Horse-death, passive suicide, and other terrible things fill this "children's" movie. Honestly, people a little bit older than me watched some MESSED UP things as a kid.
Nougat_JesusGot to crush that idealism early...
The unholy trilogy of "young adult" books is the Bridge to Terabithia, along with Hatchet and The Pinballs.
Hatchet is the story of a kid who gets stranded in the wilderness and must figure out how to stay alive, while being haunted by his mother's affair with another man. I know people who had to read this two or three times in their school careers because it's so "good." Apparently the author did a semi-sequel that imagines what it would have been like for the kid if he hadn't been found at the end of the first book. I wager it would've been more depressing. He also did a real sequel in which the kid gets stuck in the woods again (d'oh!) and a final book in which he decides he wants to live in the woods for good. How... heartwarming.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_JesusThe Pinballs isn't as well-known, but it may be the worst of the lot. It's about three kids at a foster home and how their lives are horrible. One kid lived with his elderly aunts until they both simultaneously broke a hip, the female character was abused by her family, and the last kid is in a wheelchair because he was run over by his drunken father. It really is calculated to be as depressing as possible: the wheelchair kid really likes Kentucky Fried Chicken, so one time the foster parents and another kid are going out and he asks them to get some. But they forget and he's crushed. Another time they remember, but something bad happens to him and he's too depressed to enjoy it. This was turned into a TV movie that starred Kristy McNichol.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_JesusAre these books supposed to teach kids about life? All they'll learn is that the most horrible things imaginable will happen to them, and that they'll never succeed in anything. Got to crush that idealism early.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_JesusI forgot to mention the best moment in Hatchet: When the kid realizes he's been eating fish that have been feeding off a human corpse. There's a good argument for vegetarianism.
This was also turned into a TV movie. The corpse was played by Ned Beatty.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_Jesus"How do you 'play' a corpse?"
Beatty was alive for most of his appearance, and you only saw him very briefly as a corpse. He wasn't a bad-looking corpse either, even though he was supposedly underwater getting chewed on by fish for weeks; he should've been pretty well skeletonized or at least rotted beyond recognition. But I guess when you have star power like him, you want to get as much out of him as possible.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_JesusAs for messed up,kids attended catholic school have to read a lot of religious stories. Not the Bible, per se, but stories of martyrs, so when they complained about having flue, malaria, or broken bones, they would reminded about Saint Jebodiah who had his face eaten off by wilderbeasts and his body burned in molten lead to prove his love to Jesus.
You may genuflect.
February 20, 2013
Nougat_Jesus(so enough spelling and grammar mistakes in the above?)
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