Laika’s First PG-13 Includes ‘Suicide-Related Material’
The MPA gave “Wildwood” a PG-13 for strong fantasy violence and bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language. That is a crowded warning list for any film, and a stranger one for a stop-motion story about a girl hunting her kidnapped baby brother.
It is Laika’s first PG-13 in 17 years as a feature studio; at 140 minutes, it also ties the record for the longest English-language animated film ever made. Travis Knight, who runs the Portland, Ore., studio, directed “Wildwood.”
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The phrase that does the work is “suicide-related material.” A stop-motion film about a kidnapped sibling can absorb fantasy violence; that descriptor points to a darker fairy tale than the PG-13 label alone implies.
Or the stranger detail is the guest list: “brief partial nudity” and “suicide-related material” in the same rating notice for a sibling-rescue story. That is less a tone than a set of things a parent will have to explain on the drive home.