Reviewing Kids Movies, TV Shows & Toys for the Parents who have to Survive Them
An Open Letter to the Easily Offended
Dear Reader,
You have told us, “You guys don’t get it. Kids shows are for KIDS, not adults!” We agree. Actually, we have nothing against the makers of Teletubbies, Santa Buddies, or Oobi. They are fine people, I am sure. We don’t begrudge them for making money on their creations. Would we sacrifice our shame for big bucks?
Welcome back to How Annoying Is It! After a much longer than anticipated hiatus, we are happy to finally unveil our new site features! Our main goal was to get you, the readers, to join us in the conversation. We are doing that through user reviews (which now include TOYS!), a better rating system, and an individual rating system. All of these upgrades, we think, will seriously enhance the usability and fun of the site. So take a look around and join the conversation!
User Reviews are common online, whether it’s the latest novel on Amazon, or the new trendy restaurant on YELP. But never in the history of Blogging have user generated reviews come to the world of Children’s Entertainment Over Analyzation (CEOA). Today, that changes.
Here’s how it will work. You will choose a category to write a review (Movies, TV Shows, or Toys & Other Things). From there, you will register with a username and email address. It only takes a second, and we won’t be giving out nobody’s email addresses. People who do that are headachy at least… Anyway, then you can plug in some fun, easy information for the Box Score (stuff like “Three Word Description,” and an Infuri-Ometer Rating) and write your review.
After you submit it, our crack team of HAII staff will review your submission and post it. The only main criteria are that it is coherent and clean. So jump on in. There are thousands of parents out there who need to know what you have learned!
Last year, we knew we had made a mistake by only having three categories: Que This, Mostly Harmless, and Cringe Worthy. So we finally decided to spread things out a bit. The new scale is from 1 to 5 instead of 1 to 10. When you are writing your own reviews, you might want to keep these qualities in mind.
Click on the titles below to see the new Infuri-Ometer in action!
1- Irritant Free
Synonyms: Quality; Respectable Stuff; Better than Ezra
This is reserved for the really good ones. Not only are films, shows, and toys free of irritants, but they are actually very likeable. This takes the place of the best “Queable” movies we have already reviewed, like “Up” and “Kung Fu Panda.”
2- Almost Pleasant
Synonyms: Not Half Bad; Surprisingly decent; Sympatico
These aren’t quite Irritant Free, but they’re better than harmless. This is the category that parents will often drop the word “Cute.” As in, “yeah, it was cute. The kids really liked it.” Notice mom didn’t say she loved it. She didn’t yak it up on Facebook. But it was nice, and worth a Queue.
3- Mostly Harmless
Synonyms: Phenomenally Average; Powerfully Mediocre; Ignorable
Mostly Harmless entertainment includes stuff the kids will enjoy, and which won’t drive everyone else crazy. But that’s the most we can say for it. Parents won’t love it, but they won’t wish for the arrest and indictment of the producers, either. Mostly Harmless shows play in the background. It’s bearable.
4- Headachy
Synonyms: Grating; Officially Offensive; Jerry Lewis-esque
Reach for the Excedrin Migraine, my friends, because this is where we turn the corner. Headachy is stuff that parents want to hide, because it hurts them (the parents). The kids, having an undeveloped sense of taste, might love it. But their big brothers, sisters, parents, and babysitters will try to block it out or, if possible, make it disappear altogether.
5- Cringe Worthy
Synonyms: Maddening; Excruciating; I’d Rather Have My Fingers Broken By Jack Bauer
Cringe Worthy is reserved for the truly awful. Again, the kids might actually enjoy it, but a parent, after one viewing, will beg for mercy. We’re talking about horrors like Santa Buddies, Barny, and Teletubbies. Seriously. Is there a parent who has been able to watch these without hating life a little bit more? It’s just not worth it. You need to avoid these.
This just adds more user participation for HAII. Now, you can Rate any movie, tv show, or toy using the same categories as the Infuri-Ometer. You will see the 1 to 5 rating on the right side of the title of the movie or product that you are viewing (near the top right corner of the site).
The site will keep a constant tally of all user ratings and average them out. That way, you can see if the reviewer is on par with most others who visit the site. It can give you a bird’s eye view on how other parents feel about these particular choices.
Pretty neat, huh?
In a word, yes. We love writing our extensive essay-style reviews, so we’ll keep those going. And if your reviews catch our eye consistently, who knows… Your reviews may be included in our OFFICIAL REVIEWS section.
Finally! You can get that pink dinosaur “Cringe Worthy” T-Shirt you’ve been asking for since you were seven. At last, your life has purpose and meaning again!
And there’s more of course. We’ve got several designs in our t-shirt shop, and you can choose the color and style of your t-shirt. And because high prices are extremely irritating, we have kept them low. You can find most anything for under $15. You can access the T-Shirt shop any time by clicking on the “Irritant Free Swag” tab at the top of the site.
Just so you know, we don’t actually print or send them out ourselves. We have teamed up with a company that does that. So if you have a problem with any orders, contact them (their info is all over the T-shirt shop.)
If you have a good idea for a design that you’d like to offer up to the store, you can email a .png file to us, and we’ll think it over. Just keep in mind we have to keep it relatively generic for legal purposes (and it’s a good thing, because there are literally thousands of pink dinosaurs our there… who did you think it was supposed to be???)
We will be progressively adding more of our own designs as we are able. Hope you enjoy!
The Tooth Fairy comes out today, and I’m going to see it by myself, without my kids. I know… Ouch. It stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a minor league hockey player who is forced to get into a tutu. Johnson, who recently starred in such epic films like “The Gameplan” and “Race to Which Mountain?” is the latest in a long line film star celebrities who have turned into Kids Movie specialist. Those who go down this road just don’t come back.
George of the Jungle, Looney Tunes Back in Action, Dudley Doright, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now This Side of the Looking Glass. Not to mention teen flix like Blast from the Past, Encino Man, and the Mummy movies. Fraser plays these roles with fervor, and kids love him. Forgive me, but I can’t take him seriously ever again.
Dr. Doolittle, Dr. Doolittle 2, The Nutty Professor, The Nutty Professor 2, Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Daddy Daycare, Imagine That.
Murphy was great on SNL and the Beverly Hills Cop series, but something went dreadfully wrong after that, and he has kept the kids laughing when the adults stopped. Maybe it was his agent, but the guy has picked some awful roles.
There are others, of course, but these two might serve as a warning to Johnson, who has thrilled some people in other theaters with his action movie prowess. Some have compared him to ARNOLD. If you bring Kindergarten Cop into play, you realize it might be a valid comparison. And a bad omen…
Our tag line specifies the HAII scope: We are a Kids Movie Review Site for Parents…” But today, I’m getting ready to watch the sci-fi animated film “9,” and it brings up a curious dilemma we have here at How Annoying Is It: what is a kid, exactly? We have to draw the line somewhere, so what constitutes a kid’s movie? Do teen movies fit in?
Maybe what we’re really talking about is Family Movie Reviews. At any rate, one thing has been decided: the line will be drawn BEFORE the Twilight series, even though they are mostly marketed to teenage girls. Our reasoning is pretty simple: We don’t want to watch Twilight. Everything about the franchise makes us want to hurl. And yet, you say, we don’t want to watch Barbie movies, either. And you are right. But there actually is a difference. You see, teenagers rarely want to watch their movies with mom and dad, but younger kids will want to watch their movies at all hours of the day. So parents of teens will rarely be exposed to their Vampire nonsense.
But what about GI:Joe, Transformers 1 & 2, and movies like 9? Do they qualify? We already stretched things a bit for The Water Horse and the Star Wars Holiday Special. I think the rule of thumb should be this: If there are Action Figures, then it can be reviewed by HAII. Does that open up Avatar, the newly crowned Golden Globe winner? Probably so.
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