THE BOTTOM LINE: Even with the PG rating, “The Big Year” includes very occasional mild profanity and epithets, plus a crude hand gesture. A couple of adult-focused themes deal with fertility treatments and presumed marital infidelity.
PG-13
Footloose. This likable remake is more for high-schoolers than younger teens because of its occasional strong language, sexual slang and innuendo. This time, local minister Shaw Moore in the small town of Bomont is a grieving father who gets the town to pass a law banning loud music and public dancing after he loses his son in a car crash. In a prologue, we see the teens drinking at a party, then getting into the car. The crash is not overly graphic. Three years later, a freethinking kid named Ren McCormack arrives in town to live with his aunt and uncle, having recently lost his ailing single mom. Ren makes friends with the droll, dance-challenged Willard and the minister’s beautiful daughter, Ariel. Ren works to repeal the law and hold a huge dance bash.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The script includes plenty of crude sexual slang and innuendo, frequent use of the S-word and other gross epithets. Some of the dancing is sexually suggestive. At least one teen character smokes pot. The kids race old school buses. A father slaps his daughter when she tells him she’s not a virgin.
The Way. For meditative high-schoolers, this little film could prove a poignant tonic to counteract all the pop culture noise out there. Other teens will deem “The Way” a boring tale about old people talking too much. Tom learns that his 40-ish son, Daniel, has died in France. Daniel had just set off alone on the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrims’ trail between France and Spain when a sudden change of weather caused his death. Father and son had a rocky relationship. When he gets to France, however, Tom impulsively has Daniel’s remains cremated and takes the ashes on the path his son had begun, to scatter them along the way. The movie is spiritual but never a sermon.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The characters drink a lot of wine, and some smoke marijuana and cigarettes. The script includes occasional mild profanity and toilet humor, plus verbal references to spousal abuse.
Real Steel. Perhaps teens who like the “Transformers” films will find a similar thrill watching battered robots smack one another around. The film is okay for most teens, but it’s a little too hard-edged for preteens. “Real Steel” follows the adventures of former boxer Charlie, who travels the country with a boxing ’bot and enters it in contests for cash. Into his life drops Max, his estranged son with a long-ago ex. The two are able to bond only after Max finds a beat-up boxing ’bot in a dump.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The robot has enough human qualities that you feel for it when it gets smacked down or damaged. The boxing sequences get fairly intense. Charlie gets beaten up. The script includes occasional mild to midrange profanity.
R
The Thing. High-school horror buffs 16 and older with strong stomachs will thrill to this compelling prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film. Though this new “Thing” includes some profanity and a dirty joke, the R rating mainly reflects the gore. Scientists in Antarctica, circa 1982, discover a frozen alien and a spacecraft buried beneath the ice. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd is recruited by a scientist to join his team in Antarctica. She urges caution but is overruled. The most interesting note is how, not knowing which person may have been merged with the alien, team members start suspecting one another.
THE BOTTOM LINE: When the alien breaks out of its human prey, the film shows skulls and bodies cracked open, organs exposed, as the human “host” is rent asunder. This is strong stuff. The movie also includes gunfire, much use of flamethrowers, midrange profanity and some drinking.
The Ides of March. There’s little reason that many high-schoolers interested in politics couldn’t handle this riveting look at how campaigns are run, though there is profanity and themes about promiscuity and abortion. Stephen is the press officer for a Democrat named Morris, who’s running for the presidential nomination. Stephen believes in Morris but is also a calculating operative who is flattered when the opposing campaign tries to hire him. Stephen fails to tell his boss, and the more he tries to fix his mistakes, the worse things get.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
In addition to excoriating profanity, “The Ides of March” includes a nongraphic sexual situation, promiscuity and marital infidelity themes, a subplot about abortion and a possible suicide.
Horwitz is a freelance writer.
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