When I was about 12, my mother took us to see Snow White at the cinema and my younger sister, aged seven, was so scared by the evil stepmother that we had to leave.
I’ve not forgotten it. I didn’t blame my mother for taking us — it was my sister who shouldn’t have been so sensitive. The tables were turned at our half-term-trip-to-the-flicks the other week. When we returned to daylight, this time it was the mother and father who were a bit overwhelmed by the scary baddie.
Mother in the cinema
We had been lured to see the film partly because the girl adores princesses and the boy likes frogs. We thought it would be a winner. The whimsical poster of a classic princess character with a frog in her hand, the excitement of seeing Disney break the mould with a black protagonist, an animation that was drawn, not computerised, the idea of seeing the beauty of New Orleans put back on the map post-Katrina — it all appealed to us.
