PARTHURBLOG

The pleasures of parenting are numerous and varied: from lisped lines in a Nativity play to the first try in a school rugby match; from reading a bedtime story to reading an A-level essay. With enough time, I could write a thousand moments of joy that my children have given me.

Watching ‘Scooby Doo: The Movie’ is not one of them.

There are so many things wrong with this film, it’s hard to find a redeeming feature: Possibly the production design, which takes the vibrant colour scheme of the original cartoons, and renders the entire film with a similar primary look.

Other than that,  it lacks everything. Soul, wit, charm – all missing in abundance. Which is inevitable if you set a film in a soulless, witless, charmless theme park (presumably in the hope of creating the ultimate merchandising cross-over, and building said park as a soulless, witless, charmless ‘downstream revenue pipeline’.)

For a moment, I thought my contempt was linked to being outside the target audience – but looking back over the U-certificates of the past 15 years,  I’m relieved to report that I haven’t lost touch with  my inner child. There are at least 10 movies that stir the heart, engaged the brain, and set benchmarks that Scooby Doo misses throughout its seemingly-endless 90 minutes:

Aladdin: love or loathe Robin Williams, he’s perfectly cast as the Genie, and the Disney Studio made an inspired call in letting him improvise first, then animating to the voice track after. It sets the tone for the entire film, which is energy. Scooby Doo has the energy of a wet battery.

Babe: every time I see those stupid sheep line up in single file and walk into the pen, followed by the eruption of applause from the crowd, there’s a tear in my eye and a lump in my throat. Then again, I had that reaction to SD – but I think it was a gagging reflex.

The Iron Giant: the best morality tale for children I’ve seen in all my years as a parent. It deals with complex issues, like a prejudice, in a way that 5-year olds and adults can ‘read’ side by side.

Stuart Little: wearing  schmaltz on all their sleeves, live actors (including Hugh Laurie, practicing his US accent) seamlessly interact with a computer generated mouse. In Scooby Doo, live actors have trouble interacting with live actors.

Monsters Inc: as well as great characters, out-loud-funny one-liners and a rich narrative, it’s a technical masterpiece: There’s a single shot of Sully (the big blue one) asleep in bed, breathing on his furry arm which, on its own, is worth the price of admission. That’s true of the end credits for Scooby Doo – just because they’re at the end.

Toy Story: delivers exactly what the title promises – a great story, perfectly structured, precisely paced.

Shrek 2: my pick of the Shrek series because (as the King) it’s John Cleese’s best screen performance for years. Maybe Rowan Atkinson would have been better off voicing Scooby than actually appearing as the villain?

The Incredibles: watching ‘Bob Parr/Mr Incredible’ run through the Pixar-generated jungle, I remember thinking “This is the future; why will movie crews ever need to go on location again?”. Well they did, and they went to Scooby island. Sadly, they came back.

Wallace & Gromit – The Curse of the WereRabbit: and they said that our two Plasticine heroes would never extend beyond 30 minutes. More invention in a single frame than in the entire Scooby canon.

WALL*E: rather like Saving Private Ryan, Act 1 of this film is somewhat let down by the rest of its running time. But those opening 25 minutes are simply stunning; gorgeous graphics offering the pathos and joy of silent comedy – two words that have no meaning on planet Scooby.

* * * * *

So that’s my Top 10 family films, enjoyed as an adult. (And believe me, there have been some clunkers. Hell is an endless loop of Scooby Doo, Agent Cody Banks and Spy Kids 3D.)

Excluding the films you saw as a child and now revisit – they’re too coloured by nostalgia – what are your favourites?

Popularity: 52% [?]

“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consistent of believing, or in disbelieving; it consists of professing to believe what he does not believe.” Thomas Paine

It is Sunday morning. Ben and I sit in the kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while my 13 year-old son reads one of yesterday’s supplements; he’s found a review of a new X-box game that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.

BEN: That’s really cool.

ME (not looking up from the Arts section): Have you played it?

BEN: No. But it’s got 5 stars in here.

ME (wondering about getting tickets for the new ‘Godot’): And that makes it ‘cool’ does it, because it says so in there?

BEN: Well, it’s why we buy the big papers, isn’t it?

And I realise that I am at one of life’s key parental conversations. We’ve talked about sex, about bullying, about drugs. Now it’s ‘truth’ in the press.

M: How do you think a newspaper makes money, Ben? Where does my £1.50 actually go?

B: The paper shop?

M: Yes – to Mr Singh, and to the distributor who delivers the papers to the shop each morning. By the time they’ve taken their cut, it doesn’t leave very much for the people who make the papers. So how does a newspaper make its money?

We pause. Ben flicks a page or two, looking for a picture of a hole to crawl into.

All he can find is listings for London cinemas.

B: Advertising.

M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising, no newspapers. So the first thing to remember about newspapers is that their business purpose isn’t to print news. It’s to generate advertising revenue.

B: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort of stuff? (He points at a feature about a soap actress in the ‘Property’ section.) Why not just run ads?

M: Because too much advertising wouldn’t be very interesting, then no one would buy the paper. That’s the publisher’s dilemma. It’s a question of balance.

B: So get more journalists writing more stories.

M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader, but not good for the publisher as a business. That’s more cost.

B: But there’s loads of writing in these papers, pages and pages of news.

M: Is there? What is ‘news’, Ben?

B: Um…Stories about things that happen in the world. Gaza and the Credit crunch and things like that.

M: And all the sections of this newspaper are full of that, are they?

B: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings insert he has in front of him), it’s got records and dvds and films and stuff.

M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph Hearst once said: “News is something that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want to see in print. Everything else is publicity.”

B: So what’s this? (He points to the soapstar ‘profile’).

M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in italics.

B: “The Notting Hill flat is on the market for £675,000 with Foxtons”

He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the next few minutes he’s ploughing through pages of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a disgraced MP and his new book; a glamour model and her new TV series.

B: Jokes! (it’s a different language, but I’m keeping up) It’s all Publicity! All of it!

M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And the reason is simple – it’s cheaper than news. News takes time to research, time to collate, time to write, time to check. And as the businessman running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs – but you need to keep the amount of editorial content, because your readers demand it.

B: So make the journalists work harder.

M: Going to be a media mogul when you grow up? Despite the stereotype, most journalists and editors are incredibly productive. But when the advertising people sell more space, it creates a need for more editorial to keep that balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged material from publicists and agents and PRs, who are being paid for by someone else.

B: So the editor can fill more space, while the publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this publicity?

He has found a ‘car of the year’ piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage would-be petrol-head, Clarkson is a deity.

M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn’t promoting anything in particular. So we’ll call it Entertainment – one of the main reasons people chose their Sunday paper.

B: So what about all this (he points back at the cinema listings).

M: That’s the fifth type on content. That’s Information; helpful facts to help you make decisions. You’ll find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially in the Travel sections.

B: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment. Information. Is that it?

M: Pretty much. It’s a good filter to apply each time you read the paper – especially to weed out the PR man’s dream – Publicity that’s being presented as News. Put it in another order, and it spells PAINE.

B ??

M : Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the time of the American and French Revolutions. He wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. He was quite complicated, and no friend of the Church or the English Government, but all you need to remember is his basic philosophy – we should each think for ourselves. So when you read the paper, and to make sure you read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE. Think for yourself, not the way that others want you to think.

Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a morning shower. Twenty minutes later, Ben is standing in the bedroom door.

B: I looked up Paine on the web. He might have written those books, but he died in poverty and no one went to his funeral.

M : Yes, well, ermm…

B : I bet the man who publishes the Sunday paper won’t die poor.

M : Probably not.

B : Although all that stuff we talked about, that’s on the internet for free. So ‘praps he will.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The front page of this morning’s ‘Daily Telegraph‘ carried one of those ‘let’s-test-a-potential-policy-to-see-how-many-people-choke-on-their-muesli’ stories.

This one’s from the Department of Health.

Apparently, it’s considering payments to a growing (sic) part of the population, to encourage them to walk their children to school.

I need a mug of coffee
I need a can of Coke
I need a bacon butty
I need to have a smoke.
I need a pie or pastry
A bagel, bun or bap
I need a snack that’s tasty
I need a chicken wrap.
I need a cake that’s sticky
I need Kentucky Fried
(I need another ciggy
So I need to go outside.)
I need a Double Whopper
I need some extra fries
Two sugars in my cuppa
And make it Super Size.
I need spicy tortillas
I need some saucy dips
I need chocolate and vanilla
I need saveloy and chips
I need a strawberry sundae
Frozen on a stick
I need a latte grande
With whipped cream, extra thick
I need a pint of larger
I need dry roasted nuts
I’ll be out in the garden
Knee-deep in ash and butts.
I need a bag of salted crisps
I need pints two and three
I need the fourth and fifth and sixth
(I need to have a pee.)
I need to have a balti
I need a madras too
A naan bread and a bahji
Some rice and sag aloo.

I need to keep filling my face
I need a doc to weigh me:
If the fat police say I’m obese
The government will pay me.

.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In a world full of designer psychological disorders (obsessive-compulsive, attention deficit, seasonal affective and the like), there’s not much room for another. But I think I’ve found one in the behaviour of my 13 year-old son.

Compulsive Sociability Syndrome.

As the name implies, its main symptom is straightforward and easy to identify: a constant need to see / call / text / IM / chat / hang-out with / sleep over at / go round to or just meet a mate. The compulsion manifests itself in two ways:

1) No matter how many methods of contact his mother and I withdraw from his armoury, he finds another. Can’t use the phone? Use the web. Can’t use the web? Send a text. Can’t text? Get on your bike and ride. His creativity hasn’t extended to carrier pigeon or smoke signals, but give it time.

2) No matter how many mates are busy, there’s always another one on the list. Megan busy (she’s his current favourite squeeze)? Call Michael for a guitar jam. Michael out with his Mum? Contact Spencer for a trip into town. Spencer gone to his Gran’s? See if Breece wants to ride bikes up to the woods.

If he hasn’t contacted you personally yet, just wait by the phone a little longer.

Of course, children can’t win. Our first son is much quieter, has a close circle of just a few friends, and is happy in his room, listening to music and reading a book. As parents, we want him to go out more.

Number Two is the other extreme and will do or say anything to be with other people. This morning he spun me a line about his homework – what he’d done, what he needed to do, and the deadlines he was juggling. He seemed on top of everything, and I was almost ready to let him go up the park.

But then I asked him about his German vocab revision, and if he’d like me to go through it with him as practice for his test tomorrow.

He dropped into defensive mode, got very stroppy, and said that he’d “better do it again, because whatever you ask me I’m going to get wrong and then you won’t let me out at all today.” In these circumstances, B will look right through you, and strip the paint on the wall behind with his eyes.

Time for a father to make a tactical exit.

Ten minutes later he was downstairs in the kitchen, looking daggers at me, thrusting forward his vocab book. His body language screamed “Come on then!”

He was word perfect. Another afternoon out for B.

Another 5/10 for Dad.

Popularity: 3% [?]