10 and older
The Pirates! Band of Misfits (PG). Much of the humor in this laugh-out-loud British animated comedy will, alas, go over kids’ heads. The cheeky tone and historic references are more likely to amuse grown-ups and will require a lot of explanation for kids younger than high-school age. Yet there’s little in the film that is inappropriate for those 10 and older, save a lone throwaway line uttered by the Pirate Captain, who reminisces about how he used to enjoy running people through and killing babies. The Pirate Captain and his merry crew are headed to Blood Island so the Captain can enter the Pirate of the Year contest. He encounters a scientist named Charles Darwin, who notes that the Captain’s pet Polly is actually a rare dodo bird. Darwin brings the Captain and his crew to London for a science contest and things get quite out of hand.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
The dialogue includes very mild sexual innuendo, as with a character named “The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate.” A few mild curses such as “hell’s barnacles!” are heard. A subplot about rich people who like to eat the meat of rare, exotic animals could disturb kids.
PG-13
Think Like a Man. This is an adult romantic comedy despite the PG-13 rating, and better suited to high-schoolers and grown-ups. Parents may find it too sexually charged and occasionally profane for middle-schoolers. Based on comedian Steve Harvey’s advice book “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” it follows the romantic follies of several men and women who have key problems in their relationships. The women get copies of Harvey’s book and start using his advice to trick the men into stepping up. Then the men get the book and try to fight back.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The movie includes several steamily implied but non-explicit sexual situations, implied drug use, moderate drinking, midrange profanity and a lot of sexual innuendo.
The Lucky One. Teen girls (and their moms) are the target audience for this romantic drama, based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, and they’ll like it just fine. Logan believes the photo of an unknown woman he found somehow saved him in Iraq. He traces the photo to Beth, a divorcee who runs a kennel in Louisiana and lives with her 7-year-old son, Ben, and her grandmother. Logan can’t bring himself to tell Beth why he’s there.
The bottom line:
Scenes depicting violence in the Iraq War, threats by a jealous ex-husband and strongly implied sexual situations make the film iffy for preteens. The film includes a couple of strongly implied sexual situations, which involve bare bottoms. Characters occasionally use barnyard epithets and get drunk and belligerent. A character’s apparent drowning is not graphic.
R
The Five-Year Engagement. Too sexually explicit and comically profane to recommend for under-17s, “The Five-Year Engagement” is nevertheless a deeply humane and refreshingly comedic adult take on the difficulties of love. Tom is a gifted San Francisco sous chef. His fiancee, Violet, is a budding psychologist. It was love at first sight. Violet gets an offer from the University of Michigan. They postpone their wedding, and Tom gamely follows her there but hates it and sinks into a depression. It takes the five years of the title for the two to realize they need to be together.
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