Age Appropriate Movies (opinions please)

[Tinks]

Am I being a prude or are there no age appropriate movies out there at the moment?

Over the holidays I took my 6&10 yo DD and one of their friends to see 17 Again. The whole cinema was full of girls my DD ages. It was marketed as being a movie about a dad who regressed back to a 17 year old and ended up back at high school with his kids. It had Zac Efron (the reason for going to see it ) in it and I just assumed it would be similar to Freaky Friday.

I was wrong! It was about a 17 year old who got his gf pregnant in high school and had always felt like he'd missed out on his life becuase of it. He was divorcing his wife (the gf from HS) and was turned into a teenager to live his 17th year again. So he ends up in high school with his 2 kids, the daughter is going a bit off the rails and has a bad boy boyfriend and the son was a geek. In one scene the class were in a sex ed class where the teacher was handing out condoms. The daughters BF was grabbing hands full of them and joking about that being just enough for the weekend while winking and smirking at the daughter. It was quite an amusing scene really BUT not appropriate for a 6&10 year old. IMO of course. The rest of the movie was pretty much the same. I quite enjoyed it and had a bit of a blubber at the end. I just don't thik it was at all appropriate for the age group it was marketed at.

A friend of mine suggested I get a movie called The House Bunny because her 7yo daughter loves it. It's about a Playboy Bunny who gets kicked out of the PB mansion and goes to live at a college sorority house as a house mother. It sounded like quite a cute movie so I got it. I watched it before showing my girls, thankfully. The Playboy Bunny (basically) ends up at a sorority house with a bunch of geeky girls so she makes it her mission to 'make them look sexy' so boys will like them. So, the whole movie revolves around her 'sexing' them up, boys ogling both her and the 'sexy' nerdy girls and her being a complete dunce really.

Friends of mine have no problems letting their kdis watch any movie, I feel like such a prude but I just don't want my girls to think about looking sexy or having sex at their ages.

Do you let your daughters watch this type of movie? Am I being a prude for not allowing it? Should I just lighten up??

[Rouge]

WHAT?!?!?!?!

House bunny & 17 again are definitely not appropriate for kids. 17 again has been marketed as a movie in which Zac Efron has branched out to do more adult movies (I haven't seen it as marketed for kids at all). Even my 7 y.o. knows its not for kids (She told me! But I knew anyway )

How can people get so complacent about these things. Its not hard to research a film online before going to see it, its not like the only info about movies is in the newspaper anymore.

[Tinks]

I did check it out on IMDb but there was no parental info, probably becuase it was a new movie. I've just looked and there is parental info on there now GRR.

I have ot add that I didn't let them watch House Bunny! My friend can't understand why

[brightstar79]

Nillac - Couldn't have said it better!! I agree with you, there is the internet and newspaper to read about all the movies that are showing. Sometimes I do question the ratings they give movies though... 17 again being PG.... maybe M would have been better.
That being said, I probably would not have thought twice if the movie was given a PG rating, but I would be a little annoyed if I took children to see it and then found out it was more for adults.

[ubba82]

My 7yo has been asking me since the previews came out to go and see 17 again. She thinks it will be along the lines of High School Musical. I have kept telling her no. She got angry with me but I am glad I stood my ground on this one.

I tend to stick with the Disney Pixar and those types of movies or other childrens movies I remember watching when I was a kid, although DD and I did watch the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy over the holidays, but I have seen them before so made my onw decision to let her watch them. Mind you they are now her favoirites along with the Back to the Future movies.

[Tinks]

Yes, my kids love Pirates and Back to the Future too and also The Neverending Story. Hotel for Dogs was a good movie and so was Bedtime Stories. Why can't they make more movies like that?

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

I actually think that was a bit harsh, Rouge. If I'd made this topic I would've been offended by that. I know you didn't mean it like that but it came across as a bit rude.

I wouldn't expect a PG movie to have Sex Ed classes and condoms and to be honest I thought it was a tween movie when I saw the ads. I guess for the 10 and under age group the best movies are the animated ones, isn't Ice Age 3 coming out soon or has it already started?

[AnyDream]

We're having this issue at the moment, DD has just turned 11 and we are only now branching out into some of the PG movies...I'm still surprised at the content in some of those PGers. The material that I find borderline is usually down to 'themes', rather than overt activity.

It's tricky, I just don't know where all the kids movies are these days. It's school hols here and there is only 1 G rated movie showing (Hannah montana) - 2 PG rated ones, and the rest are things like Transformers which is M rated. And they wonder why we stay at home and watch pirated DVDS???!!!

[Tinks]

I actually think that was a bit harsh, Rouge. If I'd made this topic I would've been offended by that. I know you didn't mean it like that but it came across as a bit rude.

I wasn't offended by it Neenee but I see where you're coming from. I always research movies before taking the kids to see them, it was the one time I didn't that I got caught out.

[Gigi]

i have a fridge magnet with the details for YOUNG MEDIA AUSTRALIA on it.

i have YOUNG MEDIA AUSTRALIA website bookmarked.

it's my "go to" place to research movies for children, will it suit their age group or not?

my way of going in prepared, so i don't end up having to explain things without being warned first.

this was a great site to have, when i first became a step parent (i was terrified of taking SD to see anything, and her going back to her mum and coming out with things that would freak her mum out). i don't know why i worried, time went on and i realised she was being given M and AO dvds to watch at home, whilst with me, she only watched G dvds. i digress.

Young Media Australia - i would put the url if allowed - you just type in the movie title and you get a good report on all sorts of things

- swearing in film (if any)
- topics and concepts covered
- precis of storyline
- any violent content
- which age groups it suits and which age groups might not suit e.g give nightmares to
all sorts of useful stuff

you just read it (as the parent) and work out, yeh, i think my child could cope with that bit, and nah, i don't want my child to see that bit, and make up your own mind whether to take them or not.

i just went to Young Media (it's a dot ORG site, not a dot COM site)
and by searching for "17 again" i got a hit instantly, they did a review in April 2009 when it came out

first bit says

17 Again

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about 17 Again's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of 17 Again completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 13 April 2009.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 8 Not recommended due to sexual references and coarse language. Could also lack interest for this age group.

Children 8-13 Parental guidance recommended due to theme of family breakdown and sexual references.

Children over 13 Some children over the age of 13 will still benefit from parental guidance due to sexual references


The movie is rated PG, so even if i took a six year old to the movies, and had no laptop with me to look up the Young Media site, had to decide on the spot, i would only take a six year old into a G rated movie, on speck. So no, i don't think you're a prude.

I was the one who had to deal with my early primary school aged SD's questions, after she was given "muriel's wedding" to watch, her and two other similar aged girls (at her mum's house) - no adult in the room. The amount of questions she had, about threesomes, oral sex, words that she didn't understand (all words to do with sex) etc, i was mortified. Her mum fobbed her off, so she asked me. I could not believe anyone would let a 7 yo watch an adult movie. She was relieved to find someone who WOULD answer her questions, but wow it was hard for me (to find age appropriated language for her) and to work out on the spot what to say, how much to explain. I remember especially explaining the swearing she had heard, in the most gentle way i could think of - wow, that was hard.

[Tinks]

That's a great site. The IMDb site also has detailed parental information, that is where I usually look.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Not a prude. We have loads of U films in the house for DS to watch - the only PG films he watches are those we have seen before and we watch together. The first time he saw Cats and Dogs he was very concerned about a cat lying on the road with a van coming (but woo hoo for us drumming road safety in!): he is now OK with it because he knows what's coming. That's the only PG film he has seen!

Even U films, I'm picky about what he watches. Just cos it's Disney it's OK? No way would I let DS watch The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Black Cauldron just yet. They're Disney Cartoons but not appropriate for a young child. You can't stop children being scared by films (one friend was petrified of Madam Medusa in The Rescuers for years).

We watch most things first. The exceptions being Thomas and The Wiggles. Those we generally take as read as being OK, but DS has been scared of Thomas before now.