Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups

image for Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups

Short takes

Suitable for all ages but lacks interest over 7

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups
  • a review of Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 11 October 2018.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 5 Most children under 5 could see this film with or without parental guidance.
Children 5 to 8 Children between the ages of 5-8 could also watch this film with or without parental guidance but it lacks interest for children over 7

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: Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: Very mild themes
Length: 44 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

A team of six helpful pups, together with their young mentor Ryder (Justin Kelley), try to serve and protect their town. When a rocket ship knocks a meteor off course and sends it blasting through the atmosphere straight for Adventure Bay, the pups are the first on the scene and find themselves with individual super-powers curtesy of the cosmic rock. These super powers are soon put to work when the villainous Mayor Humdinger (Ron Pardo) joins forces with his naughty nephew Harold (Chance Hurstfield), who was also close enough to have gained supernatural abilities from the rock, to steal the meteor from the town hall and use it for his own personal gain. The pups must work together to stop the pair before they inadvertently destroy the town.

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.

Super powers; good versus evil

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 rocket ship crashes into a space rock creating a large explosion and causing a meteor to veer off course and head straight for the town.
  • Mayor Humdinger and his nephew destroy the front of Town Hall while stealing the meteor.
  • Harold creates a machine that captures the pups and damages the town, including a beloved tulip garden before the pups manage to escape.
  • Ryder is locked in the Pups command centre and held captive by Harold.

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 scenes described above, children under the age of 5 are unlikely to be scared by anything in this film

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 of concern

Product placement

The movie itself contains no product placement but parents should be aware that the film is an off shoot of the Might Pups TV series and that there are entire lines of merchandise based on the characters portrayed.

Sexual references

None

Nudity and sexual activity

None

Use of substances

None

Coarse language

None

In a nutshell

Mighty Pups: Paw Patrol is an animated adventure aimed at preschoolers. The plot is very predictable and will generally not appeal to older audiences.

The main messages from this movie are to believe in yourself and never stop trying. It also illustrates the fact that everyone has a role to play and that by working together seemingly impossible obstacles can be overcome.

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

  • teamwork
  • helpfulness
  • determination
  • problem-solving
  • leadership

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children the importance of taking responsibility for their actions and the reality of dealing with consequences when things go wrong. Parents could also discuss the importance of having the courage to keep going even when things look hopeless and you feel like giving up.