Is 2.5 year old too young to go to the movies?

[CADS]

DH wants to take ds to see Cars, I think he is still too young to go to the movies.

Opinions, please.

My DD did NOT behave dreadfully when I took her to the cinema .... she played up and down the aisles in a virtually EMPTY cimema and NO ONE minded. The film is pretty loud so any noise she made was drowned out by the movie. I took her to a 10am showing 2 weeks into the Cars run here so it wasn't full for that very reason. Obviously if my 6 year old was playing, we wouldn't have stayed ...

I understand that it would be inconsiderate to take a toddler to a busy cinema and I wouldn't do that but surely the above circumstances were ok Cat64?

BTW ... Cars in NZ was classified 'G' - the same as a 'U' in the UK ...

Apart from the noise there is absolutely NOTHING scary in this film and utterly suitable for young children (and I am pretty anal about taking my children to films - my 6 year old DS will only be taken to 'G' films. He has never seen a PG film at the cinema)

DS is our third and he first went to the cinema at 18month to see the Hefalump movie we went on a weekend daytime and luckily the cinema was completely empty. Having said that we still encouraged them all to sit down and they all did DD2 was also only 2 1/2.

Took them to see Over The hedge this weekend and they loved it.

If you take your children to see a kids movie you have to expect some noise. I would expect a consistently noisy child to be removed by the parents, but playing in the aisle quietly is complete acceptable.

Our local cineworld has a kids club on a Saturday morning. For £1 for kids and free for accompanying adults they can see a film. They have 3 films on that have been out for a few months. I used to take my 3 year old and the baby. The baby was in the isle in his carseat and loved it. The staff even do a warm up with sweets and silly games. So if you can wait and and cope with billions of trips to the loo all around you it's great. Now however they are 5 and 8 and won't wait but want to see films when straight out...Pirates and Johnny Depp this afternoon £££££

Dd 2.10 did brilliantly watching Over the Hedge, after a shaky start when she insisted on leaving the cinema twice because of the dark winter/nighttime scenes on the screen.

Then when it was nice and bright again, she was happy to sit quietly through it. Not that she followed the movie, I don't think, but was just transfixed by the images.

Things that helped - having her slightly older more movie-savvy cousin next to her to emulate. A bag of popcorn and her drink. And cute cartoon images.

The next week, I took her to see another movie (this time more grownup and without her cousin) and she insisted on going out after 5 mins. The theatre refunded our tickets!

I used to take my 2 charges, girl aged 4 and boy who was 2 the first time I took them. Girl absolutely loved it, she sat there with a smile on her face all the time bless her, and boy who usually has such a short attention span was absolutely mesmerised and sat glued to the screen for the whole 90 minutes not even budging when I offered him jellybabies (he is a sweet-a-holic!!!) and he had a right old moan when I disturbed him to take his sister to the wc!