Vacation Friends | 2021 | R | – 5.4.9

Why is “Vacation Friends” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “drug content, crude sexual references, and language throughout.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes an implied sex scene and partial nudity, several fist fights and scuffles, target practice with a man shooting a bottle off another man’s head, threats of violence, risky antics, a few scenes include drug use and many include heavy drinking, and nearly 50 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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When the free-spirited couple (John Cena and Meredith Hagner) they met while on vacation in Mexico crash their wedding, the bride and groom (Yvonne Orji and Lil Rel Howery) are embarrassed and have to endure the resulting chaos. Also with Robert Wisdom, Lynn Whitfield and Andrew Bachelor, Tawny Newsome and Barry Rothbart. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in Spanish and Mayan without translation. Directed by Clay Tarver. [Running Time: 1:43]

Vacation Friends SEX/NUDITY 5

 – A blurry scene shows a woman straddle a man sleeping on a couch and we see her head and shoulders in close-up as she thrusts while laughing (sex is implied); the man later announces to a crowd that he is the father of the woman’s baby until another woman interrupts and says that he is not because she and the woman were having sex with each other while on top of the man (we do not see this).
► A man kisses another man on the forehead in three scenes.
► A woman in a bar twerks with a man for several seconds, turns around, curses and head-butts him (he falls unconscious); she then shouts, “I don’t care if I kill you,” as another woman and two men rush her out of the bar as patrons shout.
► A man and a woman tell friends that they are unable to have children; in later scenes, the woman is seen seven months pregnant and in another scene, the man and the woman are married by a shaman in a cave as she holds her newborn child.
► A nude man is seen briefly from the back, from his head to the middle of his thighs (his bare back and buttocks are seen). A pregnant woman is seen a few times with a large belly and wearing a tight-fitting dress that reveals cleavage, bare shoulders, and bare legs to mid-thighs. A pregnant woman’s shirt lifts in front to reveal her bare abdomen. Several scenes feature two shirtless men and a dozen scenes feature two or three women wearing short-skirts and bikini tops or full bikinis that reveal cleavage, abdomens and partial buttocks.

Vacation Friends VIOLENCE/GORE 4

 – Two women watch as a man pulls out a handgun, places an empty bottle on the head of another man on a beach and shoots the bottle off the man’s head; he then gives the other man the gun and the second man becomes hysterical as we see broken glass in his hair and on the ground and the first man then puts a bottle on his own head and the scene cuts to the two couples walking down the beach with the first man’s head wrapped in bandages (no blood is visible) as he says, “The bullet just grazed me.”
► A man chokes another man outside a pawnshop, and the second man falls unconscious on the sidewalk with a loud thud (no injuries are seen).
► On a fox hunt (without a capture), two men eat the moss off a tree and then eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, laugh maniacally, and speak in slow motion (please see the Substance Use category for more details); one of the men imagines a snarling fox that knocks him down and snarls at him and then transforms into a dog licking him as the man grabs a knife and the second man knocks the knife away, seeing only the friendly dog.
► A catamaran steered by a man who has never sailed before sinks in a long shot and we see a helicopter as it pulls two couples from the sinking boat by a cable; one man shouts angrily.
► At a wrestling match, a non-wrestler is put into the ring and dodges as two wrestlers charge him, miss, and knock each other unconscious. At a wedding rehearsal and on a golf course, a man threatens to punch another man. A man at a wedding punches another man unconscious and several other men punch each other as a pickup truck drives through a wall and into the venue (no one is hurt).
► Several men fight on a construction site, but stop and laugh at the nervous boss when he comes to stop them (it was a joke). A woman scares another woman by telling her that her boyfriend kidnapped her when she was 12 years old, feeds her cat food, makes her use a small lawn chair for a toilet, and has a gun; then she laughs loudly and says it was a joke. A man and a woman each drink a shot of liquor in an airport bar and jokingly shout at another couple who are passing by, including, “No I will not mule your illegal drugs in my anus,” and “Stop that couple, I think they have a bomb!” (the passing couple becomes scared and angry).
► A man and a woman in a hotel suite over-fill a bathtub flooding the suite below them and we see a flood in the lower suite and the ceiling fan falls from the ceiling of the unoccupied room and breaks; the couple later says they were “high” when they caused the overflow, and another man yells at them.
► On a beach cliff, a man grabs his crotch and jumps off and into the water as another man and two women follow him and we hear splashing. A man grabs his crotch on a cliff and he and three other people jump into the water below.
► An anxious man argues loudly with and curses at people several times, including two women and three other men. A man looks off-screen and says someone is throwing up, but we do not hear or see this. A seagull defecates in the air and the feces hits a rock in a long shot, making a loud splatting sound. In a city, a crow defecates and the feces hit the sidewalk between a man’s feet. We hear that a man spent hours in sewage to retrieve a friend’s wedding rings that dropped through a sewer grate.

Vacation Friends LANGUAGE 9

 – About 48 F-words and its derivatives, 6 sexual references, 36 scatological terms, 27 anatomical terms, 45 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, insane, stupid, fools, dumb-dumb, silly, idiot, weird, freaks, clowns, loser, trash, gross, Brooks Brothers, Devil’s [anatomical term deleted]), exclamations (shut-up, darn, wow, whoa, whoo, boom, wahoo), 7 religious profanities (GD), 31 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Thank God, Oh God, Jesus, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |

Vacation Friends SUBSTANCE USE

 – Men and women smoke marijuana cigarettes, a woman says her boss is being pursued by the Feds and we later hear that he is a doctor and that he prescribes only legal herbs, a woman gives herb pills from her own prescription bottle to an elderly woman whose adult granddaughter shouts not to give her medications, and two men eat hallucinatory mushrooms and see flowers turn into butterflies as they speak in slow motion (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and one of the men speaks to an older man whom he sees as a clown with increasing amounts of clown makeup and giggles uncontrollably. Several scenes include substantial amounts of drinking, a few bottles of alcohol are seen on a bar in a hotel suite and a woman mixes margaritas as a man says the salt on the glasses is not salty and another man says it is cocaine (the first man shouts angrily), men and women sip from margaritas at a wedding, two couples sip mixed drinks and on a beach, two couples drink beers, two couples bar hop and consume many mixed drinks as well as shots of liquor and beer, a man leans his head back and another man pours a whole bottle of tequila down his throat as a crowd cheers him on and the scene ends when the bottle is empty, a man carries a tray of beers through bleachers (selling them as concessions), two couples on a beach drink from beer bottles, glasses of wine are shown on banquet tables in a couple of scenes, and a man orders and chugs a double scotch at a bar at a wedding.

Vacation Friends DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – War-related PTSD, mental illness, destroying property, jokes involving violence, substance abuse, illegal drugs, dispensing prescriptions without a license, putting drugs into people’s food without their knowledge, conflict, apologies, reconciliation, wife swapping, friendship, love, marriage.

Vacation Friends MESSAGE

 – People can often be misjudged and can benefit from sincere friendship.