The Rock Dons Tights

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.

Exhibit A: Brenden Frazier

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.

Exhibit B: Eddie Murphy

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.

Alot has been made the past two decades of the dangers of second hand smoke. Joe Camel and Philip Morris have gone from cool kids to villains, and smokers themselves have been made to feel really bad about how their behavior effects everybody else.

Strangely enough, there has been almost no discussion on the dangers of second hand viewing. I refer, of course, to the avalanche of children’s entertainment that has fallen from Mt. Hollywood in recent years. Kids TV, which was once quarantined on Saturday mornings, has now found its way into every prime-time living room thanks to Disney, Nickelodian, Cartoon Network, Boomerang and MSNBC, to name a few.