For freaky childhood trauma, nothing quite beats the trip on the S.S. Wonkatina in Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka movie.

Someone was on acid while they were planning the visuals for that sequence...

DH and I are considering taking Dylan to see Ponyo. He's never seen a movie in a theatre before, so we'd go to an early weekend show where there would be lots of other kids.

Other Buffista parents - is 2-and-a-bit (26 months) too young to sit through a movie in a theatre? My Neighbor Totoro is his favorite DVD in the universe, so we're pretty sure he'd like this one (and both DH and I want to see it because it's Myazaki).

Will he sit through a whole movie at home? If so, I think you are good. You might consider going a bit late if your theater has really long previews. Casper would watch a whole film at home by 2 and we took her to Curse of the Were-Rabbit at about 26 months. She was fine. Sat in my lap, a little talkative ("Where's the BIG rabbit?") but it was a matinee full of kids.

Dillo was much slower to develop the attention span to sit through a whole movie. We saw Wall-E with him twice in the theater at just-two, but he fell asleep at about the 30 minute mark both times. I saw Up with him on my lap this summer (35 months) and it was kind of a mistake, even at that old - he was wiggly and broke the 3-D glasses and I wished we hadn't brought him.

So, as in all things, Your Kid May Vary.

evil jimi - in the trailer it looks like Edge is pretty much saying the same thing about his playing that Bill Bailey says.

I don't think he has any illusion that he's all that great. He just likes the sounds he gets from the effects. It's Bono that has the ego problem. And I'm a U2 fan!

Other Buffista parents - is 2-and-a-bit (26 months) too young to sit through a movie in a theatre?

Well, yes, but then I have a seven-and-a-half-year old who hasn't managed to sit an entire film out yet. We left after 30 minutes of "Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit" at age 3-and-a-half. Managed 20 minutes of "Ratatouille" at 5-and-a-half. Held on for about 30 of "Kung-Fu Panda" at 6. He's a sensitive wee soul.

Actually, I'd say go for it, but expect to leave early and be pleasantly surprised if you don't have to. Also, do some prep - warn him about the biiiig screen, and the lights dimming before the show, and not talking too loud. And then, if it's obviously getting too much, don't hesitate and just go.

Good luck!

"But you have one like that", says Mom. "I think it's in the attic."

I've probably mentioned this before, but my folks were watching The Exorcist (on network TV) when I was, I dunno 8 or 9? At first I wasn't paying attention because it was boring. Then it got a little creepy, and I decided to stop watching and just read my book. Which meant I heard a lot of creepy stuff, and was free to imagine what was happening. And after a little bit of that, there was a commercial break, and I decided I should probably go read in my room now. But I think that "I should be elsewhere now" response tended to kick in when needed; I watched a fair amount of spooky TV shows and movies, and sometimes I didn't make it through the whole thing. But I don't think I ever had nightmares as a result, either.

I definitely agree with Matt about Eraserhead, though. I didn't have trouble sleeping afterwards, but I think that's the most freaked out I've ever been by, well, anything.

I like spooky, and scary, and even a certain amount of gross, but I have a fairly low threshhold for tension-tension-tension-BOO scenes. I suspect that it's the same reason I don't do roller-coasters; I can't tolerate the setup. Blair Witch was probably just about where my limits for that sort of thing are, actually.

Event Horizon grossed me out and scared me, but it's just an icky memory. Something that haunts me is a movie called Games, which I saw on TV some late Saturday night in high school, when I always stayed up after everyone else to see what there was to see (some weird movies got shown then). Anyway, this British couple is befriended by a weird woman who talks them into doing odder and odder things, and one of the things ends up with a corpse. And they encase the corpse in plaster and stand it up in the corner as part of their modern art collection. I have weird corpse issues, and the following scenes in the living room with that statue in the corner freaked me out more and more.

It dawned on me eventually that I started to scan every new room I entered to see if there was anything big enough to hide a corpse in before I could relax.

I'd say go for it, but expect to leave early and be pleasantly surprised if you don't have to.

I think this is going to be our plan. He will sit through all of Totoro on the couch, so my main concern with Ponyo is that he'll want to skip ahead to the catbus scene and not understand why that's not doable in a theatre.

Something that haunts me is a movie called Games, which I saw on TV some late Saturday night in high school, when I always stayed up after everyone else to see what there was to see (some weird movies got shown then). Anyway, this British couple is befriended by a weird woman who talks them into doing odder and odder things, and one of the things ends up with a corpse.

I saw that when I was fairly young too, and really enjoyed it. But the couple was James Caan and Katherine Ross, so not British.

Incidentally, it's basically an unofficial remake/update of Les Diaboliques (even down to casting Simone Signoret as the strange, older woman)

But the couple was James Caan and Katherine Ross, so not British.

Oh, OK. The older woman had a high class Northeastern accent that I remember as British.