Family Film: New movies, including 'The Proposal' and 'Year One'

ShareThis

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"The Proposal"

-- Rating: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and up.
-- What you should know: Sandra Bullock plays a no-nonsense New York book editor who, facing deportation to her native Canada, pretends to be engaged to her assistant, played by Ryan Reynolds. They head for his hometown in Alaska, where their ruse threatens to come undone.
-- Language: A couple of uses of "Jesus" or "Christ" along with a half-dozen mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: All played for laughs, including a kiss and a naked, carefully choreographed collision and tumble. A hapless exotic dancer performs, and jokes are made about fertility and bust lines.
-- Violence/scary situations: Generally mild. A character makes reference to losing her parents when she was a teen. Someone who cannot swim is unintentionally thrown out of a speeding boat, and another collapses and needs immediate medical care.
-- Alcohol and drug use: Adults celebrate or relax with alcoholic drinks, and one scene is set in a bar.

"Year One"

-- Rating: PG-13. The Motion Picture Association of America originally rated the movie R for "some sexual content and language," but changed the rating to PG-13 after the director and producer made cuts.
-- Suitable for: Mature teens and older.
-- What you should know: The movie spoofs several stories told in Genesis by having two cavemen encounter the tales firsthand in hopes of getting their cavegirl crushes out of slavery.
-- Language: Liberal use of sexual terms and stronger version of "buttocks."
-- Sexual situations and nudity: The sexual innuendos are too many to count, and the cavemen and cavewomen are scantily clad in rags.
-- Violence/scary situations: A man is speared, the two protagonists get stoned by a child and a eunuch and some humans and animals are decapitated. Oh yeah, there are some scary masks, too.
-- Alcohol and drug use: A reference by a teen-ager to "smoking some herb." A slave imbibes a whole chalice of alcohol shortly before her sacrifice.

"Imagine That"

-- Rating: PG.
-- Suitable for: Kindergarten-age children and up.
-- What you should know: Eddie Murphy plays a workaholic dad who enters his daughter's imaginary world and finds financial tips, workplace success and personal happiness.
-- Language: A stronger version of "heck," twice.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: At a meeting in the dad's office, a quickie mention is made of a nuclear weapon being detonated, but anything slightly scary -- bouncing off a trampoline, tumbles, speeding through traffic -- is played for laughs.
-- Drug or alcohol use: None.

"My Life in Ruins"

-- Rating: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature tweens and up, although its target seems to be older audiences.
-- What you should know: Nia Vardalos from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" plays an American reluctantly working as a tour guide in Greece. She has lost her mojo but finds it after a memorable tour, where she falls in love and begins to see beyond the stereotypes she assigns passengers.
-- Language: About a half-dozen mild four-letter words.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A woman announces a sexual dry spell, a man advises her to have more sex, characters kiss and are shown after a sexual interlude, and a man jokes about a prescription pill that allows him to share his bed with two women.
-- Violence/scary situations: A bus mishap looks worse than it is, and, in a separate incident, a person falls ill and lands in the hospital.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Some visitors almost always have a beer can in their hands, and characters down shots or other alcohol.

"Up"

-- Rating: PG.
-- Suitable for: Children 4 or 5 and older.
-- What you should know: This is the 10th movie from Pixar and it's a little more than 90 minutes (nowhere near as long as "Cars"). It's about a widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house and sails away to South America, unaware that a boy has accidentally stowed away.
-- Language: Nothing notable.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: A wordless sequence early on conveys a couple's inability to have children and the elderly wife's illness and death. Adults will understand what is happening, but children may not. "Up" has lots of cartoonish peril, including a strike to the head that leads to an arrest, stormy skies while flying, scary dogs, attempts to kill, hurt or capture people and creatures, and a fall we presume is fatal (the result is not shown).
-- Drug or alcohol use: None.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Pittsburgh Post-Gazette