[SPOILER] A review of the film "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," by two young boys in the back seat of a car

SPOILER ALERT! [Video Link]. To be fair, I felt and reacted precisely this way about the most recent episode of Breaking Bad.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: children • Entertainment • films • Funny • Kids • video

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ChuckTV

The movie wasn’t that bad. Close though.
revjim23

I think this post needs a spoiler tag.
- Shibi_SF
  
  I agree. I could have used a spoiler alert. Now I know… how it ends and how I will react to the ending. Damnit!
  - http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
    
    Gosh I’m sorry, I didn’t even think f that. I am really sorry. I’ll add that immediately.
    - Shibi_SF
      
      Aw, thanks…. I’ll still have the same reaction at the end — just like every time I see The Green Mile.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        For what it’s worth, it’s not as if the title of the movie itself were “The First Few Years Of The Odd Life Of Timothy Green.”
        
        But yeah… needed a spoiler warning.
naught_for_naught

I guess when there’s Charlie-Finger Money to be made, you don’t worry about protecting your children’s privacy as they experience the catharsis of tragedy. Instead you video them in the throes of despair and post it on YouTube.
Carlodog

The parents seem to be egging the kids on to cry harder, while snickering at their distress Hey, anything for a funny You Tube video, right?
- Boundegar
  
  Just wait til they’re 14 and their parents show this video to their first girlfriends! And then film their reaction AGAIN and post THAT to Youtube! The opportunities for humiliation are almost endless!
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    One word: Menendez.
garyg2

I remember my sister crying for three hours straight after ET. Also remember my parents comforting her. Don’t recall them filming and laughing at her though. Times change I guess.
- http://twitter.com/AndBobando ando bobando
  
  I remember my sister crying at the end of Beauty and the Beast (she loved the Beast) and we definitely DID laugh at her. But we didn’t film it. We’re not THAT heartless.
- Donald Petersen
  
  People in my family have teared up at many a movie, but I don’t remember seeing wailing and sobbing like this at actual deaths in the family.
  
  These kids weren’t ready for this kind of entertainment.
- edkedz
  
  Think of the sweet video you’d have now if they had.
http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

Go home, play several hours of Minecraft…. you’ll feel fine!
- naught_for_naught
  
  …until they get on the school bus with 30 other kids who saw the video. You know what comes next…Mom and Pop video taping the kids on the way to Karate class.
  - Quiche de Resistance
    
    The consequences will never be the same.
tmccartney66

This video is needlessly cruel to those kids. So was taking them to that movie, probably.
http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

Shut up everyone, all that sweet YouTube adsense revenue is gonna pay for their college education.
- Tom McCann
  
  You think any will be left after paying the therapists?
  - GrumpySteen
    
    No need for therapists. The kids will just major in psychology and spend the a few years trying to self-diagnost like all the other screwed-up psychology majors who mistake education for therapy.
Quiche de Resistance

This video is just fucked up.

I don’t give a fuck about bad parenting or cruelty or whatevs.

But those pudgy red crying wet shiny screaming faces.

Makes me want to flip a goddamn table.
- Aram Jahn
  
  The metallic red eyes from the kid on the right took a bit of the edge off. I hope the parents DO make a crapload of dough from Adsense, so the kids will inherit it when the parents die under some mysterious circumstance…and not even Colombo can figure out who videoed THAT!
  
  I was devastated for a few days after Bambi’s mom got shot by those hunters (ooops! should I have added SPOILER ALERT?); glad my mom didn’t have a video of that.
P1rat3

It might be a little cruel to post the video, but in the larger scheme of things it’s nice to see people taking their kids to see films that challenge them to think about life and death in a positive way.

I wonder if they’ll post their boys’ review of Old Yeller next…
- Boundegar
  
  I don’t think those boys were seeing death in a positive way. Just sayin’.
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Is this the new David After Dentist from which we got the classic line, “Is this real life?”
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Look at the still. The T-shirt. The raised arm. The YouTube play icon right on the kid’s mouth. Now imagine the kid saying “America! Fuck, yeah!” through the icon.

I don’t know what it means, but it should mean something.
Steve Faiella

I dunno, maybe I’m just jaded, but I feel like this video has phony written all over it…
- Boundegar
  
  You’re right. They probably just read the spoilers to their kids and then tear-gassed them.
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Also, Rotten Tomatoes says of this movie: “It means well, but The Odd Life of Timothy Green is ultimately too cloyingly sentimental—and thinly scripted—to satisfy all but the least demanding viewers.”

Ladies and gentlemen… the least demanding viewers.
Walter Gemeinhardt

the parents are just assholes.
http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

Those parents really could have pushed it over the top with a well-placed, “You know, one day Mommy and Daddy have to die, too… it could happen at any time.”
- Boundegar
  
  Somebody, I think SNL, spoofed Candid Camera once. “We’re going to tell these children their parents are putting them up for adoption. Watch their reactions!”
Gerald Mander

When you pair the fact that they just sat there filming this whole thing with the mom saying “Circle of life” and sounding as if she’s grinning her ass off, I start to wonder if some kind of enforced eugenics isn’t such a bad thing after all.
simonbarsinister

I can’t wait until they take the kids to see ‘The Road’.
- Gerald Mander
  
  ”A father and son bond on a trip to the beach!”
- allium
  
  But the kid survived in that one!*
  
  * At least the one played by Kodi-Smit-McPhee did. **
  
  ** According to some interpretations.
xaulted1

Unfeeling, uncaring asshole parents. No one will be surprised when you get “Menendezed” in the future.
smallteam

Mom: “… Circle of life.” And she just can’t stop laughing!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1360077302 Barbara Wells

Nothing funny about this at all. Parents taunting their children and posting it on the internet? Sick and sad.
https://launchpad.net/~zak-mckracken Zak McKracken

First: Showing the kids a movie they’re in no way prepared to deal with

Second: Doing it in a place where they can’t just get out! When I was 5 and “the last unicorn” got too hard to handle, I could still run out of the living room

Third: Instead of consoling them or … you know, show some empathy? … hey, let’s make a funny video of it!

Fourth: Laugh about it. I can tell you there is nothing worse if you’re a little crying kid than grown-ups laughing about you for crying.

Fifth: Oh yes, there is: _Your parents_ laughing about you. while making a funny video of it.

That’s cold-blooded. I could not watch this video because the impulse to just turn the effing camera off and give the boys a hug was too strong.
Erich Walrath

Think I’ll take my kids to see “Salo”…and then film their reaction.

Anything for an effing laugh.
teapot

OMG thanks internet psychologists, I’m glad your years of studying the subject has allowed you all to shine light on what horrible parents these are – feel free to post links to your theses so we can further bask in the glory of your impressive knowledge. Laughing at kids when their reaction is overblown is not a bad thing: it teaches them that some things are not worth being worked up over and that the divide between reality and fiction is an important thing to bear in mind.

If the kids were crying at the death of a pet or an actual living person then filming them while laughing might be pretty cruel but, no matter how you slice it, reacting like that to a PG movie is over the top and should be laughed at. I’m actually shocked that so many Boingers would want to wrap their children in bubble wrap and nurture over-emotional outbursts instead of treating them in a manner that reflects how society would react. This, like all responsible parenting, is merely preparation for real life.
- https://launchpad.net/~zak-mckracken Zak McKracken
  
  Here’s my thesis: I was laughed at for crying about something when I was a kid. Before I cried because someone I didn’t like had been an asshole to me. Afterwards I cried because someone I trusted had been an asshole to me. And didn’t understand why I somehow wouldn’t stop crying, despite people laughing at me!
  
  You may call that a lesson learned. You may also think it’s good to give your kids a good punch in the stomach sometimes, because, you know, they may have to deal with this kind of thing later in their lives, and I didn’t have it easy and look what a fine cynical person I became, so why should I be nice to anyone?
  
  Oh, and maybe you also think it’s really cool for parents to then present their kids to the whole effing world while they’re slowly realizing that maybe their parents don’t love them as much as they thought … dude that cannot ever serve any other purpose than humiliating them in public. Great, another experience everyone has to make, so let’s get it over with! Right? In front of the world? While someone is teasing you about it? Nothing forms a balanced personality as effectively as enhancing difficult experiences with humiliation.
  
  “should be laughed at” is stupid. Have you ever in your live seen anyone come to reason because they were being laughed at? I haven’t. Usually the laughing person is the one in need of reason.
  
  Ohh, try this! When your kids go to the dentist for the first time, are nervous and it reaally hurts and all: Make fun of ‘em! That’ll teach them to not feel the pain!
  
  This is a really good way to make cynical people.
- https://launchpad.net/~zak-mckracken Zak McKracken
  
  Another thing just occurred to me:
  You’re not even arguing that the parents are not being jerks to their kids, you’re actually arguing it’s good that parents should be jerks to their kids.
  To which I say: There’s enough jerk-ness in the world, and there’s a fundamental difference between making sure children never see any of that (which would indeed be a problem) and making sure they get their share of it directly from their parents.
  I mean, if someone insults you, will you accept the apology “I just did that because it’s a cruel world and you need to get used to it”?
  
  … and that doesn’t even address the fact that the parents uploaded this video which will no doubt haunt those boys for some time.
lukegarret

I remember feeling this same way after Disney’s The Black Hole. I still don’t understand why that old robot had to die and fall into the blak hole.