While visiting my favorite pawn shop a few weeks ago I picked up a used DVD of Gremlins. It took us a while to find (2) hours of daylight as a family to watch this movie. For slightly scary movies, the daughter does have a strict “sun is up” policy. It has been 20+ years since I have seen this movie and I remember only the highlights but I figured this was close enough to E.T. (which both the kids loved) that it would be safe. I do know that a 1984 PG and a 2010 PG rating is not the same and in retrospect I should have previewed the movie first probably. Anyway (as pointed out by a facebook buddy) there is a lot of smoking in this movie (and not only the gremlins). Also, there is enough (4) letter words to earn a PG-13 nowadays but even all of that the thing that might have stopped me from showing this to my kids was the gross scenes. I forgot that one gremlin gets it in a mixing bowl followed by his buddy exploding in the microwave. I can see the son watching this again but not the daughter (and even then he will likely leave the room for some scenes). We did manage to get through it though and (after one really gross scene at the end) we celebrated the defeat of the gremlins (but they made a Gremlins 2 six years later).
We also are watching the first (8) episodes of Punky Brewster. The sister-in-law bought a 1 DVD set that only has the first part of the first season. Unlink Gremlins, this is exactly what I remembered (namely, horrible). Even hearing the theme song makes me a little nauseous. Unfortunately, the daughter loves it (as I feared she would). Even the son tolerates it (I had hoped he would be an ally in this). We have muddled through (6) of the episodes and I have researched what the season DVD sets go for just in case this love lingers toward a birthday or Christmas. Let’s hope it doesn’t. I cannot believe this show lasted (4) years (a total of 88 episodes) and then turned into a Saturday morning cartoon. I hope it doesn’t come to us buying the cartoon (heaven help me).
Jon
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