Kids Really Know How to Have Fun

The Scene: The premiere of Columbia Pictures’ “My Girl,” Sunday afternoon in Century City. After the screening, guests strolled over to the club Twenty/20 for a child-themed buffet reception. The movie started at 5, which allowed families to do it all and get home in time to watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

Who Was There: “My Girl” stars Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky, along with Tony Curtis, James Woods, Ted Danson, Martin Short and Ed Begley Jr. Aykroyd, Danson and Short brought their children, as did many other guests.

The Locale: The club’s main room held adult food and a dance floor, but most guests piled into the adjoining game room, where kids feasted on hamburgers, popcorn and cotton candy while they played carnival games and had their faces painted with an airbrush.

Chow: Besides the kid cuisine, there were gourmet pizzas, chicken, turkey burgers, salad, fruit, a make-your-own sundae bar and “My Girl” cookies the size of small Frisbees.

Favors: Departing guests received “My Girl” promotional sweat shirts and as many helium balloons as they could pick off the ceiling.

Sights: Lots of Hollywood dads with glazed eyes, clutching their drinks while being dragged around by their sugar-charged 6-year-olds. Martin Short eventually sat down on the floor in a corner to get a break from it all.

Noted: A photo booth allowed guests to get their pictures taken with life-size cutouts of the stars. Most little girls wanted to pose with the cardboard Macaulay Culkin (the heartthrob of sixth-grade classrooms everywhere).

Triumphs: Premieres for kids are more fun than the ones for adults, because one can count on a high percentage of the guests actually enjoying themselves, rather than trying to network.

Glitches: Someone had affixed an incredibly offensive bumper sticker to the dance floor, where kids could see it and learn an explicit new 10-letter word. The management of Twenty/20 ought to scrape it off before the next party.