School holidays are winding up in some states, and just kicking off in others, which means schlepping off to the usual round of sanctimonious and saccharine kids’ flicks now on offer.

Why do movies for children have to be weighed down with political subtext and positive affirmation? Save the political slogans for election campaigns and the self-help baloney for Tony Robbins’ life-coach lectures.

There are many reasons why we should bring back unbridled, uncensored silly kids’ entertainment. The first one being that most of the “deeper” movie messages are lost on kids anyway.

Take Disney’s latest offering, Zootopia, about a rookie bunny officer determined to prove herself in a police force made up of big, tough animals. As a mother of a six-year-old girl it’s hard to scoff at the general “Chicks Can Do Anything” message.

However my daughter got more of a kick out of the slow sloth scene than any sickly sweet and clichéd affirmations like: “Never let ‘em see that they get to you”, “We all makes mistakes” and “No matter what type of animal you are — change starts with you”.

I’m not alone. A fellow colleague and parent also took her two sons to Zootopia, a film she found to be funny and charming in parts.

“But it became terribly earnest and towards the end got weighed down with heavy politics,” she says. “And I mean heavy — as in lectures about how politicians stir up racial intolerance and fear to ‘control’ voters!

“Needless to say those parts sailed completely over the heads of my 4 and 6-year-old boys — in fact there was so much talking and browbeating they got restless and started asking if it was almost over.”

Secondly, nicking off to the flicks should be considered entertainment, not education. It’s an escape. Oh sure it’s easy to appease parental guilt and feign delight that a trip to the cinema is making your kids better little human beings. Let’s not kid ourselves; it’s more choctop than Chomsky.

Do we really want to our childrens’ moral compasses to be guided by “Kung Fu Panda 3” with its yoda-esque perplexing pearlers like: “If you only do what you can do you’ll never be more than you are now”?

media_camera What happened to the fun in kids’ films? The empowering messages are starting to wear a little thin. (Pic: Kung Fu Panda 3/Dreamworks)

A Jackie Chan cameo and Acca Dacca soundtrack couldn’t save this one. The “be yourself” message was brandished in the first and second instalments of this franchise and is now quite stale by the third.

Sometimes the life lessons in kids’ flicks are so overbearing a film becomes distressing. Take The (not so) Good Dinosaur.

My daughter and nieces bawled throughout the film. Arlo the dinosaur learns to confront his fears. Oh yeah and his dad gets washed away in a storm in front of him and killed, like forever.

“It was so depressing,” says my sister-in-law, who suffered through the same 90 minutes of agony. “The son was basically blamed for his dad’s death. Next scene the mum dinosaur’s suffering exhaustion as she has to run the family farm solo before collapsing. I was hoping for singing, rousing music and some sort of magic. Instead we were delivered doom and gloom.”

Do kids really need to be confronted with veiled political and social propaganda such as: The Lego Movie (individualism good/socialism bad), Cars (alternative fuel good/oil bad), Frozen (poor yet dependable bloke good/rich and poncy prince bad), Inside Out (joy good/sad bad).

“I’m all for a bit of positive messages served up with the popcorn,” says the fellow mum who took her sons to Zootopia.

“But I think these filmmakers need to remember that kids seeing an animated film these holidays don’t care if there’s an election in the US this year. Spare us all the not too subtle political speeches.”

And let’s bring back unadulterated escapism. After all, Mum and Dad need a break from the real world during the school holidays too.

Elise Elliott is a Herald Sun columnist.

@EliseElliott9