Unlike the MPAA we do not assign
one
inscrutable rating based on age, but 3 objective ratings for SEX/NUDITY, VIOLENCE/GORE
and PROFANITY on a scale of 0 to 10, from lowest to highest,
depending on quantity and context.
Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) is a respected music critic and Dre (Taye Diggs) is a successful but unhappy music
executive. Both attribute their relationship, as well as their careers, to having witnessed the birth of hip-hop on a New York street in
the late 1980s. They now realize that fulfillment can come from revisiting that childhood experience. Also with Mos Def, Queen Latifah and
Nicole Ari Parker. [1:48]
SEX/NUDITY 3 - A man and woman kiss passionately and caress each other and we see them in bed covered with sheets after they
have had sex (the man is bare-chested and he gets out of bed wearing jockey shorts). A woman in a wrap dress kisses a man on the nose and
then on the mouth; they kiss passionately and the man begins to unwrap the woman's dress. A man and a woman kiss romantically and talk. A
woman invites a man to have sex, and a boy and a girl look at each other admiringly and hold hands. Men and woman are shown kissing and
hugging (as a greeting, after a wedding, a man and woman kiss and she smacks his buttocks, a man kisses a woman's hand, etc.) and dancing
and hugging in many scenes. Men and women are shown flirting with each other. A woman wears a dress that has an opening down to her
abdomen. A woman wears an oversized shirt that is unbuttoned to reveal a part of her breast and we also see her bare legs. Women wear
outfits that reveal cleavage, bare shoulders and bare midriffs. There is a running gag about a woman's "massager" (it is suggested that it
is a vibrator) being used as a replacement for a man, and there is some homosexual innuendo: a man suggests that when Humphrey Bogart and
Claude Rains walk off into the fog in "Casablanca" there was something more than friendship between them.
VIOLENCE/GORE 2 - Two women talk in a kickboxing class and as they get more agitated, they punch the punching pads harder
and harder, eventually yelling at each other. Two men play fight.
the review continues below...
PROFANITY 5 - 1 F-word, 7 sexual references (there are several more in the lyrics of a song that we hear snippets of a
couple of times), 10 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, 20 mild obscenities, 5 religious exclamations, 1 derogatory term for
African-Americans. [profanity glossary]
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Freedom, hip-hop, relationships, friendship, order, chaos, change, divorce, alimony, differences between
men and women, selling out, infidelity, scruples, conflict of interest.
MESSAGE - We should all have the courage to do what we believe in.
(Note: People are shown drinking alcohol, sometimes to the point of inebriation.)
A CAVEAT: We've gone through several editorial changes since we
started covering films in 1992 and some of our early standards were
not as stringent as they are now. We therefore need to revisit many
older reviews, especially those written prior to 1998 or so; please
keep this in mind if you're consulting a review from that period.
While we plan to revisit and correct older reviews our resources are
limited and it is a slow, time-consuming process.
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