Big Kid News

Peppa Pig picks Dallas-Fort Worth for first permanent playdate in U.S.

Peppa's ready to play.

UPDATE: The Peppa Pig World of Play at Grapevine Mills will open at 10 am February 12, the mall has said. Regular hours will be 10 am-6 pm Monday through Saturday and 11 am-7 pm Sunday. The last admission for entry is 90 minutes before closing. Admission is $20 for children and $5 for adults. Tickets are now on sale at www.peppapigworldofplay.com.

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The preschool set's favorite loveable little piggy is coming out to play in Dallas-Fort Worth. The first U.S. location of Peppa Pig World of Play, a family-friendly indoor play center, will open at Grapevine Mills mall on February 12, 2019.

According to a release, the new permanent attraction will allow children to step into the world of Peppa Pig and her family in a special setting full of "oinktastic" activities. It "will take families on an unforgettable journey where they can join Peppa and her friends to explore and interact with instantly recognizable locations from the show in a number of colorful playscapes that have each been lovingly recreated from the hugely popular animated series," the release promises.

The attraction will include 14 Peppa-themed play areas for little ones. According to the release, highlights include:

Peppa’s Family House: where visitors can play inside the iconic living room and kitchen, have a conversation with a talking Polly Parrot and a photo opportunity with Daddy Pig.
Supermarket: children can have fun grocery shopping and helping Miss Rabbit on the cash register at the local supermarket where they can find items from Peppa’s family shopping list;.
Zoe Zebra and Daddy Dog at the Garage: an activity area where children can help Mr. Zebra deliver the mail and repair a truck at Grandpa Dog’s Garage.
Madame Gazelle’s School Bus: children can climb aboard Madam Gazelle’s school bus and sing along with Peppa and her friends on an exciting trip to the theatre.
Rebecca Rabbit’s Underground Adventure: little ones will love crawling through tunnels, exploring bedrooms and sliding into a big muddy puddle in the Rabbit family’s underground burrow.
Peppa’s Treehouse, George’s Fort, Muddy Puddles and George’s Dinosaur Discovery: imaginatively themed play areas that recreate key themes from the show for children to enjoy.
Sensory Garden: this interactive sensory garden features a duck pond, hen house, Grandpa Pig’s train and more.

There will also be a theater, gift shop, facilities for families to relax and play, and lots of photo opps. It is operated by global leisure giant Merlin under a licensing agreement with eOne, the owner of the Peppa Pig brand.

For those not familiar with what's captivating kids on screen these days, Peppa Pig is a British-based preschool animated TV series focused on the adventures of an anthropomorphic female pig named Peppa and her family and friends. Peppa loves to play as real kids play — swimming, jump-roping, riding bikes, and playing on the playground.

So a permanent Peppa playground makes perfect sense. (And is also a good tounge-twister for all ages.) Grapevine Mills Mall is also home to Legoland Discovery Center and Sea Life Grapevine Aquarium.

“The universally loved Peppa Pig brand offers us the chance to create a truly magical experience for our youngest visitors and families,” says Mike Vallis, Merlin Entertainments divisional director for new brands, in the release. “By giving fans a unique opportunity to step into the incredible world of this hugely popular little piggy and encouraging them to discover, explore and play, we are confident that Peppa Pig World of Play will become a popular destination for families in Texas."

families openings

Movie Review

New film I Want Your Sex somehow makes kinky activity boring

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut - Three Bewildered People in the Night - in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest - his first film in 12 years - he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention - and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.