Fun with Dick and Jane

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Fun with Dick and Jane's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Fun with Dick and Jane completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 30 December 2005.

Overall comments and recommendations

Fun with Dick and Jane is a satirical comedy/action adventure tailored to an adult audience, most of whom will probably enjoy this satire of everyday life. The film contains some very funny and clever scenes and Carrey and Leoni perform very well together, but the plot falls a little short towards the end.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Fun with Dick and Jane contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Dick Harper (Jim Carrey) is a well-off middle ranking executive who works for the Globodyne corporation, while his wife Jane (Tea Leoni) works for a travel agency. They have everything that life could offer including roll out lawn and a hole in the backyard for their new hot tub. Life gets even better when Dick is promoted to vice president of communications, and starts rubbing shoulders with Globodyne’s Chief Executive Officer Jack McCallister (Alec Baldwin) and Chief Financial Officer Frank Bascombe (Richard Jenkins). At the same time as Jane quits her travel agency job to spend more time with their six-year-old son Billy, disaster strikes the Globodyne corporation, all of Globodyne’s employees lose their jobs, and McCallister walks away with four hundred million.

Dick finds himself working in Hardware Mart while Jane enlists as a guinea pig for a cosmetic drug testing company with disastrous results. Their possessions are gradually repossessed and the bank gives Dick twenty-four hours to pay up or lose the house. To recover what they have lost, Dick and Jane turn to a life of crime, but find that they must then team up with Bascombe to battle charges of corporate fraud and try to get justice from McAllister.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Fun with Dick and Jane contains periodic low level violence set in a comical context, including:

• on his way to a job interview, Dick runs into an ex-Globodyne employee. A fight develops as the two battle each other to get to the front of the interview line
  
• Dick is kicked in the groin
  
• a woman throws what appears to be a bowl of salt in Dick’s face after Dick chases her through the hardware store
  
• Dick is punched in the face over a job
  
• in a number of scenes, Dick sticks his son’s squirt gun in people’s faces while robbing them
  
• Dick asks his wife if he could pistol-whip a man they are robbing; he then places a dog collar around his neck, giving him an electric shock whenever he shouts for help.
  
• during one of Dick and Jane’s bank robberies, a second pair of bank robbers enter the bank with shotguns, firing the guns into the bank’s ceiling
  
• Dick tackles Bascombe to the ground and punches him

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Some of the above-mentioned violent scenes could disturb very young children. In addition, the swelling of Dick’s mouth and jaw after he is punched in the face, and Jane’s appearance after a cosmetic test goes horribly wrong, could disturb some younger viewers.

There is a scene in which a dog receives an electric shock from his collar when he barks, and as a result jumps up in the air. While the scene is designed for comical effect, it could concern some younger viewers.

Over the age of eight

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Children over the age of eight should not be scared by any images in this movie, as they will be more able to respond to the comic intent.

Sexual references

The film contains infrequent and humorous, but at times blatant, sexual references, including:

• McCallister asks Dick if he has a nickname. Dick says his nickname was ‘squirt’, having something to do with how he was conceived.
  
• the expression “pulling the dick” is used to refer to the manner in which Dick responds to a TV interview
  
• Dick chases a somewhat older lady through a hardware store. When he catches up to her, she throws a bowl of salt in his face stating, while holding her breasts, “I saw you, you were all over my goodies.”
  
• Dick and Jane are discussing what they have left to sell and Dick states “There’s always prostitution”. When he receives a somewhat stern look from Jane he says “I meant me.”

Nudity and sexual activity

There is no nudity, but in one scene Jane walks into a shop in her nightie with a fair degree of cleavage exposed. The shop has ultraviolet lighting which accentuates her cleavage and breasts.

There is some sexual activity, usually portrayed humorously, including:

• Dick and Jane are sitting on their bed, with Jane wearing a pyjama top only, her legs and upper thighs are exposed and a small degree of cleavage is shown. Dick is wearing both pyjama tops and bottoms and they are being mildly affectionate towards each other. Jane states “We should have sex on Saturday”. At this suggestion they become somewhat more passionate towards each other, hugging and panting, but then abruptly get into bed, turn out their bedside lights, roll over and go to sleep.
  
• Dick and Jane are sitting in the car, having committed their first robbery. They become sexually excited, jumping on each other, kissing and passionately embracing. The scene is cut at that point, but the implication is that they go on to have sex in the car.

Use of substances

The film contains numerous scenes depicting alcohol use, including:

• Bascombe drinks spirits directly from a bottle while in an intoxicated condition; slurring his words, staggering around and falling over
  
• while drunk, Frank rams Dick’s car into a parked car, then phones Dick stating that he is waiting for the police to arrest him for drink driving.
  
• Dick drinks a bottle of beer in a bar, and begins to act very intoxicated staggering, standing on a table and shouting incoherently to the other patrons.

Other drug references include:

• Dick smokes a very large cigar.
  
• As part of a job application, Dick is required provide a specimen of his urine. The lady watching him provide the specimen states that for a hundred bucks she would sell him her ‘piss’ as she had “stopped using the pipe two years ago.”
  
• an elderly lady, an ex-employee of Globodyne, is raided for growing cannabis plants in her house. A large number of cannabis plants is removed by police.

Coarse language

The film contains infrequent low to medium level coarse language, including:

• fuck (used once)
  
• mother fucker
  
• damn
  
• son of a bitch
  
• screwed
  
• holy hell
  
• bad arse
  
• shit
  
• bastards.

The movie's message

Fun with Dick and Jane is a satire of upper middle class America and the corporate world, at the same time portraying the transformation of Dick’s value system.

Parents may wish to encourage the manner in which Dick and Jane supported each other through their hardship, and the selfless manner in which Dick sought financial retribution for all Globodyne employees not just himself.

Parents may wish to discuss the real life consequences of offences such as those committed by Dick and Jane. The movie could also provide the opportunity to discuss how society and popular press can lead people into a “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality, in the process losing sight of values which are really important. Parents may wish to discuss how stealing can not be viewed as a justifiable means to an end regardless of the circumstances.