Education Is Fun

7 best museums in Dallas-Fort Worth to have fun with the whole family

Whether it's a random weekend in winter or the middle of summer, keeping children busy and entertained when they're out of school is a big concern for all parents. But giving them mindless activities to do can't always be the answer.

Luckily, Dallas-Fort Worth is chock-full of museums that stimulate kids' minds while also letting them have a ton of fun. These are the seven that do it best.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas' newest museum almost instantly became its most kid-friendly when it opened in 2012. Yes, there's an actual children's museum that gives the young ones their own special area in which to play, but the entire museum is so insanely interactive that there's almost no spot they won't enjoy.

The museum features 11 exhibit halls where you can do such things as experience an earthquake, make music, build a robot or remote control car, put on 3D glasses and pretend you're a bird, conduct actual science experiments, create your own virtual dinosaur, race against a Tyrannosaurus rex, and much more.

Add in a theater, now sponsored by National Geographic, showing cool 3D nature movies and a fun — and free — courtyard area out front, and you have a spot that can be explored for hours on end.

Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
The Perot Museum of Nature and Science may be getting all the recent attention, but Fort Worth boasts its own go-to science museum. It has been in existence since 1968 and got a brand-new building in 2009.

Its children's museum features a variety of activities good for younger kids, including the opportunity to observe live reptiles and amphibians. The museum's DinoDig, where you can pretend to be a paleontologist, has been a favorite with visitors since it debuted in 1993.

With exhibits tying in everything from Curious George to Indiana Jones, they know how to bring in pop culture references to keep things interesting.

And don't forget about the "history" part: In addition to the history evident in the permanent exhibits, the museum occasionally brings in special exhibits like one featuring artifacts from the Titanic.

C.R. Smith Museum
There's almost no business more synonymous with Dallas-Fort Worth than American Airlines. It's had flights originating here as early as the 1940s, and its headquarters have been in Fort Worth since 1979.

The C.R. Smith Museum — one of several flight-related museums in the area — celebrates that history with exhibits that let you see the variety of airplanes the carrier has featured, interactive features that guide you through the years and behind-the-scenes looks at everyone from the flight attendants to the baggage handlers.

But the biggest draw by far is the flight simulator, in which you can pretend you're a pilot flying over the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dallas Museum of Art/Nasher Sculpture Center/Crow Collection of Asian Art
Yes, these are three separate places, but because of their proximity to each other in the Dallas Arts District and their collaborations on kid-friendly events, tying them together only makes sense.

The DMA has a variety of programs aimed at children as young as 2 that introduces them to certain special areas of the museum and then encourages them to make art of their own. It's also free to get in, making it an obvious draw for cost-conscious parents.

To reach out to children, the Nasher throws open its doors the first Saturday of every month, offering things like scavenger hunts and storytelling. And "adult" exhibits like Katharina Grosse's Wunderblock or Alfredo Jaar's piece for Nasher Xchange bring out the kid in anyone.

The Crow hosts AdventureAsia the first Saturday of every month, offering different activities to help kids get closer to the art. Kids can even try their hands at yoga, in which the instructors use music, games, stories and more to introduce the young ones to the challenging activity.

The third Friday of every month is when each museum offers something extra special: Late Nights at the DMA, Nasher's 'til Midnight and Crow Collection After Dark. Each has something a little different, but movies, concerts, art activities and more are the norm. Don't miss their special spring, summer and fall block parties, when the action spills out of the museums and into the streets.

Dallas Firefighters Museum
Being a firefighter is one of those jobs that inspires awe in children and adults alike, because their entire purpose is to keep people safe from harm. It's the rare child that doesn't get entranced by the sight of a fire truck, and the Dallas Firefighters Museum features a few for the books — the history books, that is.

On display are several vintage firefighting vehicles, including one nicknamed "Old Tige" that dates back to 1884. Kids can sit in some of the old trucks, check out how firefighting techniques have changed over the years and pore over rookie class pictures.

Who knows — one trip to the museum could result in a child deciding to serve his community proudly like thousands of others before him.

The Dallas Museum of Art offers multiple opportunities for kids to engage with art.

Dallas Museum of Art Facebook

The Dallas Museum of Art offers multiple opportunities for kids to engage with art.

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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