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The DVD for Zathura came out this week and Alex and I watched it Tuesday. We also saw it in the theater when it was released. I loved the movie back then and I love it now. There was just something about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I finally figured out why: It’s true to its audience.

Most movies nowadays, especially kids’ movies, try to cover as many demographic groups as possible. They’ll have parts that pander to boys, to girls, to teens, to young adults, and to parents. They want to make everyone has happy as possible to increase ticket and DVD sales.

Zathura takes the opposite approach. It’s a movie focused solely on boys age 4 through 16, and on men who want to be that age again. There are no pop-culture references to make parents feel hip. There are no strong female characters to make girls feel good. It’s a high quality movie for boys about boys. I don’t think such a movie has been made since Stand By Me back in 1986.

It also takes an opposite approach when it comes to marketing. It’s a movie about a game, but yet the game in the movie is impossible to make, and thus sell, in the real world. While the game in the book Zathura was merely a run of the mill board game involving dice, the movie version was a complex mechanical game that was actually controlled by several people off camera.

I find this amazing because Disney or Pixar would have taken the greedy approach and made the in-movie game as simple as possible to ensure sales of the game to increase profits. Obviously, the director of Zathura cared more about telling a fantastic story versus creating additional profit. (I should point out that unfortunately, some suit at Sony attempted to create a version of the in-movie game to soak up some profits. But it’s a mere shadow of the real game and was an after thought, not something planned during the movie.)

Anyway, if you have a boy age 4 through 16 do him a favor and rent this movie. He’ll love it.

We saw “Curious George” today. Kasey really enjoyed it. Alex says he didn’t like it as much, though during the movie, I definitely heard him giggling.

Kasey is taking a bath tonight. Alex is taking a shower because he is a “big boy”. He takes the longest showers on record!!

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I just set this up.  Kara and I will certainly be posting lots O’ great stuff real soon.