1%-5% of your purchase will help support the PTC.

Parents Television Council Reviews	Share |
PTC reviews aim to provide you with advanced information about an entertainment offering so that you can be the final arbiter of what you and  your family see.
Get new reviews sent to your inbox!

G-Force - the covert government program that uses animals for espionage – must prove that it is worthy of continued government funding. So guinea pig super-agents Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Blaster (Tracy Morgan), Juarez (Penelope Cruz), and star-nosed mole, Speckles (Nicholas Cage) infiltrate the headquarters of sinister industrialist, Leonard Saber. They hack into Saber’s network and uncover a devious plot for world-wide domination. Unfortunately, they lose the key evidence to implicate Saber and save their program. With the agents sold off as pets, they must find a way to regroup and save the world from total destruction.

Violence is the most problematic aspect of the film - this is, after all, a Jerry Bruckheimer film. The guinea pigs are constantly facing moments of peril which include nearly being eaten by dogs and a snake, flying through traffic in high-speed hamster balls, car crashes, being set on fire, fighting home appliances that come to life (à la Transformers), nearly being nuked in a microwave, being crushed by a garbage compactor, troublesome dialogue about the mole’s family being exterminated, and several moments where death is implied. During the screening, in fact, younger children could be heard crying when one of the characters appears to have died. Overall, though, the violence is mild and mostly slapstick. No characters, human or animal, is ever really harmed.

Some of the violence, however, is related to some problematic behavior. In particular, there is a teenage boy in the film who treats the guinea pigs cruelly. At the pet store, he tosses one across the room into a snake tank. When the snake strikes at the guinea pig, it hits the glass plate and the audience realizes that the guinea pig luckily landed in the tank right next to the snake. That same teenage boy takes another guinea pig home and places it in his remote control jeep. He sends the jeep careening over makeshift ramps and dangerous obstacles. Luckily, the hamster is Blaster, who lives for this kind of extreme sports, but the boy’s behavior might give impressionable children some bad ideas.

In addition, the humor is unfortunately mostly of the bathroom variety. For example, one character is known for his flatulence. At one point, the agents set his flatulence on fire in some ill-conceived attempt to escape the cage at the pet store. That same character passes gas in an enclosed space, causing the agents great disgust. Also, some jokes are made about the bathroom being where the agents are standing.

Sex and foul language aren’t much of a problem. There is some chaste flirting between Juarez, Blaster, and Darwin. Both Blaster and Darwin wonder if Juarez is interested in either of them, but she keeps them guessing. Language is also mostly clean except for one instance when Blaster utters the phrase, “Pimp my ride.”

The film does try to inject the values of family and loyalty amid the action and crude humor. Since all the animals in the movie have been adopted in some way or another, the film tries to convey the sense that family can include the people around you that care for you and support you even when you’ve been separated from your relatives. This point could have been made more poignantly, but in the context of this film, it feels a bit forced and contrived.

The PTC does not recommend this film for viewers under age 9, given the amount of perilous action and crude humor.

 

Family Movie Reviews

The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org

Have you seen this movie? Comment on this review, Click here!