Movie: Marley & Me

[bookworm]

We rented this movie for our Sunday Family Movie Night, and turned it off before it was even half over. I thought, 'oh, puppies and rated PG, we should be okay with this one for the family', plus I had heard what a good movie it was-- my boys were very upset by the amount of sexual language in it- they're old enough to recognize inappropriate talk, even if they don't understand it all.

There were references to the act itself, and male anatomy (when they got the dog fixed) and even more references when they were trying to get pregnant. Okay, the characters are married and committed to the marriage, but my kids don't need to know anything about the bedroom stuff of these two characters. So I don't recommend this movie.

I was sorely disappointed-- it's PG, and yes, the puppies at the beginning are adorable, but I don't know how it ends- like I said, we didn't even get to the halfway point- we turned it off.

[Dia Minha]

Diva said the exact same thing to me last week. We were looking at getting this movie for the kids, but Tale of Desperauex came out before we got around to it and it was further up on our list. It sounds like that was a blessing in disguise. The only problem now being, my kids are still asking to see this movie. How absolutely frustrating. It was advertised as a cute family film. Who can be trusted in Hollywood anymore?

[bookworm]

No one. My dad has written numerous columns about how you can't really trust the rating system to protect you or to really inform you.

Examples include all the Austin Powers films which, I understand, are very sexual, and should have been rated R, but got pg-13s. Or the numerous films with the f-word in them that slide through as pg-13s. Anyway, no you can't trust Hollywood.

We rented 'Australia' a few weeks ago for DH and myself, thinking it was a sweeping epic- like the ads made it seem. Not so much. It was kind of stupid, poorly written and directed and not a very good film at all. Truth in advertising? Not in Hollywood!

[natickgirl]

I recently rented Ice Castles, which is rated PG, since my daughter loves ice skating & I thought it would be a good "family" movie. The swearing was so bad within the 1st 5 min. that I turned it off. This is a 70's movie...I thought the PG would be at least as mild as PG's are (or, should be) today! Wrong.

[Mamallama]

Thanks SO much for the tip on Marley & Me! I'd been planning to rent that too, and now am so glad that I hadn't rented it yet.
It is very disappointing when that happens....you're all excited to watch what seems like it will be a great family movie...and instead you sit down to garbage like that!
How I wish we could somehow change the rating system so we could better know what we are getting into before watching.

We bought a ClearPlay DVD player last year which I absolutely LOVE and highly recommend. You download filters from the ClearPlay website (I just download their whole list because it's faster---) They have over 2000 filters---covers most movies. It only cost $8.00 for the whole list of filters. Then on the DVD player you can control how much or how little you want to filter out. There are about 10 categories of filtering---Language, Violence, Crude Language, Nudity, Sexual Content, Mushiness, and more...can't think of the specifics at the moment... You can individually select a category and then select if you want High, Medium or Low filtering....or no filtering on that specific category. They are constantly adding more movies to their list---so you can just go to the website and download them as they come up.

Don't know if I'm explaining well----but it works GREAT! You can sit down to a movie and know that know no swearing, nudity, or violence is going to be shown. It makes it great for showing movies like "Batman" to my 8 year old as I put it on High filtering for violence----so he can see the movie without the gruesome scenes.

Thanks again for the "Marley and Me" tip.....I remember turning off the "Ice Castles" movie as well! So disappointing!