The nominees for the 97th Academy Awards were announced on Jan. 23. And while the movie industry prepares for the biggest night in cinema on Mar. 2, folks at home may not be so eager to tune in this year.
Of the 29 feature-length, narrative films nominated, 16 are rated R—and with good reason. Five of those are contenders for Best Picture, making up half the category. And those five movies (Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Emilia Pérez and The Substance) dominated many of the other categories, too.
But even the two PG-rated flicks nominated for the most coveted Oscar (Conclave and Wicked), have some serious spiritual and worldview concerns for families.
Wicked: Part 1, of course, is a tale about witches, a fact that shouldn’t be taken lightly, however innocent the film’s original inspiration may seem. Certainly, this Broadway adaptation takes its cues from L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (and the 1939 film starring Judy Garland). And fans of the musical will find that the film largely sticks to the play. However, the book Wicked is based on, written by Gregory Maguire, drifts about as far from the family-friendliness of Baum’s original tale as you can get.
Conclave, as Bob Hoose wrote in his Plugged In review, “is a very well-crafted film.” However, he continues, “The movie declares that the church will not survive unless it tosses its ‘antiquated’ traditional values (translated as Scripture-focused and thereby ‘hate-filled’ tenets) to the curb. It’s repeatedly proclaimed that the church should, rather, embrace the progressive gender, sexual identity and social ideal of the contemporary moment.”
With that sort of messaging in Best Picture’s PG nominees, the significant concerns with the R-rated nominees probably shouldn’t surprise us either. For the first time ever, a trans person has been nominated for an acting award. Karla Sofía Gascón, who portrayed the lead in Emilia Pérez, is up for best actress for portraying a brutal drug lord who changes his gender identity.
Really, the Oscar nominations are a bit of a letdown this year. But the one category parents might be able to stomach is best animated film.
Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl were both nominated for our own Plugged In Movie Awards (in Best Movies for Kids). Flow made it into our Teens category, and if you check back on Friday, you just see a nod to The Wild Robot as well. In fact, of the five Oscar nominees for Animated Feature Film, Memoir of a Snail was the only one we didn’t nominate—and that’s largely due to the fact that it’s an R-rated film aimed at adults.
You can, of course, read reviews for all the nominees at Plugged In. (You can also check out our podcast and YouTube channel for more conversations about these films.) Whereas other critics will largely focus on the artistic aspects of these films, Plugged In is here to let you know what sort of content and worldview you’ll encounter so that you can make the best decision for you and your family before you start watching.
So if you’ve looked through the Academy Award nominations and decided that those films just aren’t worth your family’s time (or money), check out the Plugged In Movie Awards. We’ll be announcing our own nominations for Best Movies for Kids, Teens, Adults and Best Christian Movies through Feb. 14. And we’ll be selecting winners on our Feb. 27 episode of The Plugged In Show podcast. We’ll be announcing those winners, as well as the film you chose, on our blog, Feb. 28.
