Thank you, and we’ll see you again

We nearly hit a decade. It’s been almost 9 years since Mike and Laura Record launched Is This Movie Suitable. In that time we’ve posted hundreds of reviews, featured in the local papers, made friends with enigmatic Belgian residents, and provided a whole lot of guidance to newly clued up parents. But, for the foreseeable future at least, there must sadly come a pause.

Quick History of Is This Movie Suitable

Source: https://hdrcreme.com/photographers/7090/Randall.Lohr

It took a fraught trip watching Toy Story 3, with its loud scary monkey and lurching zombie doll, for us to think that movie ratings alone weren’t doing the job. A movie rating exists to give anyone a feel of the sort of content they will be getting. Movies are escapism. We get wrapped up into carefully constructed worlds where we could be visiting haunted bathhouses one minutes or cheering on talking cars the next. For children the effect is even more pronounced. Yet a PG rated film may contain specific triggers that could cause upset, or even simply contain material a parent wouldn’t approve of if they knew about it before hand. Ratings alone can’t give the information needed. So we launched Is This Movie Suitable, a website designed to provide informative and fun reviews whilst also breaking down the details of scenes in order to provide helpful and spoiler free parental guides. There was no judgement from us, simply an aim to let parents and carers walk away better informed and able to make the right choice for them and their children.

So how did it go?

Pretty well, really! 9 years ago the tools to build a website were excitingly possible yet bafflingly complex to us as not particularly tech savvy people lacking in deep pockets. It took a few months but then the views came pouring in. For a small website we seemed to attract an audience of people who were happy to read what guidance we had to offer and share it on. If you were one of those people, then thank you! Also back then there wasn’t really many websites providing anything like the kind of content we were posting. Other places either dug super deep into counting the minutiae (often, in our view, to the detriment of readability) or swung wildly into overtly subjective opinion. We tried to be easy to read, informative without being excessive, and as impartial as possible. This angle stood us out from the others and many of you did come despite the (admittedly few) other options.

Now? The internet got a whole bunch more crowded! That’s great for providing information, but makes life a little tough for small sites like us.

What changed?

Source: https://www.dumblittleman.com/get-rid-morning-anxiety-10-easy-positive-affirmations/excited-little-girl-main_article_new/

A whole bunch of things! Life does that, doesn’t it? 9 years ago we were a simply young married couple, whereas now we have two beautiful children of our own. Jobs got changed. House moves took place. The home budget and financials fluctuated wildly.  All the while we worked hard to keep Is This Movie Suitable going because well, it was fun! We never expected to make any profit from the site, instead seeing it as an information service for people who needed it and a great excuse to keep watching movies. Yet, of course, the website does cost money to run. And sadly at this point the balance sheet isn’t adding up. A hard decision had to be made.

What’s going to happen to ITMS?

As of the end of January 2022 our hosting is due to expire and we have make the very hard choice not to renew it. As we mentioned earlier, learning how to be tech savvy enough to provide a great looking and functioning website takes time and money, both things we are finding ourselves very short of. We could carry on writing the occasional review as we have been doing for the past year but quite frankly the whole website needs an overhaul, preferably by someone who knows what they are doing! Therefore, while our considerable database of reviews will be backed up, stuck in a glittering wardrobe, and have highly trained and big hat wearing guards placed in front of it, our front facing website will (for now) join the great 404 in the sky.

Will you come back?

Let’s shout this with the biggest and most obnoxious loudhailer on the market. WE ABSOLUTELY WANT TO COME BACK. We have so many aims and dreams for Is This Movie Suitable that there is no way we could keep a lid on them. There are so many other ways to get the message across. We have plans to put together a podcast. Ideas about hosting Q&A sessions, Perchance a YouTube channel with mini guides or watch alongs? And fronting it all a great looking and functioning website to be filled up with ever more reviews. We just need to pause for now and get as much behind the scenes elements sorted out first because Is This Movie Suitable deserves more attention and finances than we can currently provide. Once we have our feet on the ground and reformat how we do things, then you betchabygollywow we will be popping up like an excitable jack-in-the-box in the most startling yet welcome way we can think of.

Farewell, for now

Source: http://unfunnynerdtangent.com/2020/09/podcast-episode-103-bill-ted-face-the-music/

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you if you have ever made the journey to our humble site and found anything here that helped you. It’s been great, you’ve been great, and we truly hope to come back greater than ever. Until that day, slap on some Bill & Ted Face The Music, schedule a bit of My Neighbour Totoro, or cosy on down with a showing of WALL-E, and lets all get lost in the magic of movies. God bless.

Mike and Laura Record