No Jurassic Park for Ellery Harper yet

Year of the Dog star Laura Dern appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show yesterday and talked about her 5 1/2-year-old son Ellery Walker‘s newestobsession – dinosaurs – and his recent epiphany to which shehas a connection.

He’s gone into the 5-year-old obsession with larger life, snakes nowand dinosaurs – fascinated with dinosaurs, ever obsessive in fact. Andhe came home from pre-school and said, ‘Mommy! You are not gonna believeit! There’s a movie about dinosaurs! It’s called Jurassic Park! I said,’Oh, Ellery, that’s fantastic!’

Laura says she didn’t know how to inform her son that she stars in thefilms, but eventually eased into it, which only peaked Ellery’sinterest. However, afterconsulting with Steven Spielberg, Laura decided to hold off on it.

[Steven] suggested it might be slightly traumatic for your 5-year-oldto see you chased by the T-Rex, so we’re gonna wait a little longer.

Laura and husband Ben Harper also have a daughter, Jaya, 2.

Comments

She should definitely wait. I still remember seeing that movie and there was a boy who looked about 5 or 6 nearby. There are some *really* scary scenes for adults, let alone kids. The boy started screaming and crying and saying “I want to leave, Daddy!” and fortunately his father took him out. It’s happened with other movies I’ve been to.

Scary movie + small child = ticket to nightmares.

- emmalee on April 24th, 2007

Ellery should definitely see Jurassic Park…someday. Yeah Laura should definitely wait at least a year or two before she lets her son see the film, although you never know what he might watch while visiting friends.

(Hopefully Ellery doesn’t have any friends like my neighbor’s 6 yr old son who claims his favorite movies include “See No Evil” because it stars WWE wrestler Kane?!)

Yeah I remember watching a “special” about Bigfoot back when I was 5 or 6 in 1980 or 81, and being scared by the old 8mm film footage of Bigfoot from 1967. lol. (I was scared of “Bigfoot” for a while back then, so I can only imagine how a child would be after seeing “Jurassic Park.”)

- Autumn on April 24th, 2007

Oh, my, that is so funny. I remember my son loved that movie. He would watch it over and over and would cup his hands around his eyes as if he was going to cover them. But when it was over, he would want to watch it again!

- Jill on April 24th, 2007

I think the age you let a child watch something like that should depend on the kid. I worked as a nanny for a family with three small kids (at the time they were 2, 5, and 8) and on my day off they went to their grandparents house and he let them watch Jurassic Park. The kids’ parents and I were really worried, especially about the youngest one – but he didn’t have any nightmares at all and through the whole movie kept saying; “That’s just pretend.”
The eight year old, on the other hand, was terrified for days, had nightmares and was crying. I still wouldn’t recommend that movie for a 2 year old because it would probably terrify most children – but I think the kids personality should be the biggest factor in whether he/she is allowed to watch that movie and not necessarily just his/her age.

- Grace on April 24th, 2007

I agree that it depends on the child. My daughter is 5 years old and recently learned about dinosaurs in school. She knows that they are ‘stinct’ and some kids in her class told her about Jurassic Park. I told her that there were scary parts, etc. and she told me that “I” didn’t need to be scared because dinosaurs don’t exist anymore. I sat with her the first time she watched it and she LOVED it. She knows that they are pretend and not one part of the movie scared her.

- angelbaby33 on April 24th, 2007

Good for her. I remember I was 4 years old when I first saw the movie. My parents after that never let me watch any scary movies anymore, I had nightmares for 3 months, and I had to stay in their room because I was so scared.

- Italy on April 24th, 2007