St Trinians

image for St Trinians

Short takes

Not recommended under 15 due to themes, drinking and smoking, drug and sexual references.

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for St Trinians
  • a review of St Trinians completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 27 March 2008.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 15 Not recommended due to themes, drinking and smoking, drug and sexual references.
Children aged 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: St Trinians
Classification: M
Consumer advice lines: Moderate drug references, Sexual references
Length: 101 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

St Trinians School for girls is notorious for turning out girls fit for a life of crime. New girl Annabelle Fritton (Talulah Riley) is shocked to discover that the school encourages ‘free expression’ which translates into blowing up buildings and making vodka to sell on the black market. Her aunt Camilla Fritton (Rupert Everett), the headmistress, is surprised to meet up with an ex-lover who is now the new Education Minister, Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth). Despite past relationships, Thwaites is determined to close down the school because of its unorthodox teaching methods. In addition, the school is in dire financial trouble.

The girls decide to take it upon themselves to raise the necessary funds by robbing the National Gallery of its famous ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ painting. This involves cheating their way to the final of “School Challenge” which is to be held in the National Gallery.

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.

Crime; drugs

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, mostly slapstick, in this movie including:

  • a car is set on fire
  • a student is dragged, screaming, behind a tractor
  • the girls cover Annabelle in paint and feathers
  • a girl drops another girl over the stairs
  • a girl is hanging on a cross in the RE room
  • a violent hockey match where girls knock each other out with their sticks
  • girls throw Thwaites out of the window because they think he’s watching them in their underwear (they catch him with his pants down because he’s being bitten by ants)
  • Miss Fritton punches the bank manager
  • Miss Fritton points a gun to her head, but it’s a cigarette lighter
  • Annabelle punches Miss Fritton and knocks her out
  • Thwaites kicks the dog out of the window because it keeps rubbing itself against his leg – the dog falls into a shredding machine.
  • 10-year-old twins are experts in explosives – they blow up a shed and a door to get into the gallery.

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:

  • A skull is shown on the entrance post with a carving knife in it.
  • The emo girls look like vampires.
  • A girl is shown submerged in a fish tank looking as if she’s dead
  • A girl suggests a method to raise funds by kidnapping a rich man’s wife – cutting off her ear and then ‘keep cutting’.
  • Annabelle is woken in the middle of the night by a girl placing a hand over her mouth – she thinks something awful is about to happen to her.

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, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • A skull is shown on the entrance post with a carving knife in it.
  • The emo girls look like vampires.
  • A girl is shown submerged in a fish tank looking as if she’s dead
  • A girl suggests a method to raise funds by kidnapping a rich man’s wife – cutting off her ear and then ‘keep cutting’.
  • Annabelle is woken in the middle of the night by a girl placing a hand over her mouth – she thinks something awful is about to happen to her.

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.

Some children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes

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.

Children in this age group are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in this film.

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Annabelle phones her father who is occupied with several girls at the time.
  • Girls make ‘designer tampons’ – for those don’t want to ‘only look beautiful on the outside’.
  • Looking at the painting of the Girl with the Pearl Earring, the girls say they can see why Colin Firth wanted to shag Scarlett Johansson (in reference to the film of the same name).

Nudity and sexual activity

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

  • Annabelle is filmed taking a shower, her clothes have been removed and she runs down the corridor in the nude, trying to cover herself. This is then shown on U-Tube.
  • Nude paintings are shown on the wall.
  • The girls are painting a male nude in art class.
  • Thwaites is caught with his pants down in a manner suggesting he’s being turned on by the girls in their underwear. (He is actually being bitten by ants.)
  • Thwaites goes to bed with Miss Fritton.

Use of substances

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

  • Frequent drinking and smoking by girls and staff.
  • The girls make vodka to sell – one of them tests it and immediately passes out.
  • Thwaites starts to hallucinate after tasting a drink.
  • The school secretary supplies pills – “pink ones to pick you up, blue ones to bring you down”.
  • The girls give boys drugged tea to drink.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Slut
  • Piss
  • Oh my God
  • Bugger
  • Shit

In a nutshell

St Trinians is a modern film version of the comic books by Ronald Searle. It is likely to have some appeal to adolescent girls.

As this film is a comedy about girls behaving badly there are likely to be few values that parents would want to promote. Parents may, however, wish to discuss the real life consequences of the criminal behaviour and substance use seen in the film.