Shellharbour has a little gem for parents wanting to take their young children to the cinema but who may be unsure if they'll sit still for the entirety of a packet of Maltesers.
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Event Junior sessions are not new, but as a mum-of-a-toddler I felt its presence fell off the radar with the onset of the pandemic. Last Thursday I got to road-test whether my nearly threenager would enjoy the 90 minutes of Minions (more on the film later).
Available at many Event Cinemas around the country, the "junior" sessions are inside a custom built theatre with a soft play area at the front near the screen.
The session opens 30 minutes before the movies starts for kiddies to frolic in the soft play area.
There's a slide, car, stepping stones and various alien monster things for children to climb on. There's also climbing ropes, bean bags and mini chairs if they want to sit down the front.
Halfway through the movie a 10-minute interval is cut in. Families can utilise the time for more play, a toilet break or grab a chop top from recently refurbished candy bar.
However, you're not supposed to continue playing at the film's end (Stockland shopping centre next door has several of indoor play spaces to migrate to).
Miss G had only been to the movies once before and was super excited for our adventure, talking about the impending trip to see Minions all morning.
There's usually two junior sessions a day (morning and afternoon) and I chose the 2.30pm time slot as opposed to 10.30am, as I was worried it would run too close to her nap (times do change dependent on the day).
The only problem with the outing was I confused the films and discovered we weren't watching a movie about little yellow odd-ball things, but instead My Sweet Monster.
Checking the trailer and also Wikipedia synopsis I discovered it was a a foreign film dubbed in English, although the main character voice was of Haylie Duff.
"Well this has to be good if it's a Duff sister" I thought. Ah, but she is no Hilary, that's for sure.
The movie was incredibly dark and really scared Miss G, so much so she wanted to leave and go home.
From an evil postman who kills happy and good robots to fuel his arm of metal rats and killer canines, to a rabbit who looked like something from a Tim Burton film, it is not a good film for kids under five.
This probably explained why we were the only ones in the whole cinema.
I didn't want to leave with Miss G traumatised, so I persuaded her to stay until the happy monster came on the screen to help the princess, but I still needed to use the line "oh they're just sleeping" for any character who suddenly appeared lifeless
I've added in the trailer, but that doesn't even look scary (great editing).
Our verdict? A big thumbs up for the play space in a cinema. Thumbs down to the movie.
At least Minions is still on for the moment so we might need to revisit Event Junior in Shellharbour very soon.
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