Like a ton of bricks

Panique au village

(2009)

"Hey, wait a minute!" you're saying. "Don't you have some sort of 'guideline' [read: 'rule'] about letting a year pass before watching something again? And didn't you just see this in December? What gives?"

Geez, you must be a little OCD yourself to be so hip to my OCD "guidelines." Lighten up a little. It's a fair cop, but with extenuating circumstances. See, my granddaughter's 4th birthday is coming up, and I wanted to screen this to see whether the fact that it's in French, with no English soundtrack available, would interfere with her enjoyment. In fact, I started watching with the subtitles turned off, to distance myself as much as possible from comprehension of anything but the trippy animation.

I quickly decided that wouldn't work: you have to know that it's Horse's birthday, e.g. But I think as long as there's a parent willing to read a few of the subtitles aloud, Veronica will get it just as much as--maybe even more than--a non-drug-addled adult will (which is to say that anyone who claims to make complete sense of it simply isn't paying close enough attention). And while I'm guessing she'll want to rescreen it before a year has passed, perhaps before a day has passed, and then again, and again . . . parental presence on subsequent screenings probably won't be as important: she'll know the gist of the story by then, and will start making up what she needs to spackle any cracks.

Or not. But hey, you have to take a chance now and then--I mean, where would we be if Cowboy and Indian hadn't ordered those bricks to build Horse a barbecue for his birthday?