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Join Focus on the Family's media and culture analysts for lighthearted reviews for parents and conversation about entertainment, pop culture and technology. Through this 30-minute podcast from Focus on the Family, you'll hear practical information from a Biblical worldview to help guide decisions about what to watch, listen and visit. And connect to a ton of related Christian resources and articles.

Recent Episodes

235: Is Swift’s New Album Taylor-made for Trouble? Plus, We Look at Sight

Don’t Know How to Talk with Your Kids About Entertainment? We Can Help! Plus, Kid-Friendly Games

Episode 233: Summer Movie Preview, plus A Conversation with Great American Family President Bill Abbott

Episode 232: The “Reinvention” of JoJo Siwa, plus Fallout

Episode 231: How Entertainment Shapes Our Beliefs, plus Netflix’s Testament: The Story of Moses

Episode 230: Let’s Talk About Technology! plus A Conversation with For King + Country

Episode 229: Why Popular YouTubers are Retiring, plus Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Episode 228: How Entertainment Shapes Us. Plus: A Conversation with Rebecca St. James

Episode 227: A Conversation with Karen Kingsbury, plus Boundary Basics—The When, What and Where of Screens

Episode 226: Introducing Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, plus Navigating Non-Christian Worldviews in Entertainment

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In Theaters

• Animation , Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

• May 17, 2024
• Ryan Reynolds as Cal; Cailey Fleming as Bea; John Krasinski as Bea's Dad; Fiona Shaw as Grandmother; Voices of Emily Blunt as Unicorn; Steve Carell as Blue; Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Blossom; Maya Rudolph as Alligator; Louis Gossett Jr. as Lewis the Bear; Sam Rockwell as Guardian Dog; Awkwafina as Bubble

Home Release Date

• John Krasinski

Distributor

• Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

Twelve-year-old Bea is having a tough go of things. You see, she lost her mom when she was little, and now her dad is sick, too. And he has to have an operation at the same New York City hospital that Bea’s mom was in.

It’s good that Bea’s grandmother lives nearby, so Bea can stay with her. But the tween is finding life difficult right now.

Don’t get me wrong, Dad is still playful and full of jokes, like usual. He’s trying to keep things light and help Bea find fun in life’s tricky moments. But Bea can’t help but stop and tell him, “Sometimes, life doesn’t have to be fun.”

Dad agrees, with an assuring smile and a warm hug. He tells her to go on out and “explore her own story” while she’s here. Figure out how everything fits. But he tells her … to have a little fun, too.

Then something unexpected happens.

After returning to her grandmother’s apartment, Bea spots an odd little figure fliting in and around the building’s shadows. At first, she thinks it’s a young girl. But when getting closer, she realizes this person looks like a 1930s cartoon version of an anthropomorphized butterfly.

Hmmm. How very strange.

Bea secretly follows the creature back to the apartment of a man named Cal. And after forcing him to talk to her, Bea finds out that the amazing-looking character, called Blossom, is none other than an “IF”: an Imaginary Friend.

You see, imaginary friends are often left behind, Cal tells the girl. They help their young human pals through tough times, but then the kids tend to forget all about them once they grow up.

Cal has the ability to see all the left behind imaginary friends in the world. Just as Bea apparently can. And after Cal shows Bea to a retirement home full of bizarre and wonderful IFs, she is ready to lend a hand.

Bea determines to spend her time at grandmother’s helping Cal find new homes for the lonely IFs. And maybe they’ll reconnect some IFs with their now grown-up kids, too.

What Bea doesn’t realize, however, is that there might be a big part of her own story that she’s about to connect with as well.

Positive Elements

We see a nice video montage of a 6-year-old Bea dancing and playing with her mom and dad. As we near the end of this collection of family moments we realize that Bea’s mom is dealing with an illness that wasn’t obvious in the earlier scenes. Mom asks her to tell a story: Bea’s story. In narration, an older Bea thinks back on those moments and tells us, “I realized that the most important stories we have to tell are the ones we tell ourselves.”

This insight later plays into the narrative that 12-year-old Bea tells her Dad, who is seemingly unconscious and just out of surgery. She talks of the things that she’s learned about herself and others. She notes that her dad’s love is vital, and she says his embrace is one of the only places she feels completely safe. Bea emotionally declares that he must stay with her. And her groggy father, stirs and tells her it was a really good story.

Bea also digs up an old, forgotten video camera that she finds in her grandmother’s closet. She wistfully looks upon those forgotten images. In that light, when Cal takes Bea to a “special” place where the IFs live, she asks him if it’s a magical place. He tells her it used to be. And it turns out that the IFs’ residence is beneath Coney Island—the very place where Bea and her mom and dad recorded some of the videos.

The film also makes it clear that remembering the past—the highs the lows, the sweet moments, and difficult challenges—make us better, more thankful people. In the course of things, for instance, adults who reconnect with memories of their forgotten IFs find themselves happily flashing back on valuable lessons and joys they once experienced. (The IFs likewise glow happily in those momentary connections. They celebrate with other IFs over those short but potent reconnections.)

[ Spoiler Warning ] The IFs collectively worry that if they are forgotten, then they won’t be needed. And if they aren’t needed, they’ll cease to matter or exist (some of the very feelings that lonely people sometimes have, too.) We eventually discover that Bea has an imaginary friend whom she forgot, too. She accidentally realizes her misstep and apologizes. Bea thanks him for his past help and declares that she’ll always remember and need him going forward.

Spiritual Elements

The only spiritual-like elements in the mix are things of imagination.

For instance, an older IF named Lewis tells Bea that the IFs’ “retirement home” domain can be positively changed with just a little imagination. So Bea uses her imagination to magically transform the generally dour place into a building that’s vibrant with song and dance. Ultimately, all the IFs gather in a rock concert-like celebration with a classic Tina Turner song. (Tina shows up and joins in, too.) A ghost is one of the IFs. One imaginary friend calls Bea the “chosen one.”

Sexual Content

While visiting the IFs, Bea and Cal walk in on an IF art class that’s painting an IF “model.” The apple-with-stick-legs IF quickly grabs a towel to cover it’s “nakedness.” Cal tells a banana-like IF to put on some pants. “You’re freaking everybody out,” Cal says as the embarrassed IF covers its lower banana extremities.

Violent Content

Bea meets a young boy at the hospital who says he falls a lot. He has a broken leg, arm and tailbone. (He calls it a “broken butt.”)

When Bea first comes face to face with two different imaginary friends, she faints and falls to the ground.

A burning marshmallow IF melts, dropping its eye to the tabletop. A giant puffball-like IF named Blue has a few panic attack moments that Cal states could lead to a blow up. (Each is diffused at the last moment.)

Crude or Profane Language

The dialogue includes about two dozen misuses of God’s name (in the form of “OMG”). Those are joined by one use of “gosh” and two uses of “h—.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Other negative elements.

A giant Gummy Bear IF nervously passes gas. Cal breaks into a kid’s bedroom to retrieve Blue. There’s some talk of needing to vomit.

There’s something refreshingly lovely about a family-focused film that doesn’t choose to jump through the same old problematic hoops.

IF , written and directed by actor John Krasinski, is one such film. It’s original and creative and sets something of a new gold standard for its brilliant blending of CGI and live action characters. The film talks about navigating loss, remembering the good things of the past and finding your place in the world. At the same time, this pic lauds the love of family and the special connection between dads and daughters.

Drawbacks? Well, God’s name is misused several times. And we get a couple of winking gags about “naked” fruit characters that might cause a parent to roll his or her eyes.

But the biggest yellow flag here is perhaps the fact that the early chapters of the tale can be a little confusing for younger viewers. (It’s all made very clear by the conclusion in a few tearfully sweet moments.) That’s said, when those broad and silly imaginary friends are mixed with a few snacks, even the littler tykes will likely be a satisfied crew.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Plugged by Eoin Colfer – review

T he rumour that JK Rowling may one day turn to crime has long persisted, despite any declaration of intent from her, because it clearly makes publishing sense to lure escapees from one of publishing's most lucrative genres – children's fiction – into another: mystery and suspense. Eoin Colfer , having achieved global eight-figure sales with the fantasy Artemis Fowl books and other juvenile ventures, is now attempting such a project with Plugged , his first adult crime novel. Colfer also wrote And Another Thing . . . , an impressive extension of the late Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series, and so there's a sense of a successful author trying on new choices and voices, resisting the trap of being defined by a revered series.

In the journey towards crime fiction, Colfer is helped by the fact that his children's hero, Artemis Fowl, was a master criminal. The narrator of Plugged is also quite a dodgy dude. Daniel McEvoy is an ex-soldier, a common background for a character in this form, although his particular experience is promisingly fresh. Dan served with the Irish army, which has specialised in peacekeeping duties around the world – possibly because, as he points out before the reader can, of the excellent record of peaceful co-operation between communities on their own island. He served several tours in Lebanon and still carries shrapnel in his back from a Hezbollah rocket attack. However, now out of uniform and working as a doorman in New Jersey, his main medical concern is tonsorial. We meet Dan while he's waiting for the plugs to take from a recent hair transplant procedure.

This comedy of vanity in an action protagonist alerts us that we are in the territory of comedy crime, in the style of Carl Hiaasen or, on this side of the Atlantic, Christopher Brookmyre and Colin Bateman. Nicely summarising the house style, Dan at one point breaks off from describing a badinage-packed standoff with the baddies to observe: "I don't respond. All this wisecracking is more exhausting than the gunplay."

As shown by that quote, Plugged is told in sardonic monologue, a story-telling form that has the weakness of tipping off the reader that, even in the most tense scenes, the hero must survive; although as the dustjacket declares the novel to be the first of a series, his longevity is already taken as read. And the novel is not completely one-voiced: Dan is granted a kind of psychic sidekick. His best mate from the Lebanon, cosmetic surgeon Zeb Kronski, now missing, believed dead, keeps popping up as a taunting, prompting voice, speaking in italics.

By employing an Irish central character in an American setting, Colfer sensibly combines his own natural linguistic inheritance with a key publishing market. As Dan investigates the murder of an occasional New Jersey girlfriend, coming up against drug dealers and two female detectives with a complex sense of justice, there are numerous telling details, such as the small triangle in the corner of a car windscreen signalling that the glass is bulletproof – which, as our narrator notes, usefully narrows down the driver to "good guys, bad guys, or maybe a rapper praying someone will shoot him".

As he showed with the Artemis Fowl books, Colfer is an engaging and inventive writer with a strong sense of the rhythm of a story, its twists and riffs. His Douglas Adams continuation was also cleverly negotiated without damage to either the host franchise or his own reputation. But that Hitchhiker spin-off was inevitably, at some level, an exercise in superior pastiche; and a sense of prose karaoke also hangs over Plugged .

Always entertaining page by page, the book also has a truly unexpected sex scene and much sassy dialogue. However, there's a recurrent tic in which Dan worries that what's happening doesn't quite feel real to him. "It's what a Hollywood cop might say," he frets about one exchange with a detective. One comment meets the rejoinder that people say that kind of thing "only in movies". When someone kisses Dan, he frets that it's "like a movie kiss".

At the risk of sounding like Simon Moriarty, the Freudian army shrink who treats Dan's post-Lebanon stress disorder, these repeated references to the secondhand fictionality of the exercise might be taken as a psychological signal that Colfer fears a movie screen is intervening between him and his computer screen, that he is putting on borrowed clothes. In his experiments beyond the youth shelves, he is proving impressively versatile, but he needs to be wary of losing his own voice.

Mark Lawson's Enough is Enough is published by Picador.

• Eoin Colfer
• Crime fiction

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The Alienist

• Crime , Drama , Medical

• Daniel Brühl as Dr. Laszlo Kreizler; Dakota Fanning as Sara Howard; Luke Evans as John Moore; Douglas Smith as Marcus Isaacson; Matthew Shear as Lucius Isaacson; Robert Wisdom as Cyrus Montrose; Brian Geraghty as Theodore Roosevelt; Q'orianka Kilcher as Mary Palmer; Matt Lintz as Stevie Taggert; Brittany Marie Batchelder as Joanna Crawford; Melanie Field as Bitsy Sussman; Emily Barber as Violet Hayward; Rosy McEwen as Libby Hatch

TV Series Review

It’s never been easy to catch a killer.

But imagine trying to catch ’em before DNA evidence. Before our cell phones tracked our every move and dutifully catalogued every text. Before even  fingerprints  were accepted evidence.

And that assumes the police even  want  to find the murderer. In Season One, they argued that Georgio Santorelli, a 13-year-old boy who worked as a prostitute in New York’s meanest of mean streets in 1896, deserved his cruel fate. Now, in Season Two (called Angel of Darkness after the book it’s based on), police pin the disappearance of two infant children on the parents .

If these poor souls are to find justice, Dr. Laszlo Kreiszler and his brave band of helpmates will have to find the killers. And they’ll have to do it the  really  old-fashioned way.

In 19th-Century New York, No One Can Hear You Scream

Laszlo is a psychologist, or “alienist” as they were called back in the day. This TNT series tells us that they were so called because their patients were thought to be “alienated from their own true natures.” Laszlo has a particular interest in criminal psychology, which makes him a forerunner to today’s criminal profiler.

But you could argue that Laszlo—at least in this show’s understanding—is a bit of an alien from 19th-century culture himself. He trusts women. He trusts forensic evidence. He doesn’t trust religion one little whit. And he’d certainly be in favor of a more, um,  liberal  attitude toward sex than was typical back in Victorian-era America. Why, it’s almost as if a politically correct time machine traveled to 2018, nabbed a suitably enlightened denizen of our time and dropped him into 1896 New York City. Because really, what gritty, realistic period drama  couldn’t  be improved with a little 21st-century paternalistic air of superiority?

And indeed, if Laszlo has a fault, it’s that he seems to believe himself faultless.

But Laszlo may have found his match in Sara Howard, who now owns her own private detective agency. It’s possible that she, too, is less a product of her time and more of that same time machine: Strong and able, she’s madea career for herself and has little time for the era’s rampant sexism—whether it be the leering ogles of folks in the police department or the misguided gallantry of her friend and associate John Moore.

The three of them, along with police inspectors Marcus and Lucius Isaacson, are determined to apprehend what we’d call serial killers today. And therein we begin our significant litany of issues with this show.

A Chest Burster Ain’t Got Nothing On This

First, the violence.  The Alienist , based on best-selling books by Caleb Carr, is as gruesome and as brutal as anything we’ve seen this side of premium cable, and well into R-rated territory if it had landed in movie houses instead. (After all, Angel of Darkness’ victims are babies , and we see this evidence on screen.) Viewers see horrifically mutilated bodies and terrible evidence of disease. During the show’s first season, The Atlantic  said that it’s a “veritable grab bag of triggering visuals and nauseating images.” The Parents Television Council used the show as an opportunity to plead for à la carte television. “Those who want to watch explicit content like  The Alienist  should be able to choose to pay for it,” PTC President Tim Winter said in a statement. “But it is unconscionable that those who are offended by it must also underwrite it.”

And the series can get into other tricky territory as well. Lest we forget, the victims of Season One’s brutal acts are  boys —boys who have been perhaps abused and brutalized for years as, essentially, prostitutes in New York’s most unsavory districts. These pubescent sex workers wear women’s clothing (and often skimpy clothing at that) and call each other by female names, and they cater to a presumably same-sex clientele. While  The Alienist  implies that most are forced into the industry, it also suggests that most of these underage prostitutes are beaten into it because of their own same-sex leanings: In the show’s telling, the brothels where these boys work and the clients who pay them are less complicit in their corruption than their intolerant moms and dads.

Indeed, it seems that faith and religion are as much societal enemies as serial killers in  The Alienist . A Catholic priest is seen serenely watching police beat a man nearly to death. In one episode, a man berates Laszlo for his apparent lack of faith, then says flatly that a 13-year-old boy—mutilated almost beyond recognition—”had it coming.”

The Alienist  seems determined to lump religion in with racism, sexism, poverty and indifference as the greatest social ills present at the turn of the century. This despite the fact that, in those days before pervasive social programs, the Church was about the only place that the abused and poverty-stricken could turn to for help. I’m sure that Christianity had its share of bigots and jerks back then, just as it does now. But this series’ depiction of the faith so far is disappointingly one-sided. For all of Laszlo’s enlightened tolerance for those of different races, genders and sexual orientations, the show itself seems to harbor a vitriolic bias against Christianity.

The Alienist  depicts its share of graphic and lewd sexual encounters between adults as well. Drinks are quaffed, cigars smoked and, while the language does stay a bit cleaner (and more period-appropriate) than you might expect given all the other problems, it can still stray into the foul, too.

TNT’s  The Alienist  is as dirty, messy and brutal as the streets from which it pulls its story. And even while its intrepid, enlightened heroes track down killers, the show itself hacks away at its viewers’ mind, heart and soul.

Episode Reviews

July 26, 2020, episode 4: “angel of darkness: gilded cage”.

Sara’s employee, Bitsy, goes undercover at the Lying-In Hospital to gather information on the corruption within. Meanwhile, Sara and Laszlo attend John’s engagement party in order to get closer to the hospital’s owner, who they think might be the killer.

A woman slaps the hospital matron, chokes her and then stabs her in the neck repeatedly. She then paints the woman’s face with her own blood to make the corpse look like a baby doll. Someone is poisoned via a drug-filled syringe, but a doctor is able to administer the antidote before she dies. A woman is slapped and chased by another after insulting her.

We see the pictures of many dead children, made up to look like they are sleeping for the grieving parents. There are several conversations about stillborn babies and the grief associated with losing a child. We learn that two mothers who lost their children later took their own lives.

Laszlo’s team discovers that the mistresses of wealthy men brought to the Lying-In Hospital always have stillborn children and are sterilized after the births. They suspect that these children are actually being murdered. We hear the details of an infant’s murder.

Several women covered in blood from helping in a childbirth clean a hospital room. There are several guns hanging in Sara’s office. Someone lies about being late to work, saying that the tram hit a person. A woman picks a lock to enter an off-limits room.

A woman wearing a corset and underskirt kisses her fiancé and tries to undress him. Another woman’s back is partially exposed as she tries to dress herself after a surgery. Women wear dresses with cleavage at a ball. A man says it’s OK to have multiple mistresses since the girls weren’t “innocent.” Someone says that “Chief Mistress” was a royal court position in France. People drink champagne and smoke cigars and cigarettes. Sara puts her cigarette out in a man’s drink.

It is implied that a woman won’t be able to write about New York’s high society because she is black. After being publicly humiliated by his fiancé and her godfather, a man pretends he doesn’t mind but admits that he stays with her because he doesn’t want to wind up alone. There is a reference to male genitals. God’s name is misused several times. People light candles in a church for the lost.

The Alienist: Feb. 19, 2018 “Hildebrandt’s Starling”

Dr. Lazlo, Sara and John uncover a letter that leads them to look for a murderer known for his graphic abuse and mutilation of children. Sara suggests that the letter indicates the murderer was abused by his mother, causing Lazlo to rethink his own hypothesis. The team works with the police to discover the identity of the murderer, but the police seek out the wrong culprit.

The letter from the murderer includes phrases such as “saucy” and “dirty immigrant” in reference to young boys. The team concludes the murderer has an obsession with “the desecration of the body” and is both violent and sadistic. The murderer is seen dancing with a young boy in a dress and pouring drugs into his drink; he also gives him a milk bath (though we only see the boy’s head and shoulders). The murderer is also kissed on the cheek by his mother, and he violently protests her affection.

In an effort to realign his own thought process and understand the murderer, Lazlo and John head to a prison to speak with Lazlo’s old patient, known as “Hildebrandt’s Starling.” This child killer tries to convince Lazlo he murdered them (and mutilated their faces) because of his own disfigured face. He also tries to stab Lazlo once Lazlo realizes he’s lying. The guards violently beat the patient.

The team uncovers that the murderer has been killing boys on “holy days” based upon the Christian calendar.

John and Sara occasionally flirt and John mock proposes to Sara, until he realizes she might marry him if he were a better man. He quits drinking, but continues to smoke.

Other characters smoke cigarettes and cigars, as well as drink whiskey, wine and other hard liquor. John’s mother suspects he has a hangover. We hear the word “d—ed.” Pictures of mutilated boys are seen and discussions of their entrails are heard. Masturbation and ejaculation are discussed. A bishop explains that “we’re all evil” and “everyone is born in sin.”

The Alienist: Jan. 29, 2018 “A Fruitful Partnership”

Laszlo and his team formalize their partnership over dinner to capture 13-year-old Georgie’s killer. But after Laszlo offends his somewhat inebriated friend, John Moore, John decides to walk home—then takes a detour to a boy brothel to do some investigating himself.

We see lots of pubescent lads there, many seemingly in their early teens. Most are shirtless or wear women’s clothes and are heavily made up, flirting with the adult male clientele. One leads John to a back room. Despite John’s insistence that he’s just there only for information, the boy kneels down as if preparing to perform a sex act. The brothel’s owner, however, has drugged John’s drink: He passes out on a bed and several other half-dressed teen boys come and writhe about the impaired visitor.

We hear deceased Georgio—called “Gloria” at work—was “not like other boys,” and that he ran away from home because his father beat him because of those apparent differences. Someone says that he died in sin, while another says he deserved to die. In the same neighborhood, we see other presumed prostitutes—some women in revealing outfits, some men dressed as women—loitering in the alleys. Two people noisily and graphically have sex. (The man’s rear is visible, and both are apparently naked.) They introduce themselves to each other as they’re in the throes of passion. We also see Sara, one of Laszlo’s helpers in the murder case, in some bust-augmenting undergarments and a slightly revealing dress. A policemen ogles and try to flirt creepily with her. Laszlo and Sara seem to flirt, too.

Laszlo examines a young girl underneath her dress as her mother frets that the girl masturbates every day. “The priests say she’s losing her mind,” the mother says. Laszlo says she’s just becoming a young woman. A priest (who’s mysteriously privy to the goings on in this case) insists the girl needs God, not a doctor, and that her body is “a blessed gift not to be defiled by lust.” Laszlo quotes Scripture back to the priest (“Whoever does not love, does not know God”). Lazlo says that God never gave him answers, only questions; and he finally declares that his business is “a sanctuary for the young. I will not tolerate its trespass, neither by man nor by God.”

A woman talks about lighting candles for the Sabbath. A priest watches and prays as police beat a man almost to death. (A boy later says that he’s a “holy Joe.”) We see the brutalized man hit, kicked, thrown down flights of stairs and smashed into the ground. Later, we see his bloodied face. A man cuts an eyeball out of a cow skull. We see pictures—both photographic and drawn—of dead and sometimes mutilated boys. There’s discussion of how one victim had his tongue removed. Someone sticks tubes into cadavers and lights the tubes on fire, like candles.

Characters drink a variety of alcoholic beverages (a Jewish diner suspects the wine is not “kosher”), and one smokes quite a bit. We hear verbal references to masturbation, mutilation, prostitution and suicide. Characters misuse God’s name four times. We also hear “d–n” and “b–ch.”

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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Plugged In: A Clinicians' and Families' Guide to Online Video Game Addiction

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