Slums of Beverly Hills

The lead character observes her father grope and place his hand down the blouse of his niece, touching her breast. Lead character stabs her uncle in the thigh with a fork, causing him to limp with a bloody bandage in a later scene. This is in imitation of her father, who often tells the family the story of when he caught a kitchen employee who was robbing steaks from the restaurant the father owned by stabbing the man in the thigh with a fork and stabbing steak instead; the father then punched out the employee. A teen boy neighbor mentions to the lead character that they are close to where one of the Manson Family murders took place, then rattles off the names of some of the murder victims.

Implied sex in a car between a teen girl and boy. An extended scene in which the lead character is on her back on the bathroom floor masturbating with a vibrator for the first time -- comically exaggerated sexual arousal shown on her face and in the triumphant background music. She gets the vibrator from her older cousin who has just moved in with them; they play a game of hot potato with the vibrator before the lead character uses it as a microphone before her father walks in, and she doesn't know how to turn it off. Female nudity -- breasts. A woman stumbling down a dark road trying to hitchhike flashes her breasts at a trucker. A teen girl allows her teen boy neighbor to place his hands on her breasts. Exposed breasts when she is in a plastic surgeon's office seeking to get a breast reduction.

Regular use of profanity, including "f--k." In a restaurant, the father tries to get the attention of an African-American server by addressing him loudly as "Jackson." Variations on "s--t." "Goddamn." "Piss." "For Christ's sake."

A teen boy neighbor sells pot; in the midst of nearly getting caught by the police while in a parking lot, he has the lead character hide his stash in her panties. He sells pot to the lead character's older brother, who is shown smoking out of a giant bong in the kitchen. Their older cousin, who has just gotten out of rehab due to addiction to prescription drugs, at times appears drugged, and is passed out from an overdose in one scene. Cigarette smoking. Wine drinking.

Parents need to know that Slums of Beverly Hills is a 1998 coming-of-age dark comedy. The comedy takes a dark turn when the lead character spies on her father groping the breast of her older cousin. Teen characters experiment with sex, including an extended masturbation scene with a vibrator, a teen girl allowing a teen neighbor boy she has just met to put his hands on her exposed breasts. A woman stumbling down a dark road trying to hitchhike flashes her breasts at a trucker. The lead character, at age 14, meets with a plastic surgeon to discuss breast reduction surgery. Teens sell, buy, and smoke pot. Their new neighbor, a teen boy, sells pot and only wears a t-shirt with a picture of Charles Manson on it. The family relocates from cheap apartment to cheap apartment every few months, stiffing the landlord when they can no longer pay rent; evidence of how dumpy one of the apartments is gets proven by the young boy in the family pulling out a dead cat from the oven. Lots of profanity, including "f--k." The film centers on a very dysfunctional family in 1976 Southern California, and of a young teen girl trying to accept herself as she is and, ultimately, her family as they are; older teens and adults who also came from families that weren't exactly Leave it to Beaver could find common ground with their own experiences, and use this as an opportunity to discuss the nature of "family" -- how it's often perceived in TV and movies, and how reality presents a wide array of definitions of that term.

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