INTRODUCING ... MSN'S CINEMAMA

By Martha Brockenbrough
MSN Cinemama

Back before I became a parent, a time that now seems foggy and significantly better from a personal-hygiene standpoint, I recall hearing something about children and videos.

"Watch them often, blah blah blah, thousands of times, blah blah blah. Want to kill Raffi, blah blah."

When I first heard this warning about children's insistence on watching movies again and again, all I thought was, "Whatever. She looks like she maybe didn't shower today. And those sweatpants. Wow. She's, like, given up."

There's nothing like becoming a parent to help a person understand the relationship between kids and their movies.

Kids aren't like us. If there's a movie they love, they want to watch it over and over. They want to talk about it again and again. There's no answer to the question, "What happened to Nemo?" that can satisfy a small child who's just watched "Finding Nemo" for the first time. A parent can only answer it patiently, repeatedly, until the small child grows somewhat larger, and Nemo is replaced by the amusingly gassy Shrek.

As tiring as the Nemo phenomenon can be, it's not as bad as when you drive to the theater, find a parking spot roughly in the same ZIP code and empty out your bank account for movie tickets, popcorn and sodas -- only to find your kids hate the movie or are inappropriately scared by giant robot heads projected onto a 60-foot screen or are bored silly at the idea of talking race cars and their nostalgia for Route 66.

That's why I'm becoming the Cinemama on MSN Movies -- so that parents like me can read about movies and learn the really important stuff before buying the tickets or the video. In each column, I'll let you know the following about a movie:

- How scary is it? Does it have loud parts that will make a small child go fetal?

- Does it have language that might give a parent pause, even if it meets the "everyday" standard for a G rating?

- Do the characters do things kids will copy, causing severe parental annoyance?

- Will the story make sense to kids? Likewise, will they care?

- Will grown-ups enjoy it as much as their kids? Will it stand up to repeated viewing?

- And finally, what happened to Nemo (or whoever else was in the movie)? I won't give spoilers, but I will give a sense of what the movie is about.

In addition to the reviews, I'll write columns about the pleasure parents can take from family movies, whether they're well-crafted stories, useful cautionary tales or just feasts for the eyes. Even in a children's movie, Colin Firth is still hot.

Martha Brockenbrough is author of "It Could Happen to You: Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond." She's also founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. And she writes an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her site at http://marthabee.com