Chasing Comets

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Not recommended for children under 13 and parental guidance recommended to 15, due to adult themes, sexual references and coarse language.

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Chasing Comets
  • a review of Chasing Comets completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 27 August 2018.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 13 Not recommended for this age group due to adult themes, sexual references and coarse language
Children 13 to 15 Parental guidance recommended due to adult themes, sexual references and coarse language
Viewers 15 and over OK for this age group

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: Chasing Comets
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild themes, sexual references and coarse language.
Length: 96 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

This is a semi-autobiographical film written by retired rugby league player Jason Stevens. The film is set in the town of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales and tells the story of young NRL champion Chase Daylight (Dan Ewing) navigating the macho footy lifestyle and finding his way towards the Christian faith. Chase lives with his mum in Wagga and plays for the local rugby team, the Comets, who are not doing too well. His best mate, Rhys (Stan Walker) plays AFL, but together they like to party hard.

When Chase realises that his party lifestyle might be affecting not only his game, but also his relationship with girlfriend Brooke (Isabel Lucas), he starts reflecting on his priorities. An encounter with the local reverend (George Houvardas), a man who understands from personal experience some of Chase’s troubles, sets Chase on the path to finding faith. Despite temptations and challenges along the way, Chase must try to turn his life around.

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.

Sport; the Christian faith; relationships; sex outside of marriage and abstinence; absent fathers; macho attitudes

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:

  • Chase runs and shoves another man in the chest in a threatening way because he sees the man talking to his girlfriend. He justifies the aggression as being because he thought the other man was ‘hitting’ on his girlfriend, even though it wasn’t the case. 

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.

Apart from the violent scene described above, there are no scenes in this film that would disturb or scare children in this age group.

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.

There are no scenes in this film that would disturb or scare children in this age group, but older children in this age group may have some questions regarding the sexual references or the religious themes.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group may also have some questions regarding the sexual references or the religious themes.

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Nothing of concern

Product placement

Nothing of concern

Sexual references

There are many sexual references in this movie, including:

  • A woman is seen waking up in bed after a one-night stand with Chase. He asks her to climb out the window and he seems embarrassed to have lowered his standards to ‘that kind of woman’. It is implied that he could do better.
  • Rhys kisses his girlfriend passionately and asks her for ‘a quickie’ before he has to go play football.
  • Chase talks about how he needs to not get distracted, while there is slow motion footage of football cheerleaders dancing.
  • Rhys introduces Chase to some girls in a bar as ‘Big Chase, because he’s got a really big...heart [wink wink]”
  • Rhys and Chase go home with some women from the bar to have a one-night stand.
  • The coach says to the rugby team (referring to the game) “They pulled our pants down out there boys, and not in a good way”.
  • In the locker room, one of the players urinates on another players leg and says “It’s just a little golden shower! Everyone is doing it!”

 

Nudity and sexual activity

  • There are no scenes with explicit sexual activity, but it is often implied that it is about to happen or has just happened.
  • Scenes of men showering together after a football game, but only from the waist up.
  • In the last scene two men take their clothes off, but there is a black square covering their genitals.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • Adults drink alcohol in bars or in their homes

 

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • “shit”; “balls”

In a nutshell

Chasing Comets is a warm-hearted movie that tries to tackle some of the common issues that young men, especially those involved in sports clubs, might experience. One, in particular, is the temptation to have meaningless sexual encounters and shallow relationships with women. The movie has a very strong moral plotline that encourages young people to wait until they are married to have sex, without being too evangelical or condemning of those who don’t choose that path. The film is aimed at teens and young adults and younger children may find it a little boring. It is not recommended for under 13s because of themes and sexual references.

The main messages from this movie are that young people should wait until they are married before they have sex, and that belief and faith in Christianity can help you make the right choices in life.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include the importance of meaningful and respectful relationships between men and women.

Parents may wish to discuss:

  • toxic masculinity and the macho culture that encourages objectification of women and a disrespectful attitude towards them.
  • infidelity