'Its just a kids movie'
That is the laziest excuse in the history of excuses. If you look at the encyclopedia of lazy excuses, "its just a kids movie" would be on page one. All good movies take effort, and kids movies, if anything, need to have the most effort put into them. What is a kid more than a mini-adult? All kids are going to be adults one day, and this is the time in which the develop the most; they get first impressions of everything in life.
I just saw a TV advert for The Smurfs 2 last week, and I was absolutely dumbfounded at how unfunny it was. A smurf showing his blue butt to the audience, an obnoxious CGI cat, the villain tripping over something and bonking his head, the same villain get squashed by a CGI taxi. Its clear that no effort went into the writing. Five hacks just got together and said "durrr, this will make the kids laugh, I'm sure!" and you know what? It will make the kids laugh (the younger kids at least) because they dont know any better. Then they will expect this level of comedy to be the highest level of comedy.
Maybe I was spoiled by sitting around the TV as a youngster, eagerly awaiting reruns Monty Python's Flying Circus and the new episode of Ren & Stimpy. The latter of the two was filled with nonsecical violence, yes, but it always had a funny, non-cliche, original punchline to every joke. It took effort to write. The Smurfs 2 did not.
The only thing I remember about celestial Spider-Man is that he's...celestial. - Bruce Campbell