Today is the North American release of the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a fan of the series. It’s well-written and moves at a good pace (making for an easy read).
We’ve got tickets for the 10:15pm showing at our local AMC Theatre, and we’re getting together [with my cousin, who’s going to the movie with us] and watching the first movie beforehand. I suspect the later showing will have less kids and more adults like us there, but I’ll probably be wrong. Some parents took their young children to see the 12:01AM showing this morning (the early news showed a child who couldn’t have been more than four waiting in line with his mother). I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. We saw at least one infant in the audience when we saw the 12:01 AM showing of Fellowship of the Rings last year. I’ll never understand it, though.
What’s even worse is when the parents leave their infants at home to go to a the opening night of a movie… like that couple that got arrested for sneaking out on their sleeping kid to see star wars II on opening night! Man, it’s just a movie…
This is one movie I would never take a child to see under the age of 16. My 9 year old received the book as a gift from a friend. She read and enjoyed the first book, “The Philosopher’s Stone” as well as the movie but “Chamber of Secrets” is a much darker and much more violent story. Taking a 4 year old to see this does not show much discretion on the parent’s side. I read some of the book, and I stress SOME… then I banned it from my 9 year old. It is more for adults than children, definitely. Our world is in trouble … when they lure children into becoming fans of something entertaining for them and then darken the sequel to this extent the author should be banned from publication for anything in the future. In my opinion, J.K.Rowling is nothing but a modern day Salman Rushdie and my advice is to stick to Beverly Cleary. At least she has some comprehension of what a child’s mind is like without scaring them half to death.
Gimmick’s other than this…. for my daughter’s 9th birthday, a friend of mine paid $36.97 Canadian plus 15% sales tax for the Harry Potter Potion maker. Don’t waste your money on this contraption. It contains a few bags of powders that adults have to measure and put into different compartments of a laboratory that adults have to put together. Then when they watch these mixes drop into water in a plastic dish (they may or may not change color)and the potion that they do make is totally disgusting. We have made about three or four different potions using all the ingredients hoping to find something pallatable, to absolutely no avail. Each recipe is as bad as the first one you make, or worse. She watches the powder slide down the chutes or drop from little buckets, she stirs the potion with the plastic “wooden” stick, then she dumps it down the drain. Where is the fun in this for kids??
The two healthiest of these powders contains the following ingredients…
KNOTGRASS…(actually, Artificially flavored lime powder drink mix) as written on the package.
Ingredients: Sugar, red cabbage, acidity regulator sodium bicarbonate, color(tartrazine E102), gelling agent calcium lactate (E327), artificial flavoring.
LACEWING FLIES…(actually artificially flavored mango powdered drink mix) unquote.
Ingredients: Sugar, potato flakes, citric acid (E330), emulsifier sodium hexametaphosphate(E452), artficial flavoring.
Sound delicious? Believe me, it is as every bit delicious as it sounds.
Worth $42.52 Canadian… I should think not. We have only played with this for one evening. It is now just another yard sale item laying around the house.