PG-13

Men in Black is a lot like an amusement park. Technically fun for the whole family but one or two attractions roped off for the older kids and adults. Hence the PG-13.

What bumps up the rating from a family-friendly PG to a PG-13 is the fantasy violence. Fantasy violence means that the humans get be punched, pushed, and knocked around, but they aren't allowed to bleed. The alien creatures, on the other hand, are consistently eviscerated in glorious fountains of blue, green, and puss-colored blood. If our childhoods of anime, video games, and Saturday morning cartoons have taught us anything, it's that funky colored blood doesn't count as actual violence—at least in the censor's eyes.

The only thing bluer than the blood is the language. IMDb provides a list of the terms not suitable for impressionable ears, which includes 15 anatomical terms, 18 scatological terms, 29 mild obscenities, name-calling, 1 possible f-word, 3 religious profanities, and 2 religious exclamations. Apparently those last two aren't the same thing.

That laundry list reads like an anthropologist's study of a typical middle school recess yard and that probably provides a good rule of thumb for the film. If the child's vocabulary has already been irrevocably tainted in middle school, there's not going to be any further damage here.

Oh, then there's the sexuality. There are a few innuendos that the female lead, Dr. Laurel Weaver, has a kink or two but nothing too explicit. Um… yeah, not much to report here.