Matilda's pretty good at dealing with people-in-peril storylines as long as someone else is spoiled and can promise her that everything turns out okay. When we're reading chapter books with suspense or even potential peril, I have to reassure her that I've read ahead and that it turns out okay; if we're both unspoiled and I can't make that promise, she flips out.

So I think, with some prep beforehand reinforced with in-movie reassurance, she should be okay with Brave.

And, man, she has absolutely no concept of the badness of spoiling plot twists, which has been an issue when she and Emmett watch episodes of Korra and Adventure Time together as he's fairly spoilerphobic but his objections are completely baffling to her. And amusing to me, since he did the exact same thing when he was her age. He gripes and grouses about her spoilage, and when I point out that he did it to me all the time himself, he says, "Yeah, but that was when I was five!"

"And she is how old now?"

"But that's different! Don't ask me how! STOP JUDGING ME OKAY!"

So I guess that rules out most of Disney for Dylan?

If it's quick or offstage (Bambi, Finding Nemo), it doesn't register too much, so most Disney is ok. In Brave, probably 75% of the movie is the mom-as-a-bear being pursued and almost killed by everyone else ever, and it's not even remotely clear (except that since it's a kids movie it must be) that it will be okay in the end.

that's uh, quite a twist. I never would have guessed that the movie was about THAT.

Yeah, that's sure not set up in any way by the trailers. Huh.

Huh.

Actually, I figured that out from the trailers. Mainly from the part where Merida is leaping and reaching out to the bear. Had to be either her dad or her mom, and since her relationship with her mom was more fraught... yeah.

I need the buffista hivemind for recommendations. Mom wants to add more movies to my nephew's video library library. E will be 4 in August. He's got some Disney stuff, most Pixar, and he likes Backyardigans, Blues Clues, Bob the Builder, and Fireman Sam.

She really wants to find things with very little violence (or, at least, no more than you'd find in Finding Nemo or A Bug's Life, or something), and NO DEATHS. Especially NO PARENTAL deaths.

So, any suggestions? (movies or tv shows)

Wallace & Gromit. Miyazaki (Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Ponyo).

Nightmare Before Christmas, unless "no deaths" eliminates it since the main character is a skeleton...

For TV shows, he probably knows all the PBS Kids stuff already (Dinosaur Train, SuperWHY, Sid the Science Kid, etc). I don't know what's on the other kids networks these days because I'm trying to avoid letting D watch commercials unsupervised.

The Mary Sue saw Brave. No real spoilers: [link]

Thanks for the suggestions! I hadn't thought about Nightmare before Xmas or the Miyazaki, those might be good choices.

Actually I don't know if he knows those PBS shows, they don't want a lot of tv and don't have Netflix. Mostly he just watches dvds he owns or are from the library. I'll have to point her towards those.

E's mother and her fiance died suddenly earlier this year and he's still trying to understand what happened. Mom said she thought he had enough movies where someone dies and it would be nice to have movies where everyone lives.