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Dear Frankie | 2005 | PG-13 | - 2.3.5

A woman (Emily Mortimer) and her deaf son Frankie (Jack McElhone) move from one small Scottish town to another, while Frankie thinks that the reason he's never seen his father during his life is because he's a sailor on HMS Accra, traveling in distant and exotic lands. Frankie believes that his father writes to him regularly and hopes to one day see him again. When the real HMS Accra is due to dock, Frankie's mother, who concocted the sailor story and provided the letters, hires a man (Gerard Butler) to pretend to be Frankie's father. Also with Mary Riggans and Sharon Small. Directed by Shona Auerbach. [1:42]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A man and a woman kiss and dance holding each other close. A man and a woman hold each other as they walk, he kisses her neck, and they kiss. A woman's sweater pulls up in the back revealing her bare back.
 A woman walks into a bar, men ogle her, she sits at the bar and the bartender makes an insulting remark. A boy makes a sexual gesture and remark to another boy.

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A man yells violently at a woman (he is in a hospital bed but tries to lunge at her). A boy nudges another boy on the shoulder, stomps away from him and slams a door behind him. A woman yells at a boy and girl who have been rummaging through her things. A woman panics when she wakes up and finds her son's bed empty.
 We hear that a man has died and a woman tells her young son that his father has died. We hear that a boy's hearing impairment was caused by abuse. We hear that a man is dying and see him with tubes in his nose in a hospital bed. A boy teases a boy betting him that his father will not come to see him. Boys tease a boy for being deaf.
 An elderly woman says that the next move she makes will be to "have to be carried out in a box." A woman reads the newspaper obituaries every day looking for something about a man whom she apparently hopes to be dead. A woman talks about writing her own obituary.

LANGUAGE 5 - 1 F-word, 1 sexual reference, 9 mild obscenities, name-calling (weird, stupid), 8 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - People are shown smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Running away from problems, hearing impairment, trust, pity, guilt, regret, forgiveness, protective parenting, dishonesty, child and spousal abuse, divorce, mermaids, death of a parent.

MESSAGE - Our children are stronger and smarter than we think they are.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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