The ads make "My Girl" look like a sweet and gentle comedy, but some parents and children are in their seats before they discover the character played by "Home Alone" star Macaulay Culkin dies.
"This was supposed to be a story of a little girl and a little boy - fun, loving and happy," said Ileen Kaufman of New York. She took her 8-year-old daughter Heather to "My Girl" based on its cheerful TV commercial, which shows the child stars jumping into a lake and sharing a very quick kiss."We had no idea that the little boy would die, that the family lived in a mortuary - that was all a surprise," Kaufman said. Heather was "very upset and very saddened" by the death, she said.
Brian Grazer, the movie's producer, said the death of Culkin's character was intentionally withheld from the preview and other advertising.
"That's not what movies are about. You're giving away the mystery of the movie," Grazer said. "Movies are about discovery."
However, Columbia Pictures, fearing a greater outcry than what has developed so far, did not discourage critics from revealing the death and even screened the film for child psychologists.
Exit polling conducted by Columbia shows that patrons who were lured to "My Girl" by the trailer liked the movie. "My Girl" opened in second place at the box office, grossing $17.2 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend.
Many parents had warning because Culkin and the movie's other stars - Anna Chlumsky, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis - have been on the promotion circuit assuring youngsters that the 11-year-old Culkin is alive and well. Many TV, radio and newspaper reviews of the movie mentioned the character's demise.
Chlumsky, 11, stars as a hypochondriac who believes she killed her mother in childbirth. Culkin plays Thomas J., her best friend. Aykroyd plays her mortician father, and Curtis is featured as a makeup artist for corpses.
"If your holiday plans call for loading the kids into the van and heading to the movies this weekend to see that cute little guy from `Home Alone' in his latest big-screen role, you might think twice," Sue MacDonald wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
"Although `My Girl' is being promoted as a children's coming-of-age movie, it is awash in death, dying and abandonment from its opening scenes to its closing lines."
Still, thousands of parents don't read reviews, or missed the publicity.
Buck Buchanan of Los Angeles was set to take his 9-year-old daughter Amanda to the movie, thinking it was a lighthearted trifle. He found out at the last minute the character played by Culkin, who Amanda thinks is "cute as a bug," dies of bee stings.
Buchanan took Amanda to "Beauty and the Beast" instead.
"I don't want her exposed to that," he said. "I sure didn't want her to have to go through with that . . .. There's no mention of the death (in the preview) and there absolutely should be."
A few children in one Los Angeles theater shrieked when Culkin was shown in a casket, his face dotted with bee stings. The death is not shown.
"It's not like we were hiding this movie. We dealt with the issues," said Mark Canton, Columbia chairman. "All age groups are responding to it, either with a lump in their throat or a tear in their eye.
"We tried to spell things out to a degree. But it's entertainment and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise."
Said Culkin at the film's premiere: "They ought to know it's a movie."