Anti-Smoking Group Gives Thumbs-Up for Kids to Movie With Crude and Sexual Content, Strong Language and Nudity

The Scene Smoking organization, one of the main organizations that supports the Smoke Free Movies approach to addressing smoking in movies, has given its thumbs-up, pink-lung, go-for-it rating for kids to the movie "Role Models." Scene Smoking's complete description of the important and relevant points about this movie for kids to know about, and the basis for its thumbs up rating, is as follows: "No tobacco of any type is depicted during this movie - even the party scenes stay smoke-free."

The Rest of the Story

The rest of the story is that this anti-smoking group is giving its thumbs-up rating to, and praising, a movie that contains "crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity."

That's not all. According to a complete review of the potentially inappropriate content for youths:

"a main theme of the movie is that Wheeler likes to have sex with women and makes several jokes about it;"

the movie contains "a scene where Wheeler tells Ronnie that KISS songs are all about sex and how they got "pussy" with them;"

"Ronnie draws several cartoons involving jokes about and depicting Penises;"

the movie depicts "two pairs of breasts (one towards the middle one towards the end)";

"Wheeler is shown naked face down in front of the tent (we see his butt)";

"A real-life role-playing game called "LAIRE" is played by Augie and he's seen playing it several times, "deaths" are acted out with fake swords. The final scenes involve a "LAIRE" battle which shows people acting out their deaths.";

the movie contains "a fair amount of course R-Rated language....some of which is said by a 10 year old, and high-school student...which may offend some viewers";

the movie contains "some very strong references to genitailia (men and women) the words "pussy" and "dick" are used several times whether in print or audible";

"Wheeler smokes pot in one scene, drinks alcohol, and, abuses Ambien;"

"Gayle constantly talks about her drug addiction;"

"the fact that a highschooler and 10-year-old are using hard R-Rated language and talking about sex may upset and offend some viewers."

Sounds like a nice movie for anti-smoking advocates to be recommending for youths!

How narrow-minded can you possibly be? How can you be so narrow-minded so as to look only at whether there is any depiction of smoking in a movie, and completely ignore the presence of profanity, sex, alcohol use, illegal drug use, prescription drug abuse, and other crude and sexually offensive content for youths?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing that there is necessarily anything wrong with the policy being used to regulate exposure to the movie. The movie is rated R and parents are forewarned about the crude and sexual content, strong language, and nudity. So I'm not criticizing the movie per se. What I'm criticizing is the narrow-minded approach of the entire Smoke Free Movies campaign and its supporting groups, which looks so narrowly only at whether there is smoking that they have ended up praising as youth-friendly a movie that contains crude and sexually offensive content that most would probably view as inappropriate for kids.

Is this really the health message that the Smoke Free Movies groups want to be sending?

The Smoke Free Movies movement is so narrow-minded that they have ended up casting public health praise upon a movie whose keywords include: "black panties, girl in bra and panties, topless, urination scene, sexual fantasy, child driving car, one night stand, male rear nudity, racial slur, public nudity, throat slitting, drunkenness, and vulgarity.

In the mean time, Scene Smoking doesn't seem to be concerned about lying to the public to support its agenda. The organization continues to publicly claim (on the same web page as the thumbs-up rating for "Role Models") that "Smoking Kills About 340 Young People a Day."

I guess their web master is still on vacation on a tropical island.