Bing’s Animal Stories

image for Bing’s Animal Stories

Short takes

Suitable for all ages but may lack interest for children over 6.

Age
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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Bing’s Animal Stories
  • a review of Bing’s Animal Stories completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 15 August 2022.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 7 Ok for this age group.
Children over the age of 6 Ok for this age group though may lack interest.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Bing’s Animal Stories
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: Suitable for general audiences
Length: 71 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

As audiences help Pico complete her special animal sticker book, they join Bing and his ‘carer’, Flop, as the two learn to make friends with and care for a dog. Bing is soon joined by his friends, Amma, Sula and Pando, who help him turn a shed into a playhouse; lean to feed ducks; and create a habitat for a frog. The friends also get to sit in a fire engine; find a mother cat and her newborn baby kittens; as well as learn the art of the squiggle and how to turn a mistake into something beautiful.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Managing disappointment; Animal safety; Turning a negative into a positive.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • Flop causes a paper bag to explode so a goose will fly away.
  • A cat tries to scratch Bing and it scares him.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

  • None noted.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

  • Nothing further of concern.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

  • None noted.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Pando is occasionally seen walking around in his underwear.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

  • None noted.

In a nutshell

Bing’s Animal Stories is a series of CGI - animated episodes woven into a movie length feature. The film has vibrant animations and a plot best suited to preschoolers. It will likely lack interest for older children, unless they are ardent fans of Bing, the television series (based on the books by Ted Dewan) around which this film is based.

The main messages from this movie are to be helpful, thoughtful and considerate of others (including animals); and to always look for ways to brighten the lives of those around you.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Helpfulness
  • Empathy
  • Understanding
  • Friendliness
  • Kindness.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Interacting with animals that you don’t know and assuming that all animals will behave the same way.
  • Trying to manipulate an animal’s habitat.
  • Being carried away by disappointment at an unfair situation.
  • Focussing on a mistake instead of on how to fix it.