Is Too Much Emphasis Placed on Making An Animated Film Adult-Friendly?

Via: The Guardian

The other night I was at a house where one of the little ones was watching a film, which happened to be Gnomeo and Juliet. Although it was never a darling of the critics, the film went on to do respectably well at the box office and presumably thereafter.

While it is not the most sophisticated animated film ever released (and the short clips that I saw certainly didn’t enamour me), the little girl who was watching it was completely enthralled. She loved it, and apparently watches it almost every day.

She doesn’t care about poor writing, bad direction or even the reliance on toilet humour. Nope, she loves the film because she thinks its funny.

Clearly Gnomeo and Juliet is precisely the kind of film for kids. It doesn’t promise any grand, over-arching themes and sly adult humour that Pixar does, and that’s OK. It’s intended audience will never know the difference anyway.

Plenty of great animated films have been released over the years that are loved by adults and children that have no mature jokes whatsoever. So do we, as adults, perhaps place too much emphasis on making animated films cater to both adults and children? Is it possible to create an animated film that does without the jokes that only adults will snicker at?

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