Is Guardians of the Galaxy 2 OK for kids?

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Our 7 year old asked us for a cell phone today. He said he wants it to play games. I told him that’s why he has a Nintendo 3DS. He also asked about seeing Guardians of the Galaxy 2. So, Is Guardians of the Galaxy 2 OK for kids? We saw the film and offer up a spoiler free review of it, plus dig down into how the film got its PG-13 rating.

For adult audiences, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is a whoot. It starts off with a raucous alien fights scene where the guardians have taken on a mercenary role and are protecting the power supply for another gold group of aliens. From there Rocket, Groot, Star Lord and Gamora meet up with Yondu, Nebula. They meet Ego, Matis and are sometimes are vexed by Ayesha, the High Priestess of the Sovereigns, a group of genetically created perfect beings.

This is a fun film that takes any seed of enjoyment people had in the first one and waters it with Red Bull. It does this and manages to be an incredibly entertaining film that has as much heart and family, as it does chaos, action and humor. The backbone of Guardians of the Galaxy actually is family. Star Lord finds his father in space, which is further complicated by his step father, Yondu, who is also in the picture. Family bonding can sometimes make your eyes roll, however GOTG2 rarely takes its foot off the gas to make you realize its faults. Sure, it’s a little long and the middle bit dragged, but its front load and final 40% are so fun you’ve already forgotten what bothered you. That’s all good and well, but is Guardians of the Galaxy OK for kids?

Let’s go back to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. That was action packed, albeit not as taut as its sequel. The only discernible things I remember about that film being off limits to kids was a crude gesture and Star Lord’s use of the word “A-holes”.  It too was rated PG-13, but was certainly a soft one.

This is the kind of film that puts parents in a box. The action and violence is on-par or just slightly above the first one. Whether or not Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is OK for kids depends on your (the parents) tolerance for bad language.

There are many more instances of bad language and sexual innuendo in GOTG2. Many of those instances were used in a comedic tone (and were quite funny), but younger viewers who haven’t learned the art of cursing might simple leave the film being a pirate’s parrot without a cause.

For example, our 7 year old hasn’t really seen a film that had coarse language. He’s seen a couple with bad words and run across some occasional words on YouTube, but that’s it. I mentioned to a friend of mine about the language issues in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and he quickly said that his 8.5 year old loved the film.

It is possible that kids do a lot of growing and maturing in that year and a half. His son is also a city kid, lives in the big city and has seen/heard much more than us suburbanites. I was somewhat relieved when I quizzed the people next to me in the movie theatre and they echoed my sentiments. They said that perhaps a 12 year old would be OK with the film, but that would be as low as they go. However, at the other side of the spectrum were the people who brought their 5 and 7 year old to the film.

The 9 year old version of me would’ve loved this film and snuck into it when I said I was going to see some talking dog movie. Our 7 year old got scared last year when he saw Kung-Fu Panda 3. For him now GOTG2 would be too much.

So, is Guardians of the Galaxy OK for kids? Ages 13 and up enter and have fun, by that age you’re learned the art of swearing and won’t simply use it when you can’t find your Pokémon card. Ages 10-12, if you go to the film just be cool and don’t make a big deal of the bad words. Ages 8-10, you’ll be frightened by some of the action sequences, thrilled by some and should forget about 25 of the words or innuendo (ask your parents what that means) as soon as you hear them.