The Fabelmans | 2022 | PG-13 | – 3.4.5

Why is “The Fabelmans” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few kissing scenes, an implied extra-marital affair, a scene with partially veiled nudity when a woman dances wearing a flimsy nightgown, several staged acts of violence and danger including a war movie and a train crash and derailment with some blood shown, teen bullying, scenes of anti-Semitism, a few school punch-ups leaving bloody noses, many arguments, and at least 2 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A semi-autobiographical account of Steven Spielberg’s (Mateo Zoryan and Gabriel LaBelle) childhood and adolescence, delving into his family difficulties, encounters with anti-Semitism, and his growing love of movie making. Also with Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Judd Hirsch, Seth Rogen, Keeley Karsten, Alina Brace, Julia Butters, Birdie Borria, Sophia Kopera, Jeannie Berlin, Robin Bartlett, Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley and Chloe East. Directed by Spielberg. [Running Time: 2:31]

The Fabelmans SEX/NUDITY 3

 – A woman wearing a nightgown dances in front of bright car headlights and we can see the outline of her legs and pubic area in silhouette; her daughter is concerned about people watching and tries to get the woman to stop.
► A teen boy leans toward a teen girl to kiss her, and she pulls him to the floor to have him pray with her; they pray and she leans toward the boy and blows into his mouth, they kiss and flop onto her bed (they are interrupted by her mother knocking on the door).
► A teen boy and a teen girl kiss passionately in a stairwell in a school and another teen boy sees them. A husband and his wife kiss tenderly and another man seems jealous. A husband and his wife kiss in a few scenes. Teen boys and teen girls dance at a school dance.
► A teen boy watches movie scenes of his mother and a man holding hands, the man putting his arm around her, the woman holding the man and seemingly kissing him on the cheek, and the man catching the woman as she dramatically falls backward as she looks into his eyes lovingly; the boy becomes upset thinking that they are having an affair. A teen girl tells a teen boy, “You’re such a fun boy to kiss.” A man enters his office and we see bright red lipstick on his cheek; his secretary rushes into the office to clean the mark off his face.
► Teen girls ask a teen boy if he is Jewish and he says, “Since the day I was circumcised.”
► Teen boys and teen girls wearing swimsuits are seen at a beach and later in a movie depicting the events of the day; we see boys’ bare chests, abdomen, backs and legs and girls’ cleavage, abdomens and legs. Teen boys watch several teen girls walking on a sidewalk and they tease one boy about talking to one of the girls. A man wears a T-shirt and boxers that reveal his bare legs to the mid-thighs. Teen girls at a school dance wear dresses that reveal cleavage.

The Fabelmans VIOLENCE/GORE 4

 – Several teen boys stand around another teen boy and tease him for being Jewish and call him names; one boy tells him to apologize to a girl for killing Jesus, and one boy punches him in the nose and slaps him hard in the face (we see him with a bloody nose and later with black eyes) after he tells a teen girl that the other teen boy is cheating on her. A teen boy confronts another teen boy about how he made him look in a movie; another teen lunges toward the first teen, punches him in the face (we see blood on his mouth and face), and throws him against a locker before the injured teen runs away. A woman lies motionless in a hospital bed, we see her pulse beating in her neck and then it stops, her eyes open, and her adult daughter cries mournfully.
► A woman and her teenage son argue bitterly, he tells her that he wishes she wasn’t his mother and she slaps him hard on the back (we see a reddened handprint on his back). A man squeezes a teen boy’s cheeks hard, making the boy pull away complaining of pain. A teen boy playing volleyball slams the ball hard into the face of another teen boy and he falls to the floor. A teen boy hits another teen boy in the head while playing volleyball and another teen boy threatens him. Several teen boys crowd around another teen boy in a locker-room and one boy threatens to knock his teeth out. A teen boy opens his locker at school and finds a bagel hanging by a string with the words, “Jew hole” written on it.
► A teen boy yells at his father accusing him of causing a situation with their family. Children tell their parents that there’s a tornado outside and the mother goes to the front yard to see it, takes her children in the car and drives toward it and through town where power lines spark and a line of shopping carts speeds through the street in front of the car as wind blows and rain pours (no one is harmed, but the children are frightened). A movie contains a train robbery and a crash that includes people being held at gunpoint, struck with a wrench and a circus train colliding with a car and sending it flipping into the air as the train cars are thrown off the tracks; we see people being thrown around inside the train, the driver of the car is thrown into the air and circus animals climb out of their broken cages.
► A teen boy films a war movie with other teens using guns, knives, explosives and fighting; we see several people shot and fake blood spurts from wounds, many people are seen lying on the ground dead and a character grieves and cries over all his dead men. A boy stages a coach robbery for a film and two girls scream when robbers point guns at them; a sheriff goes to stop them, they exchange gunfire and a few are struck and fall and one person is shot in the back and falls off a cliff (it is a dummy). A boy reconstructs a train crash that he saw in a movie with his miniature train set and is startled when the cars crash together; he stumbles backward and crashes into a shelf that spills things onto the floor and causes a loud noise that wakes up his parents, and he later tells his mother, “I need to see them crash.” A woman pretends to choke on food for a camera; we see food in her mouth, she coughs and falls back onto the ground. A teen boy steps on a teen girl’s foot while dancing at a dance. A monkey screeches and runs around a house, it throws light bulbs from a fixture breaking them and jumps on a girl’s shoulder, and then a man’s when he comes home, and it throws his hat off and licks the man on the cheek. A man makes a spider out of licorice and scares a young girl when she picks up her plate and sees it and the man eats it. A man tears his T-shirt and says that he will sleep on the floor while he is sitting Shiva for his sister. A woman is upset and complains when a man carries into a house.
► A teen boy hyperventilates and holds his chest saying, “I think I’m having a heart attack”; the boy’s father tells him, “You’re having a panic attack.” A husband and his wife tell their children that they are separating and their children protest and cry; one pre-teen girl yells at her mother blaming her for the breakup. A teen boy tries to take a drink from a water fountain and flinches when another boy runs up to another fountain near him. A man and a woman argue about their son’s interest in movie making; the teen boy stands up and pounds on the table in frustration. A girl in a car says that she is going to vomit while the car drives over a very bumpy area.
► A man and a woman argue about her behavior and he says that she needs to go for therapy. A man pounds on the door of a house as a woman inside is frightened and tells her family not to answer. A woman wakes up at night thinking that she hears the phone ringing and that it is her dead mother telling her that someone is coming and not to let him in. A man and his teen son argue about the boy making a family movie for his mother to make her feel better after the death of her mother. A wife yells at her husband and says, “I wanna shake you,” and, “Wake up.” A young boy is frightened by the idea of watching a movie in a dark movie theater for the first time; his parents explain how movies work to help him overcome his fear. A woman tells her family to “Keep your big traps shut,” when they talk while she is practicing for a piano performance on TV. A woman worries that a boy will electrocute himself by playing with an electric train. A man is dismissive of his son’s interest in making movies in several scenes and refers to it as a hobby, which upsets him. A man talks about people in the circus hating Jewish people. A man says that he had a dream that he punched someone in the nose during an argument. People tell a teen boy that art and movie making will “tear you apart and “break your heart” in several scenes. Teen girls ask a teen boy if he is Jewish and he says, “Since the day I was circumcised.”
► Several teen boys find scorpions in a desert, collect them in a lunchbox and say that they will sell them to a lab. A boy stages a scene for a movie where ice cream is dropped onto people’s faces and mouths as seagulls fly overhead (as if they are being defecated on). A boy puts food into a young girl’s mouth and tells her to scream as if it hurts while staging a dentist visit scene, which he films; she spits out food and it looks like blood and matter. After a long car trip, two young girls yell that they have to go to the bathroom. A boy teases another boy about talking to a teen girl and seeing a “big fat booger on her nose.” A person says, “They’re gonna skin you alive.” A man tears up a chicken on a table with his hands and eats some of it. A young girl says about a monkey, “He throws his poop.” A teen girl sprays a lot of hairspray in a car and a teen boy in the car coughs from it. A man is shown with a patch over one eye.

The Fabelmans LANGUAGE 5

 – About 3 F-words (1 not fully enunciated), 2 obscene hand gestures, 18 scatological terms, 9 anatomical terms, 5 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory term for Jewish people, name-calling (Cossack, tomato, pointless, crazy, phony, failure, liar, backstabbing, dumb, anti-Semitic, jerk, out of control falling apart family, Jew haters, hateful, Christ killer, moron, Bagelman, new kid, great sequoia people, selfish, stupid, junkies, Gypsy), exclamations (doggone it, knock it off, geez, shut-up, freak out, glory hallelujah, bug-off), 12 religious profanities (GD), 14 religious exclamations (e.g. Lord, oh my God, my God, Jesus Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted], for the love of God). | profanity glossary |

The Fabelmans SUBSTANCE USE

 – A teen boy lights and smokes a marijuana cigarette in a school hallway and offers some to another teen boy that does not smoke from it, and a man talks about art being his drug and calls himself a junkie. Two men and a woman drink whiskey. A man prepares and lights a cigar in an office and lingers on puffing it.

The Fabelmans DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Movies, computers, RCA, IBM, family, death of loved ones, infidelity, divorce, anti-Semitism, fear, guilt, self-possession, disrespect, missed opportunities, loneliness, exile, ambition, Goldwater, depression.

The Fabelmans MESSAGE

 – Sometimes we can’t fix life events. Movies create dreams and sometimes reveal the truth.