I’m a sucker for little kid movies.

It brings you back to a time when nothing but your Barbies or GI Joes and that kid down the street that smelled like glue all the time mattered.

I was happy to see Disney was going to release “Brother Bear,” an old-fashioned hand-drawn animated movie with a few computer graphics thrown in. It reminded me of times before “Beauty and the Beast.”

After going to see it, what I walked out of the theater thinking, and what spurred a long conversation afterwards, was the adult factor of animated movies in the past few years. There were a couple of scenes that definitely weren’t appropriate for kids, some just plain scary and some humor that wasn’t geared toward them. It’s been even more noticeable in other films.

“Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” are movies for kids. Adults may have liked them for the simple fact that they were good movies. But “Aladdin” and “Toy Story” were liked by adults and children for different reasons, the filmmakers catered to two different audiences, not just families in general, but adults and children separately.

There was humor for children, simple and amusing. But there was humor aimed at adults, something the kids wouldn’t understand and parents probably walked out of the theater looking down at their children’s questioning eyes as they asked, “Why was the part when the Potato Head mixed his face up and called himself Picasso funny, Mommy?”

The answer they give is, “You’ll know when you’re older.”

So why did this trend start? Why make anything in the movie for the adults, when the children are the ones making them go see it?

It started when adults began asking, “What’s in it for me?” and continued when Disney realized they could make more money if they added adult humor, making their movies ones adults may want to see on their own. It also has to do with children growing up too quickly.

Even looking at reviews of the movie, critics seem like they’re taking their time explaining if there’s anything in it for the adults. On a broad view, you can look at movies with humor added just for adults and see a societal problem. We’re out to make money, so far to the extent that we’re messing with cartoons.

Not to mention that we’ve become so focused on ourselves that we can’t go see a Disney movie just for the kids. And on top of that, maybe there aren’t real kids any more. They’re growing up too fast to laugh at running-into-walls and falling-down-a-cliff humor; they see sex and drugs and death every day in the news and on television; they’re simply shorter adults now.

On a smaller view — the one that should be taken from those inhabiting a college town — we can note the change and realize this is when movies started to go downhill. Fantastic animated films that weren’t just good for the animation, but for the story lines, started to make less money and be less popular after “The Lion King,” which is right after Disney started catering to adults.

It’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s definitely a trend. Films can’t just cater to one audience any more; they must cater to several to even think about making any money.

They make it, we go see it, so they make more. We’ve started a vicious cycle. All we can hope now is that some decent movies are made out of it sometime soon.