The Water Horse - 3 Buckets

Maybe it's me, but I wonder about things - like how does a water horse go from an egg to the size of a dinosaur in a couple of weeks and not die within a month? I mean, if I were born on Christmas Eve and here it is the first week of January and I'm already a young adult, wouldn't I be a senior citizen by the end of the month and returned to dust by mid-February? You would think that a screenwriter would be able to come up with a better way of bonding a little boy with a giant dinofish (that's a new word I've created. It's trademarked, so don't use it).

Aside from that, Water Horse is a genteel version of Free Willy incarnated as a Loch Ness monster. It's a family movie, which means parents will buy a lot of those overpriced kid's packs, which the kid will promptly spill as soon as they reach out to lower their seat. Most often, I find the greasy trays behind the seats because a kid can't get out of their seats without first putting their trays in the seat next to them. As soon as they take their hands off the tray, it falls in the crack between the seat and the chair back.

Did you know that parents are trying to drown their kids in popcorn butter? It's true. In a one-inch deep plastic tray that contains only about two handfuls of popcorn to start with, I'm finding a half inch of butter - enough to clog the arteries of the entire family.

Film makers know this is going on, yet they continue to turn out these killer kid's movies and family films. Theater management knows this is happening, but do they come up with a healthier (and less messy) alternative? Nope. Popcorn is cheap - even if people in Mexico can't get enough corn to make their tacos. You would think that Congress would pass legislation requiring theaters to offer low-fat alternatives, just as they've done in school lunch programs. What's wrong with a bag of apple slices or a box of raisins - aside from the fact they're no fun to eat? Where are those pills they used to tell us about that replace an entire meal? Theaters could install aroma canisters that would release the scents of hot, buttered popcorn and chocolate. When I was growing up we could buy these straws that, when dipped in milk, produced flavors ranging from chocolate milk to strawberry or banana. Why not have straws that produce the flavor of Coke, Hi-C, and Sprite? With a little imagination we could save a lot of money and mess if we just sold tablets, scents, and flavored straws.

The Water Horse is a cute movie - if only it didn't attract kids, things would be so much easier.