Four Kids and It | 2020 | PG | – 1.3.1

Why is “Four Kids and It” rated PG? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “thematic elements, some rude/suggestive comments, fantasy violence and language.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few kissing and near kissing scenes, and a few cleavage revealing outfits, the implied death of a man caught in a house as it collapses, several dangerous activities undertaken by children including climbing sheer rock walls, flying, riding in helicopters, confronting adults that want to harm them, many arguments and discussions of the separation of families and blending families, and some mild language and name-calling. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A man (Matthew Goode) and a woman (Paula Patton) are single parents that bring their two families together for a holiday in a seaside retreat, hoping that they will begin to build a new, blended family together. That’s when the children encounter a magical creature that grants wishes. Also with Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen, Ashley Aufderheide, Billy Jenkins, Ellie-Mae Siame, Russell Brand and the voice of Michael Caine. Directed by Andy De Emmony. [Running Time: 1:50]

Four Kids and It SEX/NUDITY 1

 – A man and a woman lie on the ground together and he caresses her clothed hip as she moves to kiss him (they are interrupted). A man and woman put on tribal masks and pretend to kiss each other before they are interrupted. A man and woman introduce each other to their children and say that they have been seeing each other; the children become upset. A husband and his wife kiss awkwardly on the cheek in a video. A man and a woman lie down on a kitchen floor behind a cabinet and we hear her giggling; we later see them snuggling on the floor and they are interrupted by their children.
► Two teen girls talk about boys and one gives the other advice on how to get boys to pay attention to her; she tells her to hit them in the arm. A young girl talks about her father leaving her mother for a younger woman with a “tight, 20 year old tushy.” A woman says a man was “hitting on me.”
► A woman wears low-cut T-shirts and dresses that reveal cleavage in a few scenes. A creature has a mostly fur-covered body with drooping pectorals and we see buttocks cleavage a few times when it turns its back to us. A security detail wears tight-fitting outfits that reveal cleavage and the outline of hips, legs and buttocks.

Four Kids and It VIOLENCE/GORE 3

 – A man grabs a teen girl by the shoulder and drags her across a sand dune, where her father stops them, yells at the man and punches him in the face; we then see the first man put in handcuffs and taken away by police.
► Several security guards hold guns to the heads of four children (they do not shoot); a man says, “Shoot that one first,” pointing to a teen girl. A teen girl is caught in a rope snare and she is dragged away by a man that holds a gun on her and threatens her; three other children use super powers to throw the man to the ground and get away unharmed while other children float in the air blasting other people in the area through the air.
► A teen girl takes a video game away from a pre-teen boy and runs along dunes chased by the boy; the girl falls in a hole that turns out to be a tunnel that she and three other children run through and find a beach on the other side; the first girl climbs a rock wall to put the video game on a ledge out of reach of the boy and when the boy climbs the wall he falls off and lands hard on the sand below (no injuries are seen). A man lies on the floor of a house as the roof caves in and presumably kills him under the rubble (we do not see him again). A teen girl tackles another teen girl on a beach where they argue and throw sand at each other. Two teen girls argue over a room in a vacation house and they shove each other and pull their hair. A pre-teen boy scales a stone wall with ease and climbs very high before becoming frightened and a teen girl lowers a rope to help him climb to the top to safety. A teen girl and two younger children get into a helicopter and fly to a city where they meet another teen girl as she performs for a large cheering crowd; when the crowd magically disappears, they are chased out of the auditorium, and they run to a train station and hide in a bathroom until they are caught by a conductor that escorts them off the train to meet their parents. A teen girl floats off the ground and into the sky and she sees three other children flying; they all fly through the air and one flies toward a cliff before veering away and then flies through a forest chased by another teen girl and a pre-teen boy and girl (the boy crashes off-screen and we hear him say, “I’m OK”). A teen girl with the ability to fly flies through the air and crashes through several greenhouse windows breaking them; she flies toward a metal truck container before another teen flies into her and knocks her to the ground yelling, “You could have killed yourself” (no injuries are seen).
► A young girl bounces on a sofa and jumps off, crashing to the floor and she cries (we see no injuries). A teen girl wishes to be sent back in time and she’s told that time travel is very dangerous. A teen girl uses laser eye powers to zap a man on the buttocks and his pants catch on fire (he sits in a water trough to put the flames out). A man using a digging machine digs up a beach looking for a creature and he threatens four children and the creature before a boy jams the machine wheels using a piece of wood and a video game console to give them time to run away. Four children go to a man’s home and several security guards grab them and take them to see the man; we see the man with a creature locked in a glass case with electrodes attached to its head and the man shocks it causing it to groan and fall unconscious. Many gold coins stream down a flight of stairs and toward a man standing at the bottom, they pile higher and higher until the man is completely covered; coins burst through windows and crack the walls of the house. A creature lies motionless on the ground and four children cry over it; one boy tries CPR with no effect (it revives later).
► A woman drives on the wrong side of the road when she checks her phone and her teen daughter grabs the wheel before crashing into an oncoming car and yells at her. Water boils in a pan on a stove and a man picks up the pan, drops it and yells (we do not see injuries). A man and a woman stand at the top of a ladder to get a cell signal and when they argue over the phone, the ladder tips and they fall to the floor (no injuries are seen). People return home and find that the house has been broken into; things are then thrown around.
► A creature that lives under the sand has long fury ears, elongated fingers and toes and a mostly fur-covered body. A young girl plays in sand and we see her doll disappear into the sand; she is alarmed when a lump under the sand moves around her and something grabs her shoe before she and three other children can run to rocks and safety. Something moving under the sand grabs a boy’s backpack and spits it back out throwing his possessions around a beach; the creature is wrapped around the ankle by a charging chord and the boy pulls on it until the creature pops to the surface and a teen girl holds a rock and threatens to hit it.
► A woman says that she crashed her car into a man riding a bicycle and that he was not harmed but she destroyed his bike. A man and a woman argue about parenting techniques. A man and a woman go to police to ask for help in finding their children; the officer is not helpful. Young teens are gathered in an empty lot outside an abandoned warehouse building and one teen throws a rock through one of the windows breaking it, as her mother speeds up, yells at her and takes her away after saying that one of the other children will be in trouble with the law someday; the woman’s daughter says, “I hope I get deported.” A teen girl becomes upset when her father texts her that, “There’s no room for you at the moment” (she throws her phone to the ground breaking it). A teen girl teases another teen girl about reading on vacation, and she teases back saying that people who know how to read would take books on vacation. A man teases a woman about how she speaks and when he is told that she is American, he says, “Oh, I thought you had a speech impediment.” A teen girl threatens to burn down bus shelters (jokingly). A man and a woman introduce each other to their children and say that they have been seeing each other; the children become upset. Two teen girls yell at their respective parents about having separated from their partners. A woman takes a cellphone away from her teen daughter, the teen daughter takes a handheld video game away from a pre-teen boy, and they each yell for them to give them back. A teen girl asks her father what will happen if her mother can’t reach her and she has a crisis. A pre-teen boy talks about his parents having long silences and suffered emotional repression when they were together. A young girl worries when her mother says that she is going to cook for them and she says, “I don’t want to get poisoned.” A creature makes a comment about whether four children will survive a wish. A teen girl says, “Throw a sheet over that,” and someone throws a sheet over another teen girl. A man talks about when he was young and he would go exploring and “pull the wings off…” living creatures. A teen girl talks about her father being “fed up with my mom.” A man looks through binocular and another man and woman find him and seem suspicious of what he is doing. We see a stuffed hippopotamus in a man’s home and he says, “Daddy shot that hippo.” We see many stuffed and mounted animals in a man’s home. A pre-teen boy finds a room in a man’s home with monitoring equipment. A man says that his ancestor shot a peasant that found a dinosaur claw. Four children tell their parents that they are disappointed in them for giving up on their relationship. A man from a previous time panics when he sees a game on a cellphone and drops the phone on the ground. A boy tells his teen sister about their mother, “She left us.”
► A pre-teen boy vomits on the floor and we see goo and hear him gagging and spitting. A pre-teen boy says, “I feel sick. It’s coming up” (he does not vomit). When a creature prepares to grant a wish it takes a deep breath puffing up its chest and abdomen and then lets the air out with a flatulent sound. A creature burps loudly a couple of times. A creature throws something (we don’t see what it is) at a teen girl and she calls it “sea barf.” A boy makes a flatulent sound. A man eats a wriggling worm and spits it out (we see goo leave his mouth). A man climbs a rock wall and a bird defecates on his head (we see blue goo).

Four Kids and It LANGUAGE 1

 – 2 mild anatomical terms, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (weird, really weird, revolting, losers, gross, weird, foolish children, dumb, unbelievable, pedantic, pathetic, disappointed, scarecrow, horrible, awful, sand monster, American tart, psycho, rum looking lot, ethnically insensitive erotica), exclamations (oh my gosh, for goodness sake, butt out, golly). | profanity glossary |

Four Kids and It SUBSTANCE USE

 – A young girl opens a hatch in a helicopter and we see small bottles of liquor and when the girl reaches for them a teen girl tells her no, and a man and a woman drink glasses of wine.

Four Kids and It DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Blended families, divorce, abandonment, children dealing with separated families, growing up, moving on, magical creatures, greed, extinction, endangered species, magic, time travel, ultimate power, quests, pretending, being a teenager, wishes, consequences, being American, giving children freedom to make mistakes.

Four Kids and It MESSAGE

 – What you want isn’t always the way life should be.