A 3-year-old at Casino Royale!?

[Marchen]

It happens. It's not your problem, really. We all have bad theater experiences, but it's no use pressing the matter.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Movie tickets are much cheaper than baby sitters.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I was allowed to see whatever I wanted when I was little and I turned out fine.

But I do understand your concern and annoyance.

 

[Aurora]

I was allowed to see whatever I wanted when I was little and I turned out fine.

It's not really so much a question of them "turning out fine".

The worst case of this I have ever seen is when the last Hellraiser movie came out. I think it was #4 or 5? I believe it was back in '96. Anyways, my boyfriend drug me to go see it. It was a midnight showing and a couple was there with their three kids. Approx ages 2, 4, and maybe 8. That's right. Hellraiser.They screamed and cried through the whole thing, and honestly I can't blame them.
I find such actions to be highly irresponsible. A child that age can't sit through a movie like that. It is rude to the other patrons who paid to go see it. And that's not even starting the debate about whether or not kids should be there.

 

[Ranger REG]

Did they really think that their toddler would sit still for 2 hours? Does any toddler sit still for 2 hours? It sounds like they were just too cheap to hire a babysitter.

Or babysitter won't take food stamp.

 

[Ranger REG]

Movie tickets are much cheaper than baby sitters.

Oh, yeah, especially when the ticket price is $1 and is showing [used] summer movies (like PotCMC) in November.

 

[Elf Witch]

Sometimes parents drive me crazy because of their stupidity. I saw a couple bring their three little girls to see Basic Instinct. I cringed the film is full of violence, nudity, and graphic sex. The credits open with a couple having sex then the man be knifed to death.

What parent in their right mind would expose young kids to that. When my son was little I missed a lot of movies because I didn't have a babysitter and video stores were not around yet. So missing a movie really meant missing it until it came on TV.

Now a days you don't have to wait that long for it to come out on DVD so I have even less sympthy for these moronic parents.

 

[delericho]

In the UK, film certificates are a legal limit - regardless of the parents' wishes a child under 15 cannot get into a film rated '15', and a child under 18 cannot get into a film rated '18' (in theory, anyway). We recently had our '12' certificate changed to '12A' so that parents could give permission to their under-age kids. (The film that caused that shift was 'Spiderman'.) Oh, and films are never shown in an 'Unrated' version in cinemas.

Likewise, all DVDs are rated using the same system. (Occasionally, a film's rating on DVD will be different from the rating in the cinema, as was the case with "Starship Troopers". For a while, there was also a rule that two different DVD versions of the same film had to have the same rating, but that rule might have been relaxed. There are no 'Unrated' DVDs.)

Most films that are PG-13 over in the US are rated 12A here, and most films that are rated R seem to be rated 15 here. The 18 rating seems to get a lot less use here than it used to. (However, our rating body generally offer studios a choice - make some cuts for a 15, or accept the 18. Most studios make the cuts, which annoys me a bit.)

All of which is a long way of saying we don't really have this particular problem to deal with. Giggling teens and annoying mobile phones, on the other hand...

 

[Jesus_marley]

just throw milk duds at the offenders until they leave...

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I was allowed to see whatever I wanted when I was little and I turned out fine.

But I do understand your concern and annoyance.

I, on the other hand, was not. We only saw up to PG level movies until we were much older then it went up to PG-13. No R movies until we could go on our own. After then, they figured we were old enough to make our own choices. Mostly haven't had bad experiences with other people acting like jerks.