"It's For Kids" and Other Poor Arguments
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie came out recently, and it appears to be continuing the trend of graphically impressive yet narratively bereft billion-dollar box office bonanzas in the vein of the Minecraft Movie, the Disney "live-action" remakes, the near-entirety of Pixar's output in recent years, the first Super Mario Bros. movie1, and, come to think of it, the lion's share of most media of any format that has been released since I was cursed with the capability of discernment. As with the first film, which made clear that Nintendo and Illumination intend to squander any narrative potential that the inevitable Nintendo Cinematic Universe might otherwise hold, it is not difficult to find arguments online for why Galaxy is not only a fantastic movie, but must be so by default because there is a large collection of grievances that you are not allowed to have about it, namely, any that criticize it for lacking in narrative depth, coherent plotlines, or character development. One is essentially barred from holding this movie to the same standard as one would other films. But why?
"It's not for adults. It's a kids' movie, therefore it's good."
Implicit in this line of reasoning is the assumption that a film cannot offer value to both adult and child viewers at the same time. This is, of course, nonsense, and is a standard that you will never see applied to forestall praise of a movie that people believe has actual artistic merit. It is entirely possible for a movie to appeal both to children and adults.
This defense also raises the question of what exactly a bad kids' movie looks like. If one is not permitted to judge a movie in all the coherent ways simply because the target audience is children, how do you distinguish between kids' movies of different qualities? Can I throw literally anything onto the screen and receive a free pass from criticism as long as I disclaim that it's only intended for kids?
"There's nothing wrong with a movie that exclusively appeals to kids, therefore it's good."
Picture a movie from your childhood that still holds up as excellent now that you're an adult. For me, the Incredibles comes to mind. It's a fantastic movie that was fun as a kid and remains fun as an adult. If there were an alternate version which was intentionally made not to be fun for adults, would that make it better? Is there any way that, all else being equal, a movie which is designed to suck for anyone with an age in the double-digits can be better than one which is not? This argument essentially boils down to "it's bad because it's supposed to be bad, and therefore it's actually good."
"I didn't go see this movie for the plot or characters. It's not the Godfather! I just wanted to see something fun. This was fun, therefore it's good."
This is actually a criticism couched in the form of a compliment. It's an acknowledgement that the movie was bad, but that you don't particularly mind because there is an unclear distinction being drawn between being good and being fun.
"I don't care if it's bad. I just needed something to shut my kids up for ninety minutes. It accomplished that, therefore it's good."
This has nothing to do with the quality of the film. I could insist that my kids sit and watch paint drying for an hour, but the fact that it accomplished my goal of shutting them up does not mean that a feature-length film of paint drying would be beyond critique.
"But why does it matter?"
It matters because we as a society, and parents in particular, ought to value exposing children to high-quality media. Unless we're prepared to take a maximally relativistic perspective and declare that no content of any sort can be judged against any other, we cannot avoid acknowledging that not all media is created equal. Children deserve good stories. They deserve stories that teach them empathy, that broaden their literary horizons, that challenge them and engage them. We should be insisting that children's media help them grow into functional adults. We should care whether their movies make them smarter or dumber, more worldly or intellectually stifled.
Even if we don't care about these things, shouldn't we at least want the movies they see to be good? I don't want to spend money to take my kids to a movie that I know is going to be bad, and especially one that I know is going to make me sit in boredom the whole time. I don't understand why people have internalized the idea that high-quality family-oriented movies are too much to ask for. We had plenty available when I was a kid. So why are grown adults pushing the narrative online that kids' movies have no other choice but to be vapid sequences of flashing lights and licensed music?
The first in recent memory, that is. (The first first one predates my birth.)↩