Just ’cause something is called a children’s movie doesn’t make it automatically appropriate in my book. There’s a big difference between something like Finding Nemo and Robots, between something that is wholesome entertainment and one that is a needlessly crass. kids-in-mind can help decide whether a movie is appropriate for your kids or not.

kids-in-mind reviews movies and rates them for Sex & Nudity, Violence & Gore and Profanity, and they are explicit in their descriptions. Continuing with our example movies of Finding Nemo and Robots, here’s how they’re rated:

Finding Nemo : 0.3.0
Robots : 3.3.3

The first number is for Sex & Nudity, the next for Violence & Gore, and the third for Profanity.

Finding Nemo has some violence, all of it described in extreme detail:

Violence/Gore: A barracuda with very long and pointed teeth snaps viciously at two fish, one fish is knocked unconscious, and the other fish along with many eggs are gone when he comes around (the barracuda apparently ate them although we do not see it). A fish is hit in the nose, her nose bleeds, a shark gets a whiff of the blood and goes into a frenzy chasing two fish through a wrecked submarine, crashing into doors, lunging through hatches, breaking through the hull and trying to squeeze into a torpedo tube; the two fish push a torpedo into his mouth, he spits it out, and it floats toward an underwater mine field setting it off…

Robots has more than violence involved, and following are a couple of things that made us decide that it definitely wasn’t appropriate for M at 3:

Sex/Nudity: A male robot announces that he is going to be a dad, he rushes home to find his wife with a box of parts and she says, “Making a baby is the fun part”; the male then says “Push, push” and the female moans as she pushes against a part, assembling the baby robot. During the assembly the mother robot asks the father robot, “What is that extra part?” and the father says, “We wanted a boy right?”; he then picks up a mallet, and says, “This won’t hurt a bit,” whereupon we hear a clunk and hear the baby robot cry.

Violence/Gore: A robot says to another robot “Beat me until you are happy” and the robot hits him in the face twice. We hear that a robot has disappeared. A robot talks about destroying another robot. A robot asks, “Who wants to get fixed?” and a robot dog whimpers.

That was definitely not something M needed to see, not then and not now. And perhaps not ever.

kids-in-mind has been a most helpful site on a number of occasions. Sometimes their descriptions seem excessive, but more information is better than less. Just like the environment, I’d rather err on the side of caution when it comes to my kids. Hope this is useful for you