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Five Feet Apart | 2019 | PG-13 | – 3.4.5

content-ratingsWhy is “Five Feet Apart” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “thematic elements, language and suggestive material.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a couple of kissing and near kissing scenes, conversations about relationships and sex, cleavage revealing outfits, discussions of a death during a cliff-diving accident, a near fatal fall into ice, many hospital scenes with CF treatment and surgical procedures, several scenes of prescription drug use, and at least 1 F-word. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”


A seventeen-year-old (Haley Lu Richardson) spends much of her life in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient, living by the routines of extensive treatments and self-restraint. When she meets another teen (Cole Sprouse) with the disease, they begin to fall in love, but are forced to always stay five feet apart since they could infect each other with their own distinct viruses. The teens struggle with the realization that they will never be able to touch each other. Also with Moises Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Parminder Nagra and Claire Forlani. Directed by Justin Baldoni. [Running Time: 2:00]

Five Feet Apart SEX/NUDITY 3

 – A teen girl and a teen boy undress in front of each other, alone at a swimming pool, but do not touch as they show each other their scars from treatment of cystic fibrosis (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details); they stand in their underwear (she is wearing a bra and underwear and he is wearing briefs) that reveal cleavage, abdomens and thighs. A clothed teen boy and teen girl nearly kiss, but do not.
 A teen girl wears tank tops and V-neck tops that reveal cleavage and bare shoulders and arms a few times. A teen girl is shown in a bathroom from the waist up wearing a bra that reveals cleavage, bare shoulders and abdomen. A teen girl holds a small bikini top up for friends to see and laughs.
 Unable to touch each other for health reasons, a teen boy and a teen girl hold opposite ends of a five-foot pool cue as they take walks; in one scene, the boy says he wants to touch the girl but cannot and she takes her end of the cue and runs it along her collar bone and upper breast as he stares at her. A teen boy gives a teen girl CPR, alternating between mouth-to-mouth breathing and chest compressions and kissing her for several seconds, three times altogether (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). In a hospital room a clothed woman sits in the lap of a clothed man sitting in the bed, and both talking to a teen boy patient standing beside them.
 A teen girl with CF wears latex gloves for infection control and tells a teen boy that latex is used for protection, while winking (a condom reference is implied). A teen girl tells a male friend with CF that they can never kiss or touch each other. A teen boy tells a teen girl that his boyfriend and he broke up, but “screw him”; she replies, “At least you got to do that” (he does a double take and chokes for a few seconds). A young man tells a young woman that her organizing of a medical cart is like foreplay for her and she walks away. A teen girl tells a teen boy that lending his room to a couple to have sex is disgusting, but sex itself is fine. A teen girl tells a teen boy that she has never had sex and he says she is sexy. A young man asks a male friend, “Have you two…” (implying sex) and the friend says that no, he likes boys. A woman is shown with a large abdomen and we hear that she is pregnant; we later hear that she delivered the baby.

Five Feet Apart VIOLENCE/GORE 4

 - A teen boy and a teen girl spend a lot of time in a hospital for cystic fibrosis (CF) treatment; in one scene, we see their bodies covered with scars and each has a medicine port implanted under the collarbone and a feeding tube port in the lower abdomen, both have long scars around their chests and abdomens and in a few scenes, the teens cover the upper ports with bandages. Three teenagers have difficulty breathing frequently and we see them gasping and coughing sometimes vigorously and spitting up white mucous into a hospital pan.
 After walking with difficulty for a long distance with a teen boy in the snow, a teen girl with CF falls over a short bridge onto a frozen pond, the ice cracks, and she falls under the cold water; a teen boy with CF shouts and runs to help her, reaching into the water but not finding her and we see her under water as we hear that she hears her dead sister's voice singing to her just as the boy reaches into the water again and she grabs his hand; he pulls her out and administers CPR (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details), he lies on his back on the ice and she coughs up a small fountain of water; we then see both teens being wheeled into the hospital and wearing oxygen masks.
 While under pre-surgery anesthetic, a teen girl sees a painted picture come to life with flying butterflies and she hears her dead sister's voice singing; we see a plastic tube holding a set of lungs, the bloody latex gloves on surgeons' hands holding scalpels, and a bloody sheet over the patient's chest and we then see the patient unconscious with a large breathing tube in her mouth (we later see a couple of inches of a healing scar above her sternum as a result of the surgery). We see the abdominal feeding tube in a teen girl's abdomen twice when it is infected; in the first scene, the skin around it is red and in the second scene, the skin is redder with dark splotches and she has surgery off-screen and the scene cuts to the awakened girl slurring her words as she speaks on a phone and leaves a friend a message. A teen boy's hospital call button buzzer goes off at a nurse's station and nurses find him having fallen out of bed, not breathing and without a pulse; nurses and doctors administer CPR and electric paddle shocks, but he dies.
 A young woman coughs up some white mucous into her clear oxygen mask. A small child is shown in a wheelchair and another one is seen using a walker. We see several children and three teens wearing oxygen tubes clipped to their noses. An ICU contains three incubators that each have a baby with CF attached to a ventilator; a close-up shows one unconscious baby breathing with the breathing tube in its mouth. Two teenagers have oxygen tubes attached to portable oxygen machines and a third teen carries an oxygen canister on wheels; all three wear latex gloves and thick protective nose-and-mouth masks outside their rooms and they must stay six feet away from one another to prevent cross-infections and we see them standing in hallways waving to one another and sitting across a room from one another several times. A teen boy and a teen girl wear vibrating air-compression vests and we hear whirring noises in a few scenes; the girl tells a friend that the vest helps bring up mucous to expel it more easily.
 A teen boy with CF says he has an incurable bacterial infection that caused him to be removed from a lung transplant waiting list. A teen boy undergoes a clinical trial of a new drug and we see red circles appear under his eyes, darkening to dark gray later and we hear that the treatment is not working. We hear that a healthy twenty-something woman fell while cliff diving, broke her neck, and drowned in a body of water alone, not able to move or call for help. A teen girl lies in a hospital bed with a breathing tube in her mouth and a teen boy stands outside at a window to her room; they touch hands on the glass and he says goodbye and that he loves her as they both cry. A teen boy says online that he had a suppository for treatment. A nurse injects something into a teen boy's upper-chest medical port. In Vlog footage, we hear that a young teen girl will have surgery to remove some of her nasal passages, but we do not see the procedure. A teen girl cries, coughs and refuses to accept transplant lungs and a teen boy begs her to take them.
 Two nurses cry over a teen boy that has died and a teen girl sees them, cries, wails, and runs to her own room; another teen boy with CF enters and touches her shoulder, she shouts and slaps away his hand, telling him to leave to prevent cross-infection. A teen girl and a teen boy argue loudly in several scenes and they both cry several times throughout the movie. A teen boy argues with a nurse twice. A nurse berates three teens with CF for not following their treatment regimens and cross-infection control; she tells a teen boy and a teen girl that she previously let another couple who had CF get too close and they died. Two women argue loudly in a hospital hallway.
 A teen boy sits on the roof of a building and when a teen girl arrives, he stands on the ledge, pretends to fall off onto the roof and laughs at her when she is scared. A teen boy draws a picture of himself as the Grim Reaper. A teen boy says that he thinks about taking his last gasping breath and thinks maybe there is no afterlife. A teen girl watches a clip of video footage of a young woman skydiving while strapped to a guide. A teen girl says that she has control issues, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and guilt over her older sister's cliff-diving death. A teen girl angrily swipes everything off her medical cart onto the floor, breaking some glass. A teen boy pops a series of helium balloons with a safety pin, creating loud noises in a hospital.

Five Feet Apart LANGUAGE 5

 - At least 1 F-word and 1 word that sounds like an F-word, 1 obscene hand gesture, 8 scatological terms, 2 anatomical terms, 10 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, old fashioned), exclamations (oh my gosh), 2 religious profanities (GD), 12 religious exclamations (e.g. God, Oh God, Oh My God). | profanity glossary |

Five Feet Apart SUBSTANCE USE

 - Two teenagers in a hospital have medicine carts that include shelves loaded with many pill bottles as well as bottles of liquid medicines and boxes of other types of medicines and nutritional liquids, a teen girl organizes two medicine carts, a teen girl swallows a dozen pills and capsules with pudding and two tablets with a beverage, a teen girl spills an entire large bottle of capsules and they scatter on a floor, two teen patients breathe inhalation medicines through large nebulizers in a few scenes, and a teen girl posts on a Vlog that she needs a few rounds of antibiotics for a cough and a 102-degree fever. Several teens and twenty-something men and women drink toasts with glasses of champagne, and we see a close-up of champagne being poured into a glass.

Five Feet Apart DISCUSSION TOPICS

 - Terminal illness, Cystic Fibrosis, the "six feet rule," infection control, physical limitations, mental health issues, death, the afterlife, loneliness, fear, grief, guilt, terminally ill teenagers, high costs of medical treatment, art as therapy, community support, meeting challenges, resilience, relationships, love, sorrow, regret, survival, letting go.

Five Feet Apart MESSAGE

 - A diagnosis of cystic fibrosis does not preclude living a full life.

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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