American Beauty - Family Review

Content Warnings

• Sexual Content

  Strong
  None Mild Moderate Severe
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  A man removes his clothes and exercises in the reflection of a window. Bare buttocks are shown.

  A couple has wild sex in a motel room. There's hard thrusting and loud moaning.

  A man attempts to have sex with a teenage girl. First he strokes and kisses her, then when she is lying on her back, he runs his hands over her body and slowly pulls off her pants. He unbuttons her shirt and reveals her breasts. The camera is quite close to her in this scene, and with several shots of her breasts they are perhaps visible for around 15 seconds total. But it goes as far as that, they do not have sex.

  Lester's teenage daughter Jane is shown looking at breast enhancers on the internet. One picture of a woman's breasts and upper body is visible on her computer screen. The computer screen fills the shot for a brief moment.

  There are sexual subjects about how a teen girl has had sex with an adult man. She talks about how she enjoyed it. Another subject involves her talking to her friend saying that if her dad will work out she will have sex with him.

  A teenage girl dances seductively and unzips the front of her dress. One shot that is repeated a few times is a close up shot of her cleavage as she presses her breasts together. Later, she opens her top fully and rose petals fly out of it, obscuring most of her skin from view.

  A teenage girl appears naked on the ceiling with rose petals covering her breasts and pubic area.

  A middle age man has a dream of his teenage daughter's friend in the bathtub. It's full of rose petals and he reaches down into the water between her legs. She orgasms and moans. There is obviously seductive stuff in the tub.

  A man watches two men smoke pot from a distance but mistakes the act as oral sex.

  A teenage boy hangs out with his girlfriend in his room. He's completely nude and we briefly see his bare buttocks a few times. There is no sex in this scene.

• Violence

  Moderate
  None Mild Moderate Severe
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  A man gets angry at his family and throws a plate of food against the wall.

  A woman slaps her daughter across the face.

  Attempted statutory rape.

  A man beats his teenage son twice. Both of these scenes are very intense and upsetting and show him bloodied and bruised.

  A man is shown with a ton of blood gushing out of his head at the end of the movie.

• Profanity

  Strong
  None Mild Moderate Severe
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  A young man and his father refer to a gay couple as "faggots" and "fags."

  2 uses of bitch.

  Contains quite a host of profanity, including abuses of "Christ" and "Jesus."

  Slang terms for masturbation such as jerking off, whacking off.

  1 use of dick

  25 uses of "fuck", some are used in a sexually explicit way.

  Many uses of "shit", 1 use of "cunt" and "cocksucker"

• Intense Scenes

  Moderate
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  The main character of the movie is a disappointed and sad person

  This is a mature, and sometimes disturbing and uncomfortable film with strong sex and some shocking scenes of violence.

  The last half hour of the film is very dark, intense and foreboding.

  The themes of a grown man sexually obsessed with a high school girl can be disturbing at times.

  15+ ( Strong Themes, Infrequent Strong Coarse Language & Violence, Drug Use )