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Parents' Guide to

Plan B

By Jennifer Green, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Raunchy teen road trip has language, sex, drinking, drugs.

Movie NR 2021 107 minutes
Plan B Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

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

Community Reviews

age 15+

Based on 4 parent reviews

age 14+

Please Read.

This is a movie about a teenager and her friend who go on a long car ride to get Plan B. It starts we’re the main character has a sexual encounter. She later finds out the the protection failed. She tries to get emergency contraceptive. This fails due to a law in her state (South Dakota). She proceeds to steal her mothers car (she is away on a work trip) with her friend. They proceed to drive until they get to a store. They received unwanted sexual advices from men over 18 (the main characters are under 18) they then try to get Plan B and fake IDs. The person they’re trying to buy it from won’t sell it to them unless they give them oral sex. Male genitalia is shown. The main character backs down before she does it. Face forward she steals a drug, thinking it’s Plan B and escapes. It turns out to be methamphetamine. They go to a party and they see people taking drugs and drinking. Fast forward, the main characters friend has sex with another girl. Finally, they get back. The mother of the main character is upset with her. She buys her daughter Plan B. This definen you isn’t a movie for kids.

This title has:

Too much sex
Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
age 16+

A remarkable film!

So good on so many levels. This film takes characters that feel real and have realistic conversations. I admire their chemistry and how they are able to show solidarity, keep secrets from each other, reveal themselves, be vulnerable and end with the truth. Awesome portrayal of systemic roadblocks for health care for young women which in turn prompts the road trip odyssey. The imposed road trip and its complications also hit a nerve that resonates with many and all of the impediments that it brings. A truly remarkable film that takes a complicated topic and the ramifications of these choices and does not offer the typical wrapped in a bow and parents are none the wiser ending. Great storytelling and vivacious acting.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (4 ):
Kids say (1 ):

This edgy comedy has a lot of teen appeal, but also a lot of mature content. The teen girl buddy movie is having a moment -- from Booksmart to Never Rarely Sometimes Always to Unpregnant, the latter two with premises not dissimilar to this film's. What Plan B brings to the genre is more diversity and a gleeful urge to push the boundaries. Its two charismatic leads (played by newcomers Victoria Moroles and Kuhoo Verma) face a variety of stereotypes and ethnically-insensitive comments. Most of these are played for laughs, like the idea of an "Indian mafia" that young Indian Americans can't escape, or a character's secret penchant for Christian rap. At one point, one of the stars deadpans, "Is this what White privilege feels like?" There are also subplots about a lesbian character fearing the repercussions of coming out, and the pressures teens feel to live up to their parents' and peers' expectations.

Unfortunately, the characters don't reveal these inner feelings and motivations until more than an hour into the movie. For its first half, Plan B feels more like a series of ideas and situations strung together. Some of these are very funny, but others are decidedly less so. Rachel Dratch has a cameo as a clueless sex ed teacher promoting female abstinence, and an overachieving teen mind-melds hilariously with a drug dealer when they're both high. Sequences like one involving grown men frightening two teen girls with racist sexual taunts, young adults drugged out of their minds at a house party, or a playground drug dealer dropping his pants for oral sex all feel a bit aggressive for a high school movie.

Movie Details

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