Magic Beach

image for Magic Beach

Short takes

Suitable for all ages, however, parental guidance recommended for 5’s and under due to some scary scenes.

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Magic Beach
  • a review of Magic Beach completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 21 January 2025.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 6 Parental guidance recommended due to some scary scenes.
Children aged 6 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: Magic Beach
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: Very mild themes
Length: 77 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Magic Beach is a collection of short stories about children’s imaginations and how their different interpretations of reading the story book of Magic Beach play out. Through the eyes of nine children and a dog, an imaginary world of underwater scenes, mermaids, pirates, sandcastles under attack, and otherworldly scenes are displayed. The final scene is of all the children playing happily on the beach while the sun goes down.

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.

Imagination; Books and storytelling; Imaginative play.

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:

  • A large fish eats a smaller one.
  • A possum drops berries on a dog’s head.
  • A dog steals sausages from a butcher who chases angrily after it.
  • A dishonest trader, called ‘Salty’, lures the pirates to the deadly rocks which ‘could rip you apart like teeth’. The ship sinks and all of the smugglers perish.
  • Play fighting on the beach, with a wooden trebuchet throwing sand at a sand castle. A boy throws sand stars back in return.
  • Two characters in robotic suits clash into each other.

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.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • In animation form, a boy and his horse gallop across the ocean floor. A huge wave is seen rising and the boy and his horse are thrust up out of the water. He falls off the horse and tumbles to the shore.
  • A dog is stranded on the beach and carried out to sea. He sees a shark and other fishes. A smuggler’s ship gets into trouble in choppy waters during a storm. The smugglers are a rough-looking group.
  • A boy in a boat is pushed up out of the water by a large fish. A shell falls out of the boat and the boy dives into the sea to retrieve it. The boat is seen floating empty.
  • Some strange, alien-looking underwater creatures with luminous, amorphous bodies and yellow eyes.

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.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • The smugglers return as ghosts and haunt Salty.
  • The smugglers’ boat gets crushed by the deadly rocks during a wild storm. Dark skies and heavy rain persist, and loud, ominous music plays.
  • Salty is haunted by the smugglers, he sees them through his window and hears noises in the night.
  • A boy is regurgitated out of a fish’s mouth.
  • A girl is frightened by a seagull who looks at her with red eyes. She screams.
  • A baby is seen crying, wrapped up in seaweed by a creature with a yellow eye.
  • A girl and her pony ride through a watermelon forest, which scares the pony and they nearly trip a few times. Then watermelon seeds cascade all over them.

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.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

  • None noted.

Nudity and sexual activity

  • None noted.

Use of substances

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

  • Salty smokes a cigar and has a drink, presumably of alcohol.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • “I’ll be damned”.
  • Salty calls the smugglers ‘mutton heads’.

In a nutshell

Magic Beach is a mixture of animation, Claymation and real characters, and is based on the classic children’s book of the same name by Alison Lester. The imaginary stories are shown in either animation or Claymation, setting them apart from the real-life characters, which makes it less scary for children. While the film is suitable for all ages, parental guidance is recommended for 4 to 5 year olds due to some scary scenes.

The main messages from this movie are the wonderful power of the imagination, encouraged by storytelling; and the ability to travel anywhere your imagination can take you.

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

  • Reading to children
  • Sharing stories
  • The importance of play and having fun.

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

  • Sometimes our imaginations can run away and create scary characters and scenarios. Parents can discuss that there’s no need to be scared by them and that they are just stories.