ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:
"Confessions of a Shopaholic"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and above.
-- What you should know: Based on a pair of Sophie Kinsella novels, this movie stars Isla Fisher as a writer up to her eyeballs in debt but advising magazine readers about finance.
-- Language: Mild, maybe one use of a stronger version of darn.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Kisses are exchanged.
-- Violence/scary situations: Played for laughs.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults knock back champagne and frothy alcoholic drinks.
"Push"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: 15-year-olds and up.
-- What you should know: Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning are caught in a world of psychic espionage where people can see the future, move objects with their minds or plant ideas in others' heads.
-- Language: Some profanity and expletives, including what sounds like a single f-word.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Kissing, mainly behind closed doors, and a scene where a husband learns his wife has been unfaithful.
-- Violence/scary situations: Nearly nonstop, with references to Nazi experiments along with people being shot at or killing themselves at the behest of others, being injected with experimental drugs, falling to their deaths and slugging it out with fists.
-- Drug or alcohol use: To sharpen her powers, Fanning's 13-year-old character gets drunk. Adults are shown drinking.
"The Pink Panther 2"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: 9- or 10-year-olds and up.
-- What you should know: This is a sequel to the 2006 film with Steve Martin in the title role. Here he joins a dream team of investigators tracking a master thief.
-- Language: Generally clean.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Some hugs and flirtations, all mild, and a lecture about how it is inappropriate to stare at a woman's cleavage and buttocks.
-- Violence/scary situations: Guns are fired but most of the violence is played for laughs, with pratfalls, karate face-offs, accidental fires, head-banging, reckless car driving and the like.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults drink wine and champagne.
"Coraline"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: Children, especially those familiar with the Neil Gaiman book, age 8 and up.
-- What you should know: This animated movie is about an 11-year-old who discovers a secret passageway in her new apartment that leads to a world where her "other" mother and father live. It seems perfect until the other parents reveal their true selves and want to replace Coraline's eyes with buttons.
-- Language: Nothing notable.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: An elderly actress appears in pasties and bikini bottom -- until she unzips her lumpy body and steps out as a younger, thinner version of herself.
-- Violence/scary situations: A fair amount as Coraline and others are in danger, a boy loses his ability to talk, we see the spirits of children who disappeared and the "other" parents show their real colors as they shift shapes and demand that Coraline obey.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing, other than some circus rats that appear to be drunk.
"New in Town"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and up.
-- What you should know: Renee Zellweger is a Miami corporate climber who ends up in a small town in Minnesota, where she finds a different way of life and, possibly, love with a widowed dad played by Harry Connick Jr.
-- Language: A dozen or so mild four-letter words and a crude word for buttocks are used.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Adults kiss and spend some time vertical on a couch, but it's very tame. A woman's nipples are visible through her thin sweater, prompting jokes about whether she is cold and needs a jacket.
-- Violence/scary situations: The fear factor is either mild or played for laughs. References are made to a character, never shown, who had a degenerative heart defect that proved fatal.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Stranded during a storm, Zellweger gets drunk and adults consume beer, wine and other alcohol.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
