The Velveteen All Night Cry Fest

So we just watched The Velveteen Rabbit, a version that I can't say I liked too much, though the kids loved it.  In this version, for whatever reason, they have the little boy's mother dead (at her funeral, actually), the father avoiding him, and the boy living with his mean grandmother--so it's off to a running start.  Then he switches to this wild cartoon pretend-world with lots of flying and singing and the kids thought it was great.

So I wasn't too worried about anything but my own boredom every time it switched to cartoon, until the little boy gets sick.  And the animals in cartoon world tell us he's dying, and in the cartoon tree house the lightening strikes the wood and it starts burning, and the bunny has to sacrifice himself to the flames for the little boy to be pushed off into the river below.  Very strange and disturbing.  At this point, Abigail was hysterical; had I known it was coming, we wouldn't have watched it.

So then the boy wakes up and then we really have problems.  Because the boy's father takes the bunny downstairs in a sack and immediately starts a bonfire (whatever happened to the gardener waiting until the next day and the fairy coming overnight to take the rabbit away?) and tosses the sack in.  And they actually let us watch the sack burn, it was unbelievable.  I didn't turn it off because I kept telling them it was going to get better and end happy, but it was a bit of a train wreck.

So there is a redemptive ending, in which the dad and now happy "Nana" play baseball with the boy, and a real rabbit watches, but we had trouble getting past the burn pile.

So I lose one of the boys to wild tears because the movie is so sad--and then he remembers his lost monkey from years ago that he periodically mourns (our best guess is that it was in the little storage container of his broken rider tractor that broke and got thrown out) and vows to go searching for in the dump.  So he came unglued for a good 15 minutes.

Then I lose the second one because he feels so bad for his brother that he can't stop crying.  And even though I read them the book so they'd know the real ending, I find that for some of us, The Velveteen Rabbit is just too sad.  And also, I'm a little jealous of daddy having to work tonight.