This week Nancy Nall and Lance Mannion go to the movies.

Or, actually, don’t go to the movies.

They take their kids to the movies, and that’s the trouble. Since becoming parents, movie-lovers Nance and Lance have found their movie-going options severely limited. Grown up nights out at the movies are a rarity. Long afternoons of having to sit patiently through the likes of The Princess Diaries, Racing Stripes, Madagascar, and Revenge of the Sith have replaced the kinds of evenings Nance remembers fondly.

“Dammit,” she says, “I miss the movies. I miss going to the movies. I miss discussing the movies afterward, with adults, over adult beverages.”

Lance feels her pain, but he has an advantage over Nance when it comes to having to take the kids to the movies. He has boys. Nance has a little girl. And, says Lance, movies made for boys are far more enjoyable than movies targeted at girls.

Why is that?

Lance,

Once, years ago when I was single, childless and living in the happenin’ cosmopolis that is Fort Wayne, Ind., I asked a friend if he’d seen some recent piece of cinematic buzz. He — married with a young son — said he hadn’t. “I only see films of the Ernest oeuvre,” he added, matter-of-factly.

I would come to feel his pain, once motherhood had me buying tickets for “Rugrats in Paris.” Certainly, this has never been a better time to watch movies at home. The theater-to-DVD gap keeps shrinking, and
our house has on-demand cable, a truly marvelous invention that should have you dumping your Blockbuster stock, if you have any. I’ve come to appreciate the mix of old (no additional charge) and new (pay-per-view) movies I can have at the touch of a button; in the last two weeks I’ve seen “GoodFellas” and “Boogie Nights,” two movies that remind me why I love movies. And hey, anytime “Flirting With Disaster” rolls around, I make time for it. It’s one of the great unappreciated romantic comedies of recent years, and if you sit
through the credits, you get to see Mary Tyler Moore in bra and panties, showing a midsection so taut you almost have to look away. She was 60 when that scene was shot.

But dammit, Lance, I miss the movies. I miss going to the movies. I miss discussing the movies afterward, with adults, over adult beverages. But like my friend, these days, in theaters anyway, I only see films of the Ernest oeuvre.

And here, briefly, is what I’ve learned: Pixar Studios should get a large federal subsidy to ramp up production and produce four movies a year rather than one, since they’re the only ones making movies for kids these days who really and truly get it. Dreamworks animation sucks out loud; spare me the Hollywood vanity projects like “Shark Tale,” which apparently corrupted even my beloved Martin Scorsese.

“The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement” was worse than the first, but mercifully, the only thing I remember about it is how much the kingdom of Genovia resembled a modern “lifestyle center” mall; I think I even saw Panera Bread signage in the background.

The gems are out there, true, mostly in the video stores. We found “Holes” there last summer — a gem. And my husband picked up a DVD at his office for “Matilda,” a Danny DeVito-directed adaptation of the Roald Dahl story that had three 8-year-olds rapt on my family-room floor yesterday.

But damn, I’m really dreading “Madagascar.” Seen it yet?

Your pal,

Nance

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Lance replies:

Nance,

Remember who you’re talking to here. I’m only of the few people in America who didn’t like Shrek 2. Couldn’t watch it. The animation style annoyed me. I think it’s the color pallette more than anything. The colors strike my eye as too bright but not at all vivid, if that makes sense. Watching it is like being on a drive on a bright summer day and trying to admire the scenery up ahead with the sun glaring off the car’s hood.

And Shrek himself is the color of canned peas.

I don’t like canned peas, and I don’t like anybody who does.

Also, I would be a happy and contented man if I never hear SpongeBob’s laugh again.

You would think then that disliking Shrek and SpongeBob means my attitude towards kids’ movies would be akin to Scrooge’s feelings about Christmas.

But, having become mentally arrested at an early age, I can get into the spirit of these things easier than actual grown-ups like you. I kind of liked Ella Enchanted, which I believe you hated more than you hated Princess Diaries 2, although I think Ella E. benefited enormously in comparison to the original book, which we’d just read and I hated, loathed, despised, and otherwise held in low esteem. The movie was about a nice girl with a problem to solve. The book is about a girl superior in every way to all the people around her whose main problem is that not enough other people recognize what a superior person she is and reward her for it. The movie also starred the goofily beautiful Anne Hathaway, who, speaking of the enduring sex appeal of Mary Tyler Moore, ought to play Laura Petrie if Hollywood ever gets it into its head that we need a remake of the Dick Van Dyke Show as urgently as we needed a movie version of Bewitched.

Of course, it was still no Princess Bride.

Which brings up the question. What was the difference? The makers of Ella Enchanted clearly modeled their movie after The Princess Bride in look and tone and humor. What made The Princess Bride so much better?

I look forward to your answer. But I’ll take a stab at one first. Princess Bride was made for boys.

Yeah, I know, William Goldman wrote the book for his daughters. But he must also have been writing for the 12 year old boy inside himself. Along with the humor and the whimsy and the somewhat sappy romance, The Princess Bride was a rattling good yarn. It was a swashbuckling adventure tale in league with Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers.

Girls love it too, just as they love Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers and—I know you just find this hard to believe—Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. But the target audience for those books and movies is boys.

And this is why, although we see maybe one true grown up movie a year, my movie going life is more enjoyable than yours. We have boys.

Movies are made for boys.

So while you were having to suffer through The Princess Diaries 2, we were watching Spider-man 2. When your daughter was begging to see BRATZ, my sons were wondering if they could go see Hellboy.

Not every movie made for boys is good. Thunderbirds was so lame that our guys forgot it on the way to the parking lot afterwards. And I thank my lucky stars that my wife has volunteered to take them to see Shark Boy and Lava Girl. But I’ll bet if I went it wouldn’t be as excrutiating for me as Princess Diaries was for you.

Let me ask you then. What is it about movies aimed at girls that makes them so awful? Hollywood seems to think that all boys want to see is a lot of action. But what do they think girls want to see and how does that translate into BRATZ and Barbie movies?

Cluelessly,

Lance
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Nance again:

Well, that’s an excellent question, and I’m not sure I can answer it, because I don’t like chick flicks much, either — show me a picture of the ensemble cast of, say, “Steel Magnolias” and I can tell you right away that Julia Roberts isn’t going to make it to the credits. There are exceptions. Let me think of one. (Crickets.) OK, “Thelma and Louise.” Why? It had a plot, and it had Susan Sarandon, and that giantess Geena Davis, who can really rock a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

“Character is plot,” my screenwriting teacher told us, meaning start with good, believable characters, wind them up and see where they take you. Most movies aimed at girls of all ages forget this, satisfied instead to play Barbies onscreen with the same tired old archetypes. Did you notice Princess Mia’s best friend in those Diary movies? She was smart but made up and dressed to resemble Gilbert Gottfried. Poor girl. Only Barbie gets to be star of those movies, I guess.

We saw “The Motorcycle Diaries” on pay-per-view last night. “Thelma and Louise” was much, much better.

N.