Common Sense

Censorship is anathema. If you don't like it, don't watch it. No swear word is as offensive to me as a bleep, no scene as offensive as the jerk of a spliced film. So I tend to be pretty leery of web sites and services that focus on "appropriate" material.


At the same time, I know the pain of a mom who has stumbled into a movie her kid can't handle. As a huge Pixar fan, I really wanted to see Ratatouille when it came out. A friend of mine said it was fine for kids. At the time, I didn't think "Hmm, fine for your ten year old boy. I'd better preview it for my four year old girl." I was too anxious to get started and sat down to watch it with her. The first twenty minutes of the movie was about the whole world trying to kill the main character. My daughter was terrified and burst into tears moments before the introductory action settled down and the kid-friendly plot began to develop. She is still afraid to try it again.

Not Friendly to My Kid

So, recognizing that the fact that every kid is different  renders the "kid-friendly" label useless, and faced with the impossibility of previewing every movie my kids will ever watch, I really appreciate the consumer education approach of Commonsense Media. They allow you search for reviews and recommendations by age group. They tell you their own recommended age for watching a particular film, as well as the ages recommended by adult and teen users of the site.  I find that my daughter is about a year behind their recommendations.

A great feature of the site is the way they break out the issues that affect the ratings. They look at sex, violence/scariness, commercialism, role models, educational value, language, images of chemical use - pretty much anything a parent might wonder about a movie their kids might watch. You get to discount the issues you don't care about, and get pretty accurate descriptions of how the issues you do care about appear in the movie. Together with the reviews submitted by other parents, it's pretty easy to get a sense for how your own kid will respond.

Another great feature of the site is "What to talk about." Rather than recommending parents avoid a movie because of its use of X, Y or Z, they give talking points for how to bring those issues to your kids' attention and get your kids thinking about them.

If I had known about Common Sense Media back then, I could have looked up Ratatouille and found out that

Remy is hunted by an angry, gun-toting grandma and knife-throwing chefs. One chef is rumored to be an ex-con and looks menacingly at the rest of the kitchen staff. The sewer sequence early in the movie is somewhat scary. 

and the movie was recommended for kids at least five years old.