Professional Reviews of Kids Movies

There are certain things for which user reviews are much more useful than professional reviews. Kids movies are one of those things.

Example: Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me came out around the same time. Just about every professional review for DM said that it was good but not as good as TS3. As one reviewer put it, “Toy Story 3 is a masterpiece; Despicable Me is just decent entertainment”. As a parent of 6- and 7-year-old boys, I liked the fact that TS3 was rated G (DM was rated PG).

What the reviewers don’t tell you is that any kid under 10 is going to like DM a lot more than TS3. My 6-yo laughed loudly at the TS3 aliens saying “The Claawww”, but on the whole that movie was only decently entertaining and slightly scary for both boys. By comparison, DM had them both laughing like lunatics. Now that we have the Blu-ray, they watch the mini-movies over and over, and they quote the funny parts from the movie again and again.

What I want to know, when I read reviews of kids movies, is how much the kids will enjoy the movie. The professional reviews don’t give me that, instead choosing to focus on how much the parents will enjoy watching along with their kids. Is that really what parents want to know?