Fame Review

Messages: Students have positive intentions to succeed. But the film imparts complex lessons about growing up by putting them in a variety of difficult situations. They don't always make the "right" choices, either, and because the plot resists tying up loose ends, it's rare to see what the consequences are.

Role models: Some students prove to be generally poor role models (cursing out teachers at school, having unprotected sex, using drugs) but ultimately redeem themselves at the end of the film, while others stay positive from the beginning. The cast is racially and ethnically diverse, but there's also some racial stereotyping, although it's largely a product of its time. Some students are at the mercy of predatory adults and don't always behave well.

Violence: A student (who carries knives) has a violent outburst in class in which he storms out and smashes glass doors with a trash can, and there are a handful of fistfights. Other characters describe violent incidents (not shown on screen) that have negatively affected their lives -- including a 5-year-old girl getting attacked by a junkie, a mother having her head put through a wall by her husband, and someone shooting himself in the head. One near suicide.

Sex: Several shots of frontal female nudity from the waist up, plus kissing and innuendo that teens are having unprotected sex (it's implied that Doris loses her virginity to Ralph, and another young couple's sexual activities ultimately lead to an abortion). One student becomes pregnant and schedules an appointment to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge. Another meets a stranger who claims to be a filmmaker and agrees to go to his apartment for a screen test, where she's asked to take off her top -- and does, although she cries as she's doing it.

Language: Heavy usage of "f--k" (in all its incarnations, including "motherf--ker" and "absof--kinglutely"), "s--t," "ass," "goddamn," and "hell," plus slurs and sexual terms like "faggot," "fag hag," "bitch," "dick," and "t-ts." Some obscene gesturing.

Consumerism: Not an issue

Drinking, drugs and smoking: Teens drink occasionally in nightclubs (legal drinking age at the time was 18). Two students smoke marijuana at a movie theater, and a first-time user says, "I got stoned! It was more than incredible; it was fun." Ralph uses unspecified drugs and drinks after his comedy shows.