Kinder und Kino

“Children should be seen but not heard.” Partially true, though I’d like to add ‘smelt’ to the list of unwanted senses. But when it comes to cinemas, I don’t think children should be - full stop. As in, they shouldn’t be in the screenings, they shouldn’t be around the sticky food counters, they shouldn’t be clogging up the toilets. They shouldn’t even be outside the cinema, as you'd be polluted by them on your way inside.

It’s not like I hate toddlers in the cinema. I also hate pre-teens, teenagers and young adults. In my book all of them have lower than average attention spans and a sacrilegious lack of respect for the sanctity of film. Loud, physically offensive, disruptive and stupid, these age-groups should not be allowed to mix in enclosed spaces with the rest of society. As a rule, idiots annoy me, and when little dribbling idiots are actually brought to the cinema by their idiot parents then it’s a double whammy. I watched The Departed in America and some fools brought their toddler with them, who promptly became bored and fidgety. Was it the toddler’s fault? Partially – they should learn to know when to keep still. But how that “good idea” popped into the parents’ heads is a mystery. Idiots.