsters at a nightclub.
||
OKCupid just matched me with someone whose profile reads in its entirety "Am 6feet tall average body size easy going and God fearing,CREDIT ACCOUNTS OFFICER BANK OF AMERICA"
|>
96: Sounds like a great match! (Shudder.)
CREDIT ACCOUNTS OFFICER BANK OF AMERICA
This might mean:
a) I am financially solvent
b) I am a poor credit risk, who attempts to establish a line of credit wherever I go
c) Dear Sir, I wish to inform you, with due humility and respect, of a large sum of money in a dormant account in Nigeria
d) Something else entirely
Make them watch Thomas And The Magic Railroad. That is one disturbingly insane movie.
It is the stuff of nightmares. And it represents a very low point in the career of Alec Baldwin.
I hate Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (both the book and the film). I would far sooner suffer through the embarrassment of Dick Van Dyke's faux Cockney accent than read or watch anything that came from Roald Dahl, who was a nasty (misogynistic, anti-Semitic) piece of work.
94, 95: that's a very good example of where you see a divide along Astaire / Kelly lines and I'm on the Kelly side of things definitely. Respect, but no love, and not for lack of a good effort.
I knew exactly what the link in 94 was going to be.
oh if this is the thread where we disclose our high school musical roles, I'm
9th grade: Mayor Something, Music Man
10th grade: Nathan Detroit, Guys and Dolls
11th grade: Ambassador Something, The King and I
12th grade: Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady
We had upper and lower high schools, hence the supporting-lead-supporting-lead pattern. The director specifically chose My Fair Lady because my singing voice was for shit, although at one point in rehearsals the choral director took me aside and said, "People will watch Rex Harrison talk his way through songs for two hours, but you, not so much."
Mayor Shinn, right? Husband of Ulelie McKecknie Shinn? (Not sure how to spell it.)
than read or watch anything that came from Roald Dahl
Well then, you'll never know the pleasure of your three-year-old, following one of the mean aunts in James and the Giant Peach, calling everyone "you disgusting little beast."
My sister and I were obsessed with The Sound of Music when we were very young. We went through a period where we would watch an abridged version almost every day. I don't remember my mother ever being present in the same room, so it was probably tolerable for her.*
One of the first musicals I remember seeing was the Liza Minnelli version of Cabaret. I was probably around 6ish or so? I remember not really understanding anything that was happening and being freaked out by the sex and violence. I learned what an abortion was from watching that movie.
Another early musical was Little Shop of Horrors, which I remember my dad taking us to a high school production of.
I suppose the main takeaway lesson I learned from musicals was that Nazis were evil in some vague amorphous way and went around beating up people. Around the same time I also saw Fiddler on the Roof, and found the pogrom scene really scary. I didn't really connect anti-Semitism to Nazism at that point in my life.
*When I was 4, my parents pulled me out of a Montessori preschool to send me to Head Start as part of a reverse busing desegregation program (i.e. bus in the middle class white kids). My parents, being insane, having a quirky sense of humor, thought it would be fun to send me to school wearing a dirndl on a semi-regular basis, so my first experience being a racial minority in an inner city American school was looking like an Albino kid dressed as a Sound of Music extra. The other children were actually very sweet, but were also kind of "WTF were the hell are you from??"
Moby and Buttercup seem like an unlikely couple, but from 109.5 and this thread, it seems like it's destined.
What would a musical called "Dirndl Fever" look like? My guess is it would be guaranteed as a top contender for worst musical ever produced. It would have to be a romantic comedy, with Moby and I playing the lead roles in the Unfogged production.
86. I was raised on the Ustinov version of Peter and the Wolf, which must have been bought for me more or less on release. But I'd love to hear Eleanor Roosevelt's take.
The link in 94 is truly awesome.
111: No, it would easily be the greatest achievement of the human mind.
I'm sure the German and Czech film industries have already given us a fair number of dirndl-type musicals.
Except those may have been made using a lead actor with talent.
Anyway, I still think the unfogged movie should be about the nutria removal effort in England back in the 80s.
Billing it as an unfogged movie if it didn't have an ekranoplan would be false advertising.
I assumed the whole point was to scam money out of investors anyway.
I don't see why a movie about England's nutria removal efforts couldn't also involve dirndls.*
*Like, maybe the nutria could be anthropomorphized dirndl-wearing nutria, and the thing could also be an allegory for WW2/the UK leaving the EU.
I assumed the whole point was to scam a visit to the French Laundrymoney out of commentorsinvestors anyway.
And the ekranoplan serves as a mobile headquarters for the nutria-devouring war owls.
War Owl would be a good name for a band.
In the right thread this time: The villains: a gang of clowns who want the nutria to thrive as a materials source for their artisanally hand-stretched Fleshlights.
My dad is responsible for my love of Rogers and Hammersteib musicals, which meant that we spent a lot of time singing them (off-key) in the car. The four-hour Sound of Music tour in Salzburg that Charlie Carp mentioned upthread was AWESOME, even if Liesl was one of the made-up members of the Von Trapp family.