On Golden Pond - PG
Common Sense Note
Parents should know the movie's insights into family and aging may be too mature for young viewers, but they will enjoy the warm relationship between the rebellious boy and the grumpy grandpa. Parents should also know that the grandpa character suffers a heart attack.
Families who see this film might discuss why movies so rarely feature actors who are visibly aged, especially women. Why do you think that is? How do you feel when you see old people up on the screen?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Randy White
Norman and Ethel spend summers at Golden Pond, but this year they'll come to know their grown daughter, a teen visitor, and each other a little better.
Retired professor Norman Thayer (Henry Fonda) and his wife Ethel (Katharine Hepburn) spend the summer at their cottage on Golden Pond. Obsessed with aging, Norman finds himself getting lost on walks and scarcely able to drive his boat anymore.
To celebrate Norman's eightieth birthday, daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda) arrives with new boyfriend Bill (Dabney Coleman) and Bill's rebellious teen son in tow. As always, Norman and Chelsea fight constantly.
When Chelsea and Bill leave for Europe, they leave Billy Jr. behind. Initially resentful, young Billy comes to enjoy the simple pleasures -- mostly fishing -- with Norman. When Chelsea returns, now married, will she manage to make up with her father before it's too late?
The opening sequence sets the reflective, elegiac tone of this heartfelt movie, winner of three Academy Awards. Over lovely pastoral music, flowers bloom and waterfowl frolic among the rushes. If kids can make it past these languid first minutes of sunsets on dappled water, they might find the rich relationships between family members rewarding.
Some older kids may find this movie a decidedly unhip affair for solo watching -- and it's certainly not one they'll seek out with their friends -- but the movie does make for good family viewing. Both kids and parents can relate to the intergenerational conflict and the way the story manages to resolve family strife. And all ages will take pleasure from the wisdom the old folks pass onto the youngsters and, conversely, the zest children enkindle in the old.
Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda both won acting Oscars for their work here. Hepburn is radiant as the sprightly matriarch, with her wide smile and warbling cry of "Nooorman." Her terror when Norman is felled by his angina attack is genuinely moving. Fonda is appropriately crusty and there is a touch of poignancy in the fact that the actor's real-life daughter Jane plays his character's estranged daughter. But few will muster much sympathy for Jane Fonda's whiny, self-centered character.
Cocoon also features older actors and the theme of aging, while Terms of Endearment is a similar family drama with more laughs and a greater emotional punch.
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Sexual ContentA talk about whether the middle-aged daughter and new boyfriend are going to sleep together. Skinny dipping, but nothing is shown. |
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ViolenceAn older character has a heart attack. |
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LanguageThe Thayers give the finger to a rude speedboat operator. Moderate bathroom and sexually themed swearing. |
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Social Behaviornstead of talking calmly through their problems, family members constantly swear at each other. |
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