Film · Prime Video · 2016

Wild Kratts: Creatures of the Deep Sea

Keep it for a child. The facts are the point, and the choice is the right one.

This is the show, given a longer evening: Aviva builds a boat, the brothers go down, and the deep is treated as a place with citizens rather than as a chest of toys. Gourmand is the appetite with a kitchen. The dilemma is old and useful. Do you chase the discovery that would make your name, or do you stop the man who is emptying the water in front of you.

They stop the man. A child can watch it without a speech, and still should get one sentence after: the animal is not a prize. Then look up one real creature they named and see if the cartoon told the truth about how it lives.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A vehicle, a plan, a crew with jobs. The science is the work.
Household
6/10
Brothers who stay a pair. The team is the household.
Piety
4/10
Wonder at a living dark. Not worship.
Courage
7/10
They go down, and they go back for the creatures rather than for the credit.
Republic
6/10
A small company against a man who would eat the commons.
Temperance
7/10
The hunter's hunger is the vice, and it loses.
Truth
8/10
The animals are allowed to be real. The fiction is the suit.
Stewardship
8/10
A child leaves with a creature they can describe, which is something to hand on.

Live historicallyLearn the name of one animal that lives somewhere you will never go, and say why it is not yours to collect.

Film · Prime Video · 2012

ParaNorman

Fear faced by understanding, not by a spear. Good for a child who can take a ghost.

Norman is bullied for a gift that is mostly the willingness to hear. The town prefers a mob and a story about a witch. The film's turn, that the cursed child was a frightened child and the curse was the town's, is the right turn. It does not ask you to pretend the dead are cute from the first minute. It asks you to stop the torch.

Some of the jokes are ruder than the fable needs. The fable holds. A house can watch it near Halloween and come out less eager to chant at the odd boy. That is a rare result for a cartoon with zombies.

The eight

Industry
5/10
He treats the seeing as a task.
Household
6/10
A family that does not understand him, and a sister who comes anyway.
Piety
5/10
The dead are taken seriously. The mob's ritual is exposed.
Courage
8/10
He walks toward the person everyone else stones.
Republic
7/10
A town's panic is the villain.
Temperance
6/10
Fear is answered, not fed.
Truth
8/10
The witch story was incomplete, and he completes it.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands a child mercy before the pitchfork.

Live historicallyAsk who in your town is feared because no one asked what happened.