| nudity |
1/10
A pre-teen boy says "I'm going to sleep in your mother's bed and NOT play video games." making an innuendo that can easily be missed.
A pre-teen boy discusses kissing a certain girl on the lips and says (something along the lines of) "I've kissed a lot of other girls in much better places"
Two teens kiss briefly at a party; a pre-teen says he didn't mean to "ruin the fun" when he walks in on them. |
| violence |
3/10
The film is shot from the perspective of a young teenage boy who uses a camcorder and a smaller video camera on his bike handlebars, creating shaky and tilted scenes.
Three boys receive snapping static and odd maps on their cell phone screens; one boy says that the phones are barfing and the boys bike 17 miles into the desert late at night where they hear electronic gurgling and snapping and find a charred foot-long cylinder embedded in the ground next to a transformer that beeps and snaps at them; a boy pounds the ground with the cylinder, saying that it is a bomb and that's what you do with bombs while his friends yell at him to stop (through some narrow openings in the cylinder we see a blue metal owlet-like creature with large, scratched neon-blue eyes).
Three boys take an alien to a barn where metal parts from a tractor are pulled toward the container it is in and stick to it magnetically; lights spark and light bulb glass shatters loudly before they are able to learn that the alien does not eat humans, but someone shot down its spaceship and the alien needs more parts to fix it.
We see on a monitor that someone is poking a thin metal probe into the head of a metal owlet-alien as it flaps its wings.
In a junk yard, an alien seems to lose power and die, but its eyes flicker and metal parts from around the junkyard are pulled to the cylinder that is holding it; the cylinder becomes larger and four children grab it and run away while piles of scrap metal in the junk yard collapse and seem to melt.
A man kidnaps three boys, a girl and a small alien from a diner at night and shoves them into the back of a van, but one boy escapes, jumping into the bed of a moving pickup truck where the boy uses his cell phone to leave a goodbye message for his friends while crying.
Police officers search nearby roads looking for an alien as boys bike away from the spot where they have found the alien.
Two boys fight in an alley at night, shouting, shoving and pushing each other up against a chain link fence, but no one is injured.
We hear that an older girl used to beat up two boys on the playground until one of the boys told the girl that the other boy had Polio (he did not have it).
At a government lab a boy cries while being interrogated by two adults: men bring his friends in and another man orders them to help him find an alien spaceship, pounding his hand on a table, yelling and threatening to disable it permanently; he says that if the ship takes off, it will kill everybody in a neighborhood.
A teen girl argues loudly with her parents concerning a dress that she will wear to Homecoming in three years and she screams and goes to her room.
A middle school-aged boy with two young passengers drives a car erratically, crashing into large plastic trashcans, but injuring no one and continuing along a highway; the kids in the car switch to a pickup truck they take from a junkyard before rescuing another boy and a small alien creature; they drive fast down a highway, nearly hitting two semi-trucks and the alien uses magnetic power to separate the pieces of the trucks and reassemble them safely at a point down the road.
Four middle school children take a small alien to a housing development, where it buries itself deep in the ground in a backyard; the kids climb down the hole as well and find a metal room glowing with blue and white lights and see the alien beeping in a small cockpit using holographic charts and steering controls; the ground shudders before large metal pieces emerge through openings in the ground and assemble into a giant spaceship in the sky; the ship takes off with little noise or exhaust and adults wander out into the street to see what happened (one woman sees the ship and she staggers from the shock.
Three boys enter an arcade that is closed for the night and the machines switch on by themselves; metal parts float out of the machines and are caught by a metal cylinder carried in a backpack before a security guard chases the boys, catches one of them and tells a police officer outside to take him away for felony charges.
Three boys enter a pawnshop at night and something unseen screeches and shoots around the ceiling of the shop, melting a French horn and some electric guitars before finally knocking down one of the boys (he's OK); the boys rush out of the shop, apologizing to the owner.
Thunder sounds inside a biker bar and something unseen flies around the ceiling, sparking lights and causing glasses to crash to the floor, shattering (no one is hurt); three boys run out of the bar (please see the Substance Use category for more details).
In a girl's bedroom at night, a small jewelry box shakes before a spark hits it and pillow feathers fly in front of the camera; the girl and three boys argue, but she eventually agrees to join them on a bike trip.
Two boys and a girl rescue another boy held by police by having an alien create earthquake tremors to distract the officer. |
| profanity |
4/10
1 use of "balls", 1 hell, 10 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God), 5+ uses of "crap", and mild exclamations (Shoot, Oh My Gosh, Shut-up). Also "What The" is said a couple of times, but not finished. 1 use of Shit
Name-calling (crazy, insane, bananas, stupid, clowns, weird, weirdo, sell out, natty-homey, drifter, baby, hoarder, creepy and mopey.)
Stereotypical references to pre-teens, teenagers, parents, authority figures, police officers, government scientists, foster children, space aliens, construction crew and the rich. |
| alcohol |
1/10
Three boys enter a bar and we see bottles of beer and glasses full of whiskey on the bar and on nearby tables (no one is shown drinking.)
An adult in a bar orders three boys non-alcoholic Shirley Temple drinks that arrive in tumblers and the boys drink from them.
College-aged party goers hold red cups that indicate alcohol (no one drinks). |
| frightening |
3/10
There's some mild violence against the alien, peril, and the threat of violence.
One kid is held against his will, and a group of adults try to keep his friends in their custody too.
A boy records a goodbye message in case he doesn't make it out of one situation alive.
The adults surgically operate on/torture Echo.
Very young kids might find Echo a bit scary at first (he makes things move/crash around).
Overall: 12/50
suggested rating PG for some action and peril, suggestive humor, brief sensuality, mild language and alcohol material. |
