MPAA Rating: R

A young music journalist (Patrick Fugit) follows a fictional rock band, Stillwater, on tour. Set in the 1970s, the film is based on the exploits of a real music critic who worked for Rolling Stone magazine: Cameron Crowe, who also wrote and directed this film. Also with Kate Hudson, Fairuza Balk, Billy Crudup, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Lee, Anna Paquin, Jimmy Fallon, Frances McDormand, Zooey Deschanel and Noah Taylor. [2:02]

SEX/NUDITY 5 - Many instances of sexual innuendo (including references to fellatio and "deflowering") and a few kisses. A few scenes of implied sexual relations: in one scene a bare-shouldered woman answers a hotel door and we see a shirtless man zipping his pants in the background, and in another scene we see a woman's jacket covering a door window, presumably so no one can see what she and a man are doing inside the room. Also, in another scene three scantily clad young women say that they're going to "deflower" a boy and then push him onto a bed, undress him down to his underwear, and run around him (two of the women also share a brief kiss in front of him); in a brief "morning-after" scene we see him wake up in a bed with one of the women (she is presumably nude but sheet-covered, and he is still wearing his underwear, which we see when he gets out of bed and puts his pants back on). A bra is thrown at a boy (he picks it up and briefly looks at it). A couple of men look at high school girls running along a road. We glimpse a young woman's bare breasts through her open coat. We see many women wearing midriff- and/or cleavage-revealing shirts, one wearing a short nightgown, one wearing a somewhat transparent shirt, and a couple of shirtless men; also, in one scene a woman's panties are visible when she falls to the floor a few times (see Violence/Gore for more details).

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A man grabs a microphone and appears to be shocked for several seconds before falling to the ground (we later see him with a bandaged hand). A plane experiences major turbulence during a storm and shakes its passengers quite a bit during an extended scene. A woman suffering from a drug overdose falls to the floor a few times (her panties are visible) and is then carried into a bathroom where her stomach is pumped (we see two people trying to force her to swallow a tube, which she eventually does, then we see her legs kicking a little during the process; she's fine later). A man grabs another's shirt and yells at him; also, a couple of other instances of yelling. In scenes played mostly for laughs, a man tries to karate chop another, a bus drives through a closed gate, a woman runs into a wall, and a man who has taken LSD jumps into a pool from a nearby rooftop. We briefly see and hear a boy vomit into a trash can. We see a woman sitting on a toilet.

PROFANITY 8 - About 26 F-words and two F-word derivatives, several obscene finger gestures, a few anatomical references, several scatological references, and several mild obscenities. [profanity glossary]

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Rock bands and rock stars, music tours, music critics, groupies, infidelity, teen sexuality, coming of age, parent-child relationships, children leaving home, honesty and dishonesty, friendship, drug use (a man supposedly takes acid or LSD, we see a couple of people smoking a bong, and there are many references to marijuana).

MESSAGE - It's only rock and roll, but there's something incredibly powerful and appealing about it. You have to let others make their own choices and lead their own lives.

Special Keywords: S5 - V3 - P8 - MPAAR