You are a kid; you love movies and you love sports. You’d think that all these things wrapped up into one would constitute something truly great, like an omelet or a United Nations kegger. But you’d be wrong. With very few exceptions, the world of children’s sports movies is a world of shameless racketeering and general badness.

Now I know a lot of you are saying, “But there are a lot of really good sports movies I loved as a kid, jerk!” Well let me ask you this: have you seen those movies lately? The more of them you see again as a reasonable non-kid person, the more you realize that when you were a child, someone could have taken a baseball-shaped dump and you would have stared at it for hours, just on principle. Knowing this, all the cinema execs decided to give the kiddies the artistic shaft around the late 80s.

It is an outrage. Have you watched “The Big Green” when you weren’t eight years old? Not only is the entire picture filmed with inferior equipment, but the premise is cliché and obviously not the product of an appropriate amount of thought. The film did not garner a single positive review nationwide. I think it’s downright indecent how filmmakers skimped and continue to skimp on children’s films — especially sports films — simply because they knew we couldn’t tell the difference. Well, I can tell the difference now, damnit, and I want my crumpled up, smelly, lawn-mowing money back. This is murder. “The Big Green” grossed nearly $18 million dollars domestically because all of a sudden it was okay to exploit the most impressionable age-demographic in America. Don’t even get me started about “Little Giants” or “The Mighty Ducks.”

What about the original BBC “The Chronicles of Narnia?” I loved those movies as a child. With Reepicheep owning people, Aslan regulating Godfather style (allegory intended),and all these really awesome visual effects, it was hard not to watch all wide-eyed with drool coming out of your mouth. Even the original score was good.

But alas, to watch those same films in maturity. The horror and the pain, the utter disappointment! First of all, the animal costumes are complete crap, the snow is superimposed on the actual film in post-production and the actors are bad — really bad. I couldn’t believe it. It’s painfully obvious that the films were budgeted less money than most college beer runs. It feels like a part of my childhood has been snatched away, all because some British television suits didn’t want to make films that would stand the test of time.

This is not to say that all children’s movies are bad. Most notably in the sports genre there are some shining examples of films that were genuinely classics. When I think back on films like “Angels in the Outfield,” it’s amazing to think how good they were. By developing all these relevant themes of family values, racial and gender equality, “Angels” establishes itself as quality children’s cinema, along with “The Sandlot.” Speaking of “Sandlot,” it has to be at least 10,000 times better than “Rookie of the Year.” That little snot-nosed kid with the broken arm can say “Funky Butt-loving” as many times as he wants, but will he ever be able to match the pool scene, the s’more scene and the Great Bambino scene? No, not in a million years. Can you say “unrealistic premise?” (Sorry to poach on someone else’s territory, but I have strong feelings.)

But this brings me to another important point about children’s films and shameless profit hounding: the dreaded sequel. C’mon folks, after “Aladdin II” and “Aladdin III,” “Peter Pan II”, “Mulan II,” “Pocahontas II,” “Cinderella II,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame II,” “The Little Mermaid II,” “The Lion King 1 1/2” and “II,” “The Sandlot II” (sacrilege!), and the upcoming “Bambi II,” it becomes clear, nay, blatantly obvious, that these films were not made to further the beloved stories in any real way. They were made, brace yourselves, so some rich executive could go on vacation to shoot zebras and patronize prostitutes. So what are you to do, now that all your juvenile memories are being used to subsidize some trollop on a Zebra hunting expedition? I don’t know. Do what I do: pretend you’re a robot from the future and that you were never young. Solves everything.