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BOSSA NOVA

“The Dance of Love”

Family Content: -2 Extreme caution for older teenagers and adults.

Entertainment Quality:

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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

There’s one thing to be said for BOSSA NOVA, a romantic comedy from Brazil in Portuguese and English, its music will leave viewers humming one of those popular bossa nova hits from the 1960s. In the movie, American actress Amy Irving stars as an English teacher who attracts the attentions of a recently separated middle-aged lawyer and a soccer superstar. Comical complications ensue. Rounding out the entertaining misadventures are several funny romantic subplots with six other characters. The stories all culminate at the airport in Rio de Janeiro.

A charming, breezy farce, BOSSA NOVA’s message is similar to the mega-hit TITANIC’s: follow your heart. This message seems undercut by one of the subplots. In that story, the ex-wife of the lawyer finds out that the Chinese man she’s living with has some bad habits that make her regret leaving her husband. Be happy with what you have seems to be the message of her story. BOSSA NOVA also includes 49 obscenities and some sexual content, mostly implied. Eliminating the obscenities, the implied sexual promiscuity and the movie’s romantic, non-Christian worldview would help earn BOSSA NOVA much higher ratings from MOVIEGUIDE®

Content:

(RoRo, Pa, LLL, V, S, N, A, D, MM) Romantic worldview regarding one’s purpose in life, with some hedonistic pagan elements; 49 mostly strong obscenities & 0 profanities; man punches another man, knocking him down; one scene implies couple fornicated, one instance of implied oral sex in fantasy scene & one scene where couple starts to undress to fornicate in office but it’s unclear whether fornication actually takes place; obscured partial nudity & underwear shown; alcohol use & woman gets tipsy; smoking; and, lying to penpal through Internet, woman leaves her husband but comes back after he’s fallen in love with someone else & sexual promiscuity treated as normal part of life.

More Detail:

There’s one thing to be said for BOSSA NOVA, a romantic comedy from Brazil in Portuguese and English, its music will leave viewers humming one of those popular bossa nova hits from the 1960s. In the movie, American actress Amy Irving stars as an English teacher who attracts the attentions of a recently separated middle-aged lawyer and a soccer superstar. Comical complications ensue. Rounding out the entertaining misadventures are several funny romantic subplots with six other characters. The stories all culminate at the airport in Rio de Janeiro.
A charming, breezy farce, BOSSA NOVA’s message is similar to the mega-hit TITANIC’s: follow your heart. This message seems undercut by one of the subplots. In that story, the ex-wife of the lawyer finds out that the Chinese man with whom she is living has some bad habits that make her regret leaving her husband. Be happy with what you have seems to be the message of her story.
BOSSA NOVA also includes 49 obscenities and some sexual content, mostly implied. Eliminating the obscenities, the implied sexual promiscuity and the movie’s romantic, non-Christian worldview would help earn BOSSA NOVA much higher ratings from MOVIEGUIDE®.