Boy

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Boy's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Boy completed by The Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 13 September 2010.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines.

ACCM review

This review of the movie Boy contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• 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

This movie is set in a small town in New Zealand called Waihau Bay in 1984.The Boy of the film is an 11 year old dreamer played by James Rolleston. Boy is at an awkward stage in his childhood, dealing with schoolyard bullies and discovering girls. He proudly describes his father to his peers as a hero; a jack of all trades – an artist, sports star, war hero. In reality, however, his father is in jail.

Boy lives with his Grandmother, a bunch of cousins and his younger brother Rocky (Te Aho Eketone Whitu) who believes that he has superpowers after his mum died while giving birth to him. Boy longs for his father to take him and Rocky away to be a family.
While Boy is taking care of his younger sibling and cousins after his grandmother heads away for a funeral, his father Alamein (Taika Waititi) arrives with a couple of no-hoper mates and turns Boy’s world upside down. Boy attempts to bond with his father and learns that perhaps it isn’t all going to work out how he had dreamed.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Crime, drug use, death of a parent, separation / abandonment by a parent

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.

There is some violence in this movie including:

• A bully taunts Boy at school saying that “his mum had the plague”. Boy then pushes his desk forward and attempts to punch the bully.
  Boy’s arms are held by two peers, while another throws water at his pants
• Boy’s class teacher grabs him roughly and pushes him
• The bully’s older brother grabs Boy by the scruff of the neck and pushes him in the wall. He threatens Boy by saying he will “cut both your nuts off”
• Boy throws rocks at the so-called ‘weirdo’ (an intellectually disabled man) at the beach
• Alamein uses a machete to threaten / warn the bully not to bother Boy anymore
• Boy threatens Rocky; “Better not tell anyone or I’ll smack your bloody top off”
• After asking his mother (Boy’s grandmother) for money, Alamein becomes extremely angry when she refuses and trashes the house looking for money. He then speeds away quickly in his car leaving the kids to clean up his mess
• After seeing Boy wearing his jacket, his father pushes him and pulls the jacket off him demanding, “Who said you can steal my jacket?”
• Boy asks Alamein what he would do if someone had taken his money and he replies “I’ll f**king kill them”
• A friend of boys is beaten by her father (we don’t see this) after  Alamein steals his hidden marijuana crop
• Alamein takes Boy and Rocky to the beach and re-enacts a war battle scene, using sticks put together as machine guns
• Alamein catches his fellow gang members stealing the drugs and the car. They push and punch each other before one picks up a plank of wood and hits Alamein over the head with it
• Boy hits his father across the face twice and pushes him
• In a dream sequence, played for comedy Alamein throws a spoon at a prison guard and it lands in the guard’s eye. Blood pours out
• Alamein fights with men from whom he stole marijuana. It is set up like a dance scene where weapons are flashed. None of the actual fight scenes are shown, only the bruised and bloodied faces afterwards.
  

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.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of eight, including the following:

• The children are left at home alone when their grandmother leaves for a trip
• Rocky believes that he has supernatural powers which caused his mum to die while giving birth to him and causing the ‘weirdo’ to fall over at the beach
• We see Boy peeking into the room when Rocky was born
• Grandmother is holding a baby and we see the end of the bed with their mother’s feet covered in bloodied sheets
• The boys visit their mother’s grave which is close to the house several times
• A cartoon picture is used in one scene to show what Boy imagines when he sees a car pull up at the house late at night while he is in charge. The cartoon has scary faces drawn as the passengers.
  Boy arrives home to find Alamein giving his fellow gang member a tattoo
• Alamein drives erratically and hits Boy’s pet goat. Boy and Rocky go back to the goat to find it breathing heavily and in pain. After the goat dies, they drag its body back to the house, dig a hole and bury it.

Aged eight to thirteen

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 in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes, particularly the idea of the mother’s death, children left at home alone and the death of the pet goat.

Over the age of thirteen

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.

Younger children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above mentioned scenes.

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

• Boy looks lustfully at a classmate, Chardonnay, at school. His friend advises him to tell her that he doesn’t like underpants so that she will show them to him
• Boy tells his goat that Chardonnay is his ‘girlfriend’
• Alamein tells Boy to “show her your d*ck, feel her t*ts and get a hickey” but “don’t get her pregnant”
• Boy tells Chardonnay, “I can show you my d*ck but I can’t get you pregnant”
• Boy uses a vacuum cleaner to give himself a ‘hickey’ so the others think that Chardonnay did it. He shows his dad the ‘hickey’
• There is talk about kids in Boy’s class ‘french kissing’ and ‘pashing’
  Boy tells his rival for Chardonnay that “I already rooted her”

Nudity and sexual activity

None of concern

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Cigarette smoking – by Boy’s class teacher and his father
• Marijuana – growing the crops, distributing/selling the drugs and smoking it. Boy copies his father by picking up a butt and putting it in his mouth
• The adults often drink beer and spirits in front of the young children. Alamein offers Boy a drink of beer and says “first sip at 11”. Boy takes a can and drinks by himself. The boys also wait in the car while Alamein and his gang drink in the pub. The adults are intoxicated in front of the kids – slurred speech, un-coordinated, rough behaviour and Alamein shown passed out the next morning.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

• Bullshit
• Dork
• F*ck off, fu*k you
• Dickhead
• Shithole
• Massive shit
• Weirdo
• Piss off
• Prick
• Bloody
• Fucking arsehole
• Friggen ‘eh

The movie's message

Boy is a heartfelt and funny movie which follows the attempts of two motherless brothers to bond with their father who has recently returned from jail.  The father and children learn from each other, particularly around the death of their wife and mother and about taking responsibility in life.

The main messages from this movie are about

• facing reality
• dealing with grief, loss and guilt
• the importance of family and friends

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• forgiveness
• acceptance of difference
• caring and taking responsibility for family members

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as

• drug use and dealing
• stealing
• lying
• bullying
• dangerous driving