Where the Heart Is (2000) - Parents Guide Movie Rating
- MPAA Reason
- Rated PG-13 for intense thematic material, language and sexual content.
- BBFC Reason
- Contains moderate sex references and one use of strong language
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Sex & Nudity
moderateA Sex Scene, where a young man and woman are at a hotel. They begin to kiss and next you see her bare back and he doesn't have a shirt on. They are obviously having sex. A young guy is kissing a woman passionately, in a hotel hallway that continues into his hotel room. He takes off his coat, but they get interrupted. Ashley Judd's character wears clothing throughout the movie that reveals her cleavage/legs and is tight-fitting. An incident of incest (a child being sexually molested by a parent) is spoken of, but not seen. A woman in the film has four young children from three different fathers. She says she kept getting pregnant each time she tried to find a father for them. While saying grace at the kitchen table, a middle-aged woman asks forgiveness for committing fornication (having sex with a guy, she's not married to). A young man is arrested and taken to jail. Some of the other men in the jail cells make kissing noises at him and say things like "Hey, sweet thing." A woman has a one-night stand with a mechanic that she just met. We don't actually see the sex at all. A girl hitchhiker, is shown kissing a guy who picked her up. He makes a sexual reference. A badly beaten woman tells her friend that the guy she was dating, tried to molest two of her children, a boy and a girl. This incident was talked about but not shown.
Violence & Gore
moderateA woman goes into labor and stumbles around, falling to the floor and screaming in pain. A man then jumps through the window trying to get to her. We never see the actual birth. Fight in a bar scene. One man in a band playing gets knocked over by a flying chair. A man gets hit by a train, although the actual hit is not seen. We just see the train coming for him, and he is in the hospital later with missing legs. A woman is beaten by her boyfriend and left for dead at the house, where her kids are hiding from her boyfriend who had also attempted to molest them. The woman is bleeding and barely conscious. Two men get into a fist fight in a jail cell. No blood is seen, but there's a lot of punching and kicking.
Profanity
mildTen uses of God/Jesus. One use of the f-word. A lot of "mild" language: "hell," "shit," "damn," etc. A mother accidentally says "shit" in front of her young daughter.
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking
mildA man gets drunk a few times. Some social drinking. Two characters are recovering alcoholics. Novalee's mother smokes cigarettes.
Frightening & Intense Scenes
mildThe tornado scene can be a little intense for younger viewers. A character dies during the tornado, although we don't actually see it. Another character almost doesn't make it to the underground shelter in time, and she is hanging onto the door while other people try desperately to pull her inside. Novalee is abandoned by her dead-beat boyfriend at Wal-Mart. Novalee's baby is kidnapped early in the movie. She is found in an outdoor Nativity scene, completely unharmed. It is revealed that she was taken by a devoutly religious couple who felt that Novalee's pregnancy was an "abomination". This may require some explanation for younger viewers. A young woman who just gave birth is visited in the hospital by the mother who abandoned her as a small child. The mother steals money from the young woman, under the pretense of going out to buy baby supplies and securing an apartment for them to live in. The mother never returns, leaving the young woman and newborn to fend for themselves in a strange town.