Parents' Guide to

Blue Velvet

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Surreal, graphic shocker of small-town sin.

Movie R 1986 120 minutes
Blue Velvet Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 17+

Based on 8 parent reviews

doctora
doctora Parent of 5-year-old
June 1, 2022
age 18+

Wait..what's happening? No idea...just go with it.

A winding twisted ride that for many was their first foray into David Lynchdom. A worthy inclusion into the pantheon of "what's going on? no idea just go with it"...type of films. I never had a clue as to what was going to happen from one minute to the next, my preferred mode of film watching.
Star review
Star review Adult
September 10, 2019
age 18+

Not for kids

Definitely not for kids!! And not for adults who care about the portrayal and objectification of women in movies for no other reason than for ratings and satisfying a warped sense of getting off. A woman rapes a young man. The female lead character is abused and thinks she enjoys being beaten. She is objectified through the movie quite regularly showing full nudity. Talks about her nipples getting hard etc. Has to spread her legs wide for a lunatic. Fetish scenes that are aggressive and damaging to women. Scenes that don't make sense- she is naked throughout a scene after having been beaten and then taken to a house where people try to help her but she stands fully nude through the scene just for kicks for the viewer..just disappointing this stuff is entertainment for some people.socially irresponsible

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex
See all 8 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Innocent college student Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his all-American hometown of Lumberton to help run his ill father's hardware store and discovers an ant-covered human ear in a field. Jeffrey dutifully alerts the local sheriff but can't resist doing some amateur sleuthing himself -- with the help of the sheriff's pretty daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). Jeffrey finds his own perfect-looking neighborhood conceals a monstrous subculture of sadistic outlaws and crooked cops. He winds up caught in the middle of a sordid sexual relationship between seductive, victimized night-club singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and a psychotic, drug-addicted fiend named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper).

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (8):
Kids say (17):

Though not recommended for young viewers, BLUE VELVET is no "torture-porn" or slasher-splatter action that Hollywood commonly aims at the teen market. Among younger, horror-fixated viewers, filmmaker David Lynch enjoys a mad-scientist reputation for his movies, commonly full of grotesque, nightmarish images (often messily violent) and extreme behavior -- but this is actually a carefully composed and paced tale that still manages to be disturbing on its own terms.

The film-noir crime plot, deliberately vague about details, unravels like a slow-motion bad dream with a uniquely absurd internal logic; for example, awful Frank works himself into a homicidal frenzy with gentle, vintage tunes like the title easy-listening song (and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams"), and somehow that's creepier than if it were the most vile gangsta rap on the soundtrack. Characters all seem exaggerated (icons of either apple-pie goodness or diabolical malice), giving the thing a faintly satirical edge, and while Jeffrey shows suitable disapproval at Dorothy's plight and good triumphs over wickedness, a sense of perversity and weirdness lingers even past the happy-ending closing sequence.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the meaning of the movie. What are the close-ups of insects supposed to symbolize about this spiffy-clean looking community? Since the good guys look almost as bland and Boy-Scoutish as the villains are demonic, some critics have found the overall movie distasteful and exploitative -- like something the terrible Frank Booth would find "entertainment." Do you agree? Do you think David Lynch has a little too much fun with the violence and weirdness? How do the director's G-rated The Straight Story and sinister TV series Twin Peaks compare? What traits do they share with this movie?

Movie Details

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