Diverse, globe-trotting film has explicit nudity, violence.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 16+?
Any Positive Content?
Sex, Romance & Nudity
a lot
A teen removes her underwear and opens her legs to flash a group of young men, revealing her crotch (explicit). Full-frontal nudity of a young woman -- she pulls an adult's hand to her breast, and he grabs for a moment but stops before anything more happens. A commercial shows a young woman in a bra and panties playing jump rope. Characters kiss, make out, get married, discuss relationship problems. A boy masturbates, his hand moving quickly under his pants (nothing sensitive is shown).
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.
Many uses of "f--k" (including one use of "motherf----rs" in subtitles), as well as "s--t," "a--hole," and "ass." The film uses the outdated and incorrect term "deaf-mute" to describe deaf characters who regularly vocalize throughout the movie.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.
Kids playing with a gun shoot at a bus and accidentally hit someone -- lots of injury scenes with a lot of blood. Brief scene of a doctor stitching a wound while the patient kicks and screams. A police officer forces an innocent elder to the ground with a handgun to his head, then punches him during interrogation. A dad slaps his kids in the face. During a gunfight, police shoot a child (blood visible), and a boy shoots a police officer. A character rips the head off a chicken; a little blood spurts, and the headless chicken briefly flaps around. Characters discuss a death by suicide. An adult is lost in the desert with two young children; the kids become badly dehydrated, and one passes out. Harassment of a sexual nature: When a dentist examines a patient and leans in, the patient licks his mouth (she's sent away). A boy watches his sister undress through a peephole; she smiles when she catches him spying, implying she's OK with it, but consent is unclear.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.
Characters drink alcohol, including underage drinking; one adult drives while drunk. High schoolers take pills and appear high and elated. Minor characters smoke cigarettes. An injured character smokes from a pipe for medicinal use and becomes heavily sedated.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.
Characters drive a Toyota and order Diet Coke and Coke at a restaurant. Rold Gold package of pretzels visible on a counter.
Diverse Representations
some
Plenty of diversity in front of and behind the screen. Mexican filmmakers Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga show the consequences of fear and prejudice with this globe-trotting film. Moroccan, White American, Japanese, and Mexican characters have main roles. Among them, there's age diversity, and a main character is deaf (but played by hearing actor Rinko Kikuchi). A Mexican nanny who's undocumented is portrayed three-dimensionally. But even though the film uses cultural stereotypes to question them, and all main characters are written sympathetically, clichés are present: Moroccans are shown as violent and backward (boys play with rifles, police officers abuse their power and beat up locals, a brother spies on his sister and masturbates). A female Japanese high schooler is hypersexualized; she's the only character with nude and explicit scenes. And Deaf culture is portrayed inaccurately, with the script assuming that all deaf characters can lip-read and using the outdated term "deaf-mute" to describe characters who regularly vocalize.
Though the film is full of dark and hopeless situations, its core message is positive: We should all strive to listen to each other more and have compassion. Otherwise, the consequences are dire.
Positive Role Models
very little
Though characters are portrayed with nuance and compassion, they make poor decisions (with dire consequences). Kids shoot a rifle for fun, White tourists act entitled and fearful in Morocco, an underage teen drinks and takes drugs, an adult drives while drunk, and an employer doesn't allow his nanny to take a day off from work so she can attend her son's wedding.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Babel is the final film in writer Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Death Trilogy" (the others are Amores Perros and 21 Grams). The film has traumatic violence, including kids who play with a rifle and accidentally shoot a stranger -- with lots of injury scenes and blood. Characters stitch open wounds, abuse local elders, slap their kids, and discuss a parent's death by suicide. During a gunfight, police shoot a child (blood visible), and a boy shoots a police officer. A character rips the head off a chicken on-screen. A boy watches his sister undress through a peephole; she smiles when she catches him spying, implying she's OK with it, but consent is unclear. When an adult is lost in the desert with two young children, the kids become badly dehydrated, and one passes out. Characters drink, smoke, and take pills to get high. A woman smokes from a pipe in a medical context and becomes heavily sedated. There are many uses of "f--k," as well as "s--t" and "a--hole." The film also often uses the outdated and inaccurate term "deaf-mute." Sexual content includes a high schooler who takes off her underwear and flashes a group of young men (explicit). She later appears with full-frontal nudity in front of an adult, grabbing his hand to place on her breast. A boy masturbates (nothing sensitive is shown). Though characters make poor decisions, they're treated with compassion, and the film has an underlying message about the power of listening rather than judging. Babel is inclusive, with Mexican filmmakers behind the camera and a diverse cast on-screen, even if cultural stereotypes are sometimes in effect. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
I would not have preferred to put an age rating on here, because this one is very subjective to me.
I personally love this movie. But I like movies like this. Babel is a thought-provoking drama with an ensemble cast and multiple storylines. It attempts to exemplify the butterfly effect; one seemingly benign action (giving a rifle to someone as a gift) leads to a chain reaction of events around the world.
Is it appropriate for kids? It really depends on their maturity level. The aforementioned hyper-sexuality and nudity of a deaf teenage girl in Tokyo, a Moroccan boy peeping on his sister and then masturbating a short while later, and various scenes of realistic-looking gun violence might make it inappropriate for many kids. Other kids may be disturbed by the marriage-on-the-rocks tension between the characters played by Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, the implied fear of being stranded in a remote village in a foreign country, or the fear of two young kids being left alone in the desert by an adult searching for help.
More likely, most teenagers would be bored by this movie since it has very little action apart from a shootout late in the movie, adult themes and fears that kids might not be able to understand or care about, and even the scenes that involve children are heavy on the drama with no sense of fun or excitement.
I would recommend parents watch it first and make your own judgment call. I really think this one comes down to a teenager's maturity level and patience for a heavy-handed, slow-paced adult drama.
Babel shows the very real intricacies of not only communication but of the human experience in general. No, many will never experience the level of trauma depicted in this film, but many of us will experience our own forms of trauma. Babel helps lend a voice to that suffering as well as to life's most beautiful and intimate of moments.
There is a lot in this film, but the strongest scenes may be:
*A young boy (11 or so) views his teenage sister (she knows and apparently approves) while she undresses and then masturbates to thoughts of her undressing - no nudity shown.
*A pair of Moroccan brothers shoot at vehicles to "test"a rifle. An American lady on a tour bus gets shot in the shoulder/neck. The film stays with her storyline and she and her husband have to deal with her injury and government beaurocracy. Good bit of swearing and blood. Later, the boys and their father are involved in a firefight with police. One boy shoots the rifle at cops, at least wounding them, and the older boy is shot and presumably killed. The father is obviously distraught.
*A nanny takes her kids over the border to a wedding. There is a scene of a chicken being decapitated for a meal. Its neck is twisted off and then the children chase after it. Some blood. A miscommunication occurs when she tries to bring the kids back into the US. Her nephew panics and dumps her and the children in the desert. They walk and deal with exposure and dehydration.
*A deaf-mute teen girl deals with growing up and developing a sex drive in a world where the different are shunned. She exposes her genitals to a group of boys (pubic hair and vulva shown), tries to seduse her dentist by licking his face and then putting his hand between her legs (he tells her to leave), and later undresses completely to offer herself to an older man (he declines, full frontal and rear nudity). Her rear is shown again later.
*A group of teens takes a pill each and a few swings of whiskey. Two women smoke. Some adult alcohol use..Not excessive. Some brutal force used by police during an interrogation about a rifle. Some discussion of a character's mother's suicide. A husband helps a wife with bathroom needs. Brief discussion of a baby dying by SIDS.
Our children are exposed to so many potentially troublesome concepts every day that we cannot avoid, and we cannot always be there to help our kids process their reactions and feelings. I don't recommend for young children to watch Babel, but with all of the complex themes presented, it is definitely worth a watch for adults who don't shy away from real life and teens who are mature and have a caring, mature adult around who is willing to talk about some hard, real life concepts.
What's the Story?
Like director Alejandro González Iñárritu's other movies, BABEL tackles difficult themes using a complex structure: Three main storylines intersect at different times, all concerning children who are caught up in circumstances beyond their comprehension. Richard (Brad Pitt) and his wife, Susan (Cate Blanchett), have traveled to Morocco in an effort to get over a traumatic event, leaving their children, Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble), at home in San Diego under the care of their housekeeper, Amelia (Adriana Barraza). Tragedy strikes in Morocco when Susan is shot in the neck, and Richard works frantically to get help. At the same time, Amelia, not knowing why Richard and Susan are delayed, is worried that she'll miss her son's wedding in Mexico. At last, she decides to take the children with her to Tijuana, an idea questioned by her nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal). He drives them to and from the wedding, but on their return they're stopped at the border, and Santiago's reaction leads to disaster. In the third story, Tokyo high schooler Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), who's deaf, struggles with her mother's recent death by suicide and rebels against her father, Yasujiro (Kôji Yakusho). All of the stories are nominally linked, but it's the thematic links -- between nations, individuals, and images -- that take center stage.
At once poetic, provocative, and plaintive, this film explores people's efforts to communicate with one another. This difficult theme is made easier by Babel's veteran cast, with stalwarts like Blanchett, Pitt, Barraza, and Yakusho bringing gravitas, while younger stars Bernal and Kikuchi easily keep pace. The film's kids also deliver touching performances, with Moroccan son Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) standing out with his impish bravado. Uniting these far-flung characters are their respective traumas, as the film covers mature themes with a humanistic lens. By its end, Babel both gathers together and unravels its many strands, allowing that communication may be elusive and misleading but insisting that it's crucial for understanding and healing to take place.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about Babel's central theme: communication. How can you communicate with someone if you don't understand their language? How can communication help solve problems?
Discuss the parent-child relationships in the film. How did problems arise between Abdullah and his sons and daughter? Why does Chieko rebel against her father and act out? What about Richard's reliance on Amelia to take care of his son and daughter? What mistakes are made, and how does each family unit change by the end of the film?
How do the movie's imagery and soundtrack evoke different experiences, such as being afraid, high, joyful, deaf, etc.? Do the techniques succeed? Why, or why not?
The film uses cultural stereotypes in order to question them. Do the filmmakers succeed with this route? Was there a different way to humanize characters from wide-ranging cultures without resorting to stereotypes?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
