Parents understand this dilemma. From the moment you have kids – at least, if you are a movie lover – you start to brainstorm the movies you can’t wait to share with your sons and daughters. Sometimes, they are movies the whole family will love. In fact, if you are a family looking for an evening together in front of a great movie, here are the best options streaming at the moment. But other films were special to us growing up, and we hope that they are going to have a similar effect on our kids. Except, our memories of these movies might not be as sharp as we had hoped.
This has happened to me a number of times over the years. We have two boys, and they are now 20 and 16. But as they were growing up, I tried all sorts of movies that were impactful to me as a kid. And maybe only half of them worked on my kids. Usually, they’re just dated, and move too slow for a more modern audience. Other times, they are not appropriate, and I surprise myself by thinking, “I watched this when I was 10?”
Something similar happened to Mila Kunis as she and Ashton Kutcher were showing their kids a film for family movie night. The Bad Moms star ended up being a bit of a bad mom, sharing this story as she made the press rounds to promote her new movie Goodrich, co-starring Michael Keaton. Kunis told CinemaBlend about a family road trip they took through Iowa, and on a beautiful summer night, they decided to pull the camper over, set up a projector, and show their kids Raiders of the Lost Ark. What could be bad about Indiana Jones searching for the Ark of the Covenant? Well, as Kunis describes it:
You think (it’s OK), until you watch it, and you realize it is not okay. Because on the big screen in Iowa, on the garage door, it's just a lot of Nazi swastika, and bloody demony things coming out. It was the worst decision we made in a really long time. … The visual of it is not really – it did not translate at this age. They were maybe like eight and six. So my advice is to hold off on showing Indiana Jones to your children until they're a little bit older. We kept going, ‘Oh my God, someone's going to drive by and just see like the swastika on the garage door and think something awful.’ Like, I was mortified. Mortified at what the decision we made was.
Who can blame Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher for trying to show their kids Raiders of the Lost Ark? Indiana Jones is a seminal hero in American cinema. And it’s not like they teed up Temple of Doom! That movie was so disturbing, it helped lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating at theaters. The later Indiana Jones movies are more family friendly, though The Last Crusade still has its fair share of Nazis.
What’s funny is, Mila Kunis didn’t stop there. As it turns out, she had another personal experience of firing up a movie from her youth that she thought would go over really well, only to have it bomb. As Kunis explained, her daughter had a friend stay over, and both girls – who were around 9 years of age – were super into cheerleading. Kunis, like most of us, immediately thought of Kirsten Dunst’s classic comedy Bring It On. Great pick, right? Well, Kunis admitted to CinemaBlend:
It was a great movie for a teenager. It's not a good movie for an 8-year-old. All the language! And the connotation. I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ My husband looked at me and he was like, ‘What did you do?’ And I was like, ‘I don't know! I don't know.’ I'm watching everything go above their heads. I'm hoping that they didn't register. There were so many sexual innuendos.
Still, sharing Bring In On has become a rite of passage for some. I mean, look at Bring It On co-star Gabrielle Union and her baby daughter rocking matching Bring It On outfits for Halloween. That’s adorable. I wonder when Union will show the movie to her daughter? Probably older than nine.
We don’t think Mila Kunis is a bad mom for trying to show Bring It On and Raiders of the Lost Ark to her kids. I mean, she could have popped on Ted. Or even Black Swan. That would do some permanent damage.
