For the past month, I’ve been taking the elder monster to see movies on Wednesdays and Saturdays. She’s not old enough to understand what’s happening. At the very first one, she, very understandably, kept leaning over during the credits to ask between crackers, “Is this the movie?” And about an hour into just about any kids movie, she’s ready to stand up and explore the vast, cavernous space she’s been sitting in, while echolocating her way through the aisles. It was only brought to my attention in having a couple conversations with parents in the past week that other parents might be mortified by how their hostage-taker might be behaving in public, but the fact that it’s been over ten years since Kung Fu Panda came out, the fact that it’s 11 in the morning, and the fact that every other young child is reacting to the movie like it’s a Taylor Swift concert has really numbed me to the idea that the monster is “too young”.
She didn’t like Trolls: World Tour, which I think reflects well on her taste. She was a little confused by the fact that no one held the rock queen to account after she had burned down their homes and laid waste to entire kingdoms at the end. During KFP, she would shout “TIGER” any time that a tiger was not on screen, which is a lot of the time, and for days afterwards, she would ask about the Tai Li mostly to see if she was OK. Bestie had mentioned with glee upon hearing what her first movie in theaters would be, that she remembered there being a lot of noodle work in the movie, but–fun fact–there are only two or three scenes with noodle-themed combat. The third movie we saw together was Secret Life of Pets, which I was thoroughly warmed by. The monster laughed the hardest when Louie CK’s character realized that he could get the upper hand on his new roommate by basically blackmailing him into submission. Go figure that mean humor would bypass language, understanding, and maturity and appeal directly to her aesthetics.
The common through line to all of these movies, the reason why I am bringing them up here, is that before each of these movies there was a trailer for one Mutant Ninja Turtles, which she decisively called “Monkeys,” and which she would remark on to the staff at the theater whenever we were ordering snacks, because of the advertising above the cash register. We ordered pizza last weekend and there was a ninja turtle on the box and she nearly lost her mind. “Monkey turtle,” she pointed out. “Monkey! Turtle!” growing more urgent with each moment that we weren’t blown away by the fact that this movie character had found its way onto our dinner packaging.
So, when I invited literally everyone I know to see this movie at 10AM with the promise that she would shout full volume at the screen the entire time whenever a turtle appeared, I was surprised that so many people took me up on it. The monster was true to form and I cannot speak more highly for the feeling of pride that comes from watching your spawn lose her fucking mind at a bunch of mutants she’s never met before, trying to learn how to be regular people while fighting bad guys and eating pizza.
TMNT is chock full of pop culture references laser-focused on hitting men in their thirties who watched too much Nickelodeon as children: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Mark Ruffalo, a smooth hip-hop soundtrack. The monster taught herself to bob for popcorn directly into the tub and did not choke once!
For some reason I had assumed Donatello been gender swapped to add a sister to the mix. I think my thought process went: “purple” = girl. And even when the Turtles have their bit in the high school where they come up with nom de plumes for themselves by splitting their names into short forms, I thought to myself, Dona-Tella (I kept thinking the way they’d changed Donny’s name was by feminizing the Italian), that works! But, alas, it’s not? It’s just a kids movie about four brothers, which is fine. I’m fine.
On combat: The very first fight scene against the heist guys has some of the best comic moments of the movie, because it’s so awkward and messy. Friend commented on a lot of the fighting in the movie taking on a kind of “drunken master” style of choreography, of which I am an avowed fan.
I won’t say too much more than this in case you’re thinking about seeing turtle monkeys yourselves, but I do recommend you bring your own screaming mutant with you if you can, and maybe some childless couples in tow, just to watch their eyes twitch while your mutant edges her sippy cup closer and closer to the ledge where it can douse the next row’s audience members with buttery water if you don’t constantly adjust it throughout the movie.
