“Joyful, Feel-Good Moments Marred by Excessive Obscenity”
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What You Need To Know:
FLORA AND SON has many charming moments. Many of those moments include the movie’s songs, which have beautiful melodies, catchy lyrics and positive messages. However, the movie, even its positive parts, has abundant foul language, including many “f” words and 11 strong profanities. FLORA AND SON has two really crude comments in one scene and other immoral dialogue. All this spoils the movie’s joyful message of reconciliation.
Content:
Strong, somewhat mixed pagan worldview, with immoral and moral elements, about a divorced 31-year-old mother and her 14-year-old son who don’t get along with one another, but they eventually reconcile and bond together over music and when she supports her son when he gets into trouble and he responds positively to her love for him, plus mother’s new guitar teacher on the internet talks to her about the divine gift of music and overtly mentions God once or twice, but she flippantly wonders if and worries that he’s some kind of “Christian evangelist” in that one scene
101 obscenities (including many “f” words), 11 Jesus profanities, one OMG profanity, and one or two obscene gestures
Light violence includes mother slaps her teenage son during one of their verbal jousts, and store owner chases down and grabs teenage boy who’s stolen an electronic keyboard
Two crude references to oral sex in one scene, several references to a woman’s rear end and an implied scene of fornication when divorced mother wakes up, and the man she picked up the night before enters the bedroom
No nudity, but some female cleavage, especially in an early scene set in a nightclub where many people are dancing
Some alcohol use, plus light drunkenness in a nightclub where there’s dancing and the lead female character and her friend down four shots while dancing furiously in between
Smoking and one light comical admonition about not smoking marijuana; and,
Teenage boy and his mother often have angry obscene words with one another but eventually reconcile, and teenage boy is caught stealing an electronic keyboard and has to go to juvenile detention for four weeks because of his habitual stealing (this seems to straighten him out, however).
More Detail:
Flora, who had her 14-year-old son Max when she was only 17, is not a very good mother, but Max is not a very good son. Max is sullen and gets in trouble a lot, and they often trade obscene insults toward one another. The local policeman for wayward youths like Max advises Flora to find her son a hobby to keep him out of trouble.
So, one day, she picks an old guitar out of the trash, has a music store fix it up, and gives it to Max for his birthday, one day late. Max doesn’t appreciate the gift at all, especially since his birthday was yesterday. He storms angrily out of their apartment. (Max later tells his mother that he doesn’t like acoustic guitars anyway.)
While staring at the guitar in her kitchen one day, Flora decides to look up guitar lessons on the internet. Maybe, she can learn how to play the guitar. However, most of the people teaching
guitar on the internet are pretty pathetic. Except for one man, a washed-up, gentle young musician in Los Angeles named Jeff. Her first lesson doesn’t go well, though, because Flora comes on to him, and Jeff hangs up. However, Flora writes him a nice apology, and Jeff resumes guitar lessons with Flora.
The lessons go well, and it becomes evident that Flora and Jeff are attracted to one another. Then, Flora learns that Max has created a melodic rap song on the Guitar Band app about a girl he likes. While she listens to the song, she contributes a beautiful short lyric for the song. She then helps Max make a cute music video to send to the girl he likes.
Working with Max encourages Flora to help Jeff with one of his old songs. She helps him add a really nice chorus for it that could help sell the song to a record company.
However, all the positive vibes hit a sour note when Max gets in trouble again.
FLORA AND SON has many charming, feel-good moments. A lot of those moments include the songs in the movie. Most of the songs, if not all of them, have beautiful melodic lines and some positive lyrics about love, reconciliation and/or joy. Also, the movie’s basic story is a story of reconciliation and new beginnings. The cast does an excellent job telling this story, from the major players to the supporting actors.
Sadly, however, the entire movie, even the feel-good moments, is filled with strong foul language. For example, there are slightly more than 100 obscenities, including many “f” bombs, and at least 11 strong profanities. Some of this foul language expresses negative sentiments and ideas. Also, one scene contains two really crude, gratuitous sexual references. So, FLORA AND SON has a mixed pagan worldview and attitude with moral and immoral behavior. However, the basic story shows the mother and son overcoming their conflict to find a new harmony through music. The foul language is excessive, though, and will prevent FLORA AND SON from reaching a broad audience during its short theatrical run and its streaming life on Apple TV+.
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