Cars 2 -- how did this movie get a G rating?

[Anonymous]

hi, all.

took DS to see Cars 2 this weekend. wow -- the violence! the first scene has lots of rapid gunfire and explosions. later, a car gets beaten/tortured before he is blown up. the phrase "kill Lighting McQueen," or some variation, is said several times. yes, there can be violence in animated movies. even the very sweet movie "Up" has that mean villain with his shot gun. but "Cars 2" was way beyond.

this is so far removed from the first Cars movie, it's ridiculous. how is this not a PG movie?

[Anonymous]

The torture scene may have gone over my son's head (for now), but not mine. That was in horrible taste. I'm Ok with some generic violence, but something like that is pretty awful.

[Anonymous]

The film makers are in cahoots with the ratings people, I think. There is very little difference between an R and PG13 now, too. They want to desensitize everyone to sex and violence so they can get the largest viewership possible. It's very subtle usually, but seems to have taken off quickly in the last couple of years.

[Anonymous]

The pace at which scenes in movies and previews are shows, plust the volume, and the intensity (as the OP mentioned) is just WAY too much. I feel assaulted by the experience. I wanted to take my almost 5 yr. old and my 7 1/2 yr. old, but I'm going to skip it.

Who decided that this kind of assault is appropriate for young children? I really miss the OLD movies where things happen at a much slower pace, the menacing scenes are left to your imagination, and the soundtrack in much softer.

What's really sad is that everyone assumes it must be o.k. for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 yr olds just b/c it's a Disney movie. Kids are being fed wicked fast pictures and violence and then we wonder why they can't sit still long enough to read a book that develops slowly and relies on inferences to get the story across.

[Anonymous]

This is really disappointing to read, as I was planning to take my 3.5 year old DS next weekend. Thanks for posting this, b/c I will definitely be skipping it now. I'm hopeful that the Winnie the Pooh movie that's coming out in a few weeks will be truly G rated.

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'm not as sensitive but I took my 4 year old and went with 2 girlfriends who took their almost 4 year olds and I thought it was fine. The kids were entertained and din't understand the sub-plots anyway. My husband and I were personally more disturbed by the death tones at the beginning of UP which went right over my son's head as well.

[Anonymous]

PP again -- I also didn't find it any more scary then the grasshopper scenes from A Bug's Life where the grasshoppers repeatedly say they are going to kill the ants and grab and almost torture the little ant...

[Anonymous]

Wow, thank you for posting this. I have a nephew coming into town and thought this might be something my husband could take him to (my own is too little for movies just yet at 2). I really loathe so-called kids movies being violent or aggressive. I don't get it. My husband just told me that in toy story, there was a furnace scene where they were throwing toys in the furnace. !!! I would have flipped my sh if I'd had a child at that.

I realize that we can sometimes underestimate our children's ability to appreciate dark things and that it's a normal part of development. But there seems to be a huge difference between what was "dark" years ago (bambi's mother) and what's dark now. Torture? Furnaces?

I don't know why movie makers want to go there. It sickens me. And for what?

[Anonymous]

I just watched An American Tail (the 1986 original, not Feivel Goes West) last night and there are some pretty scary moments in that movie as well. I think there have always been dark, scary themes in children's movies, they just now seem more serious to us as parents now. When we we children, those themes went over our heads.

I will say though, I think shootouts do not belong in children's movies.

[Anonymous]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43543750/ns/today-entertainment/

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the heads up.

Try Mr. Popper's Penguins. We took a preKer and a 5th grader last week and they both loved it. I don't recall anything offensive or violent. It only resembles the book the tiniest bit, though.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the heads up about this...it is really hard to find "gentle" movies for kids!

[Anonymous]

I had the same thought, OP. I took my almost 5 y.o. and thought the storyline, with all the talk about killing, was inappropriate, and there were far too many guns and other violence. Luckily, watching cars doing hand-to-hand combat is not as shocking as watching humans do it, and the storyline was too complex for DS to follow closely, so I do think much of the violence went over his head. DH also was disturbed when he heard about the movie when we got home.

I'm also hoping the Winnie the Pooh movie will be okay. Beyond that one, we'll probably not go to any more movies for at least another year.

[Anonymous]

My DH planned to take our 4 yr old, but we ran out of time. That said, I downloaded the trailer and my son was watching it, and for the first 30 seconds I thought it was for an R rated film and that I had downloaded the wrong trailer
I've heard great things about Winnie the Pooh. The only bad reviews come from people that can't stand Winnie the Pooh.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure what the problem is here, OP. So long as no child under 17 is being exposed to one or more titties, we're a-OK with anything. It's the American Way!

--MPAA Ratings Guy