Curious George and Web 1.0

We went to the theater last weekend to see Curious George. The film is very "smooth" (that's the term that comes to mind) as the story has few intense moments. The most disturbing thing is when the Man in the Yellow Hat lets George get taken away by Homeland Security (he eventually ends up in Guantanamo but the torture scenes are kid friendly).

Although stylistically divergent from the illustrated books, the story is really very engaging for kids (and me, of course, but what's the difference really?).

What I liked about the movie actually has nothing to do with the hour and half at the theater. It has more to do with the lack of the usually kiddy movie hype and the website. The hype thing maybe due to the fact that I didn't notice the ads but I don't remember the usually mess of promotions.

My eldest daughter and I stumbled upon the movie website from the Apple Quicktime trailers page. The Curious George site opens to fill the screen and includes several different environments that kids can click and explore. It reminds me a lot of the discussions back in the web 1.0 day when cyberspace was a location and websites became "destinations". Maybe it 's broadband, or maybe it is the raw 2 dimensionality, or the renderings, or whatever but I thought that the interface as space, though seemingly old school, really was fun to explore and play with.

As fun as the movie and the website are, I still must admit that I have a soft spot for the original George.