Last weekend I was surfing through some of the free movie channels that my satellite company was trying to woo me with.  I stumbled onto the 2008 movie The Love Guru and watched for about 10 minutes only to find my jaw pasted to the floor in mortified disbelief.  This MPAA rated PG-13 movie was nowhere near appropriate for a 13 year old.   It had extreme sexual innuendo, profanity, and a boy who says “I want to be a guru so girls will like me and then I will like myself”.  Really?  In addition to finding themselves a shade of crimson, most adults I know would find such content highly inappropriate for impressionable teens and younger siblings who are often grandfathered in to a movie.  I’m not going to write about what I saw, because my mother will be reading this blog and I don’t want to offend her or, for that matter, you, dear reader! (Later, I’ll give you a website recommendation that you can use if you choose to read about Love Guru on your own.)

What if your child was invited to see this movie and you assumed it would be acceptable just because of the PG 13 rating?  How do you know that the movies your children are viewing are appropriate to your value system as opposed to the fiscally motivated values of Hollywood Producer or a robotic MPAA rating panel?

Here are 5 suggestions to help parents stay a step ahead of Hollywood and kids who say “all my friends are seeing the movie… why can’t I?” (more…)