Small Foot

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Short takes

Not recommended under 5, parental guidance recommended to 8 (some violence and scary scenes and language)

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This topic contains:

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

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 5 Not recommended under 5, scary scenes, violence and language.
Children aged 5–8 Parental guidance recommended for children between the ages of 5-8
Children aged 8–13 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: Small Foot
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: scary scenes, violence and language.
Length: 96 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Migo (Channing Tatum), an enthusiastic yeti who loves his tribe and always tries to obey their laws, no matter how ridiculous they may be, is banished for telling the truth about witnessing a plane crash and encountering a smallfoot (human). He meets a secret society of yetis, led by the Stonekeeper’s daughter Meeshee (Zendaya), who also believe that smallfoot exists and together they hatch a plan to prove their existence to the entire yeti community. Migo disappears into “the great nothingness” and makes his way down the mountain, below the clouds, where he finds a human village and an animal activist, turned TV show host, called Percy (James Cordon) who tries to get his producer to dress up like a yeti to improve their terrible ratings. After a rough start to their relationship due to communication issues (the yeti’s speech sounds like angry growling to the humans and human speech sounds like high pitched chipmunk chatter to the yetis) Percy accompanies Migo back to the his village. While the yeti (smallfoot) encounters are met with amazement, and where humans are concerned often terror from both sides, they soon learn that they have far more to fear from ignorance than they do from each other.

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.

Banishment, separation from a parent and community, some scenes showing animated animal distress.

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:

  • There are frequent falls and jumps from great heights during which there is a lot of screaming but no one is injured.
  • A plane crashes but the pilot is fine, only terrified at meeting a yeti.
  • Migo is shot with a dart gun.
  • Humans repeatedly fire darts and aim other weapons at the yetis.
  • There is a destructive chase scene through a village where lots of property is damaged.
  • A flashback scene shows the yetis being attacked, stabbed with spears and shot.
  • An eagle attacks a goat and is then hit with a snowball.
  • Migo is caught in a bear trap and his big toe is injured.

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:

  • There are a number of initial yeti human encounters that result in terrified screaming from humans and what appears to be wild and angry growling from the yetis.
  • Migo is pursued through a dark forest by armed men on snow-mobiles. He is eventually cornered and shot. The scene is both stressful and suspenseful and could frighten younger viewers.
  • Percy nearly dies twice, once from being frozen and once from lack of oxygen. Both Migo and Meeshee are extremely worried for him.

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.

  • Aside from the above mentioned scenes there is nothing in this film that would disturb children between the ages of five to eight.

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.

  • There is nothing in this film that would scare or disturb children over the age of eight.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

  • Social media is referenced a number of times with icons similar to what you would see on You Tube or Facebook appearing during a song that Percy sang.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • There are no sexual references in this film.

Nudity and sexual activity

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

  • There is no nudity or sexual activity in this film.

Use of substances

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

  • A stressed out pilot is seen drinking in a bar.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • The film contains occasional use of the following words: “dumb,” “crap,” “crazy,” “weird,” “pathetic,” “stupid,” “jerk” and “sucks.”

In a nutshell

Smallfoot is a feel-good, animated, musical. Aimed at children, this film is a movie the whole family can enjoy together.

The main messages from this movie are to question things that don’t make sense, to listen to and learn from those who are different and that even when the truth is scary it is better to know and understand it than to be uninformed and live a lie.

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

  • Honesty
  • Integrity
  • Friendship
  • Curiosity
  • Standing up for what you believe in.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children the importance of investigating the truth for themselves without blindly following age old traditions or outdated knowledge, the importance of making their own calculated judgements based on fact and experience and reason and the importance of communication with others instead of hiding away or shutting yourself off from those who are different.