• Is it age appropriate?

  About our ratings

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  Not age appropriate for kids under 12, age appropriate for kids over 14; suggested age 14.

• Is it any good?

  3.0

• Common Sense says

  Brush with fame teaches teens lessons in TV movie.

Why We Rated This for Ages 14 and Up

The good stuff

• Messages:

  The movie touches on serious issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, war, alcoholism, relationships, and the uncertainty of entering adulthood. Many characters wrestle with personal dilemmas, and for the most part, they’re handled in a frank, responsible manner. Characters learn important lessons about friendship and self-reliance.

What to watch out for

• Role models:

  Adults are entirely absent from the movie, so the teens/young adults are left on their own to make decisions. Not exactly realistic, but they do find that every move they make incurs consequences of some kind.
• Violence:

  In one scene, a man punches another for flirting with his girlfriend. In another, a woman slaps her friend when he tells her she’s being selfish. An apparent suicide attempt (a girl downs a bottle of alcohol and walks into the ocean) is thwarted by a friend’s good timing.
• Sex:

  Many couples kiss, and, in one instance, a boy kisses a girl’s neck while she talks on the phone. Terms like "I’d like to get with her" and "the chicks are really hot" are common, as are slang terms for body parts like "boobs" and "melons." A girl removes her panties under her dress in preparation for flashing the media (which never really happens). A teen’s physical relationship with her professor is mentioned.
• Language:

  Occasional profanity includes "hell" and "damn," as well as words like "sucked," "pissed off," and multiple uses of "oh my God."
• Consumerism:

  Yahoo and Apple computer logos are shown a number of times.
• Drinking, drugs, & smoking:

  Characters’ ages are never divulged, so it’s uncertain whether the borderline teens/young adults are legal to drink by U.S. standards, but one drowns her sorrows over family issues in a bottle of hard alcohol, which apparently leads her to try to kill herself (she wades into the ocean until a friend pulls her back to safety). In another scene, a character sips a mixed drink with her meal. A guy refers to past problems with alcohol by saying he’s been sober for a year.

What Parents Need to Know

About Degrassi Goes Hollywood

Families Can Talk About