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This Is Where I Leave You | 2014 | R | - 6.4.7

A new widow (Jane Fonda) insists that her four alienated adult children (Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and Corey Stoll) sit Shiva in a weeklong Jewish wake for their departed father (she's not Jewish and their father was an atheist). During the week the siblings clash in emotional mayhem but also reconnect with each other and old friends. Also with Rose Byrne, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant and Dax Shepard. Directed by Shawn Levy. [1:43]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - A husband enters his bedroom and finds his wife in bed with his boss; we see the man's bare back with a large black tattoo, bare buttocks and thighs thrusting fast as the couple in bed shouts each other's names; we also see her bare shoulders and arms and his bare chest, abdomen, shoulders and arms as the husband asks how long the affair has lasted and the boss says this is the first time while the man's wife tearfully says it's been a year. A wife and her husband have sex in a bedroom with an active baby monitor, while a living room full of people at a wake downstairs hear them panting and shouting; the woman shouts as a man in the living room says, "Circle of life, folks!" and an elderly man with an elderly woman announce that they sleep together.
 A man and a woman enter the woman's home and kiss passionately as the man carries the woman off-screen (sex is implied); the camera cuts to a scene of the couple side by side under blankets, their shoulders and arms showing and a few days later, she tells the man that it was only sex, not a relationship. A man's girlfriend is close to his mother's age and his siblings tease and rebuke him for it; he kisses her in the driveway of the family home in a close embrace and rubs her buttocks. Two couples kiss for several seconds on a sidewalk. A married woman sneaks into the bedroom of an old boyfriend, her brother-in-law, and asks him to have sex with her; he is clothed and we see her shoulders under thin straps as she sits on top of him in bed and he tells her to stop grabbing him, as a toddler walks into the room carrying a potty chair and wearing a shirt and briefs. An older woman walks up to her female neighbor of a similar age outside the first woman's house and they kiss passionately; the large family of the first woman stares in surprise.
 A man and a woman in an ice rink promise to meet again in six months in order to begin a romantic relationship and kiss passionately. A woman in a hospital room lies beside her dead husband and kisses him on the cheek.
 A married woman considers having sex with an old boyfriend who is now brain damaged; she comes out of his house early one morning and admits to her brother, who sees her, that she had sex with the injured man, but says, "Love causes cancer" and her brother admits to her that he had sex with an old girlfriend.
 A senior citizen sports very large breasts from implants she says she received and significant cleavage is shown when she wears a long bathrobe; she embarrasses her adult son, who tells her to cover up and get a second sash in two scenes and she tells him that they are the same breasts at which he suckled and he denies that and says they are new. A woman raises her breasts with her hands beneath the bosom of her robe and says to her adult son, "Your father used to love to put his penis between..." (her son stops her). A woman's adult daughter lays her head on her mom's shoulder and pushes her large breasts out of the way. Two shower scenes feature a man's bare shoulders, arms and back. A woman wears several dresses and blouses that reveal moderate amounts of cleavage and in one scene her adult son stares at her cleavage.
 At a wake a man flirts with an old flame who is wearing a low cut mini-dress that bares significant cleavage and her legs up to the upper thigh; the man's girlfriend sees this and in a few days asks his brother if her boyfriend likely had sex with the other woman and the brother affirms her suspicions (they then break up). A man repeatedly pokes a Rabbi in the crotch about a dozen times, as the Rabbi tells him to stop and in a final poke the Rabbi swears, "I swear to God! Stop touching my balls!"
 We hear that a married couple is attempting to become pregnant, unsuccessfully and she demands that he have sex with her "right now" (she calls him on his cell phone during every ovulation) several times; the man's sister asks him if he has had his man parts checked, because they may be empty. A married couple separates and the wife later asks for reconciliation, but her husband refuses, even after hearing that she is pregnant with his child. A newly estranged wife tells her ex-husband that she is pregnant with his child and they mention that they lost their first baby to a miscarriage; she says that her boyfriend is sterile, so the baby must belong to the ex-husband. A radio show host asks, "Is it gay for a man to groom his private parts? What if a husband cheated on his wife? He should have sex with a 4, a 5 and not wait for a 10. He has a foot-and-a-half of rope in his pants." At a wake, a widow talks about her dead husband's genitals being large and with a large circumference. A widow says that she misses her dead husband and it his genitals and tells friends that she and her husband's first date included sex in a car behind the local Marathon gas station. A woman says of a Rabbi, "He used to touch my boobs." A woman tells her youngest son to be responsible for where he puts his penis; she tells bystanders that he used to lick his penis as a child, thinking it was a Tootsie Roll and she makes licking motions with her tongue; he becomes irritated and tells her to stop and she then says that he had a healthy sexual curiosity; his sister tells everyone that he used to masturbate with an oven mitt. A Rabbi was nicknamed a slang term for erection in high school by his former classmates and they remind him of this several times at a funeral and wake. A woman tells a man that she uses a skating rink in exchange for small sexual favors. A man says that fossil fuels are sexy. A woman says that at age 11, she got her father's attention when he was on the roof to tell him about her first menses by throwing a baseball at him (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A straight woman tells another straight woman that a younger woman at a wake they are attending is so beautiful that she'd "do her."
 In several scenes, a boy toddler carries his portable plastic potty around and uses it on the front porch and in the living room; he wears shirts and underpants, which he pulls down for sitting on the potty (we see his buttocks once).

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A woman in the hospital calls her ex-husband, crying that she is bleeding and about to have a miscarriage (we see no blood); we then see an ultrasound machine with a fetus image on it and a doctor gliding the wand on the woman's belly as the technician says there is no heartbeat but the heartbeat is then heard; a man that the woman had an affair with walks in, kisses her, and argues with the ex-husband until a physician enters and tells the men to leave so they argue loudly in the waiting room and begin to push each other and shout as a guard tells them to watch their language and behavior; a woman walks in from the street and slugs one man, bloodying his nose, as two guards remove the two men and the woman.
 A man's older brother accuses him of kissing the older man's wife and tries to punch him several times, chasing him outside, where they grapple with a hose and some sort of garden rake as relatives and friends cheer them on; they stop when they see their mother approach a woman neighbor (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details).
 Two adult brothers fistfight in the family living room during a wake and smash each other into walls (we hear a crunch as one brother lands flat on his back, but he rises without serious injury). A woman smashes a large china plate onto the floor and runs out of the room during an argument. Five men, one on crutches and a leg brace, turn a large sports car onto its roof; the car owner (a man with a bloody nose) argues briefly with another man and walks away.
 In a blurry hospital room scene, we see two IV bags hanging on a stand beside disconnected equipment and hear that the man in the bed is dead; still in a blurred scene, the man's wife yanks out the breathing tube harshly. In two scenes, sparks fly when a man touches a circuit breaker box and in the second scene he receives a jolt that knocks him unconscious (he dreams about his now-dead father helping him up after he fell off his bicycle as a child). A man steps onto an ice rink and falls hard onto his back (he suffers no permanent pain). Three brothers accidentally set off a sprinkler system and fire alarm in a Temple by smoking marijuana (please see the Substance Use category for more details); we hear sirens in the background and the Rabbi tells them to leave before the police shows up. A man drives his sports car recklessly, fast and erratic as his brother, in the passenger seat, shouts for him to slow down several times, until the driver lets him out of the car.
 A woman, her adult children and their spouses and partners argue loudly in several scenes about the family business, relationships, sexual affairs and breast implants (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details), having children and having secrets; in two scenes, they shout so loudly in the living room that people in the basement can hear the argument clearly and a bossy woman, one of the adult children, berates her brothers continuously and her husband avoids her.
 A man at a wake says several times that his wife is absent because of a bulging disc; when people keep pushing him for information he shouts, "I'm divorcing her [sexual and anatomical terms deleted]" and says they separated because she slept with his boss. A woman says that as a child she threw a baseball at her father when he was working on the roof to get his attention and it hit him in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground, where he broke an arm and had to go to the hospital. A woman says that secrets are cancer to a family. We hear that a male senior citizen has died from an unspecified illness and a funeral scene shows a closed casket with mourners dressed in black. We hear that a man suffered brain damage in an automobile accident and that he has short-term and intermediate memory deficit.
 In several scenes, a boy toddler carries his portable plastic potty around and uses it on the front porch and in the living room; in one scene, brown material appears in the potty and he throws the potty at an uncle, who shouts, but we see no feces. In one scene, a woman runs into a bathroom, wretches and vomits loudly over a toilet, and wipes her mouth, but no vomit is visible.

LANGUAGE 7 - About 27 F-words and its derivatives, 11 sexual references, 27 scatological terms, 18 anatomical terms, 14 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, stupid, idiots, baby, moron, shrink, whore, skanky, cold-hearted slut, asinine, strange, weird, Scout Master, Boner), stereotypical references to men, women, widows, dysfunctional families, playboys, cougars (older women with younger men), shock jocks, psychologists, uptight Whites, Jews, atheists, homosexuals, exclamations (shut-up, shut your face, butt out), 4 religious profanities (e.g. GD, I Swear To God),), 22 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, God, Godspeed, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Mazel Tov, Holy [scatological term deleted], For Christ's Sake, Hebrew hymn sung in Temple).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man tells his brother that the only thing he could grow was weed, three men find marijuana in a jacket pocket and leave a service to smoke marijuana cigarettes and the room fills with smoke (the men act intoxicated as they sing and dance), a man says that his father was a stoner, a man finds a marijuana cigarette in a jacket pocket and packs it in his suitcase, a man takes aspirin for back pain, a woman holds a pregnancy test strip and jokes to a relative that she is a drug addict, and a widow at a wake remarks that she has been popping Xanax. A man on the radio tells listeners to have a whiskey or a bourbon, a man jokingly asks a toddler boy if he has been drinking all day and the boy says "Yes" (he has not), filled wine bottles are seen on a kitchen counter and on a refrigerator shelf, liquor bottles are seen on shelves in a living room while men and women in the room hold glasses of alcohol and do not drink, a woman with a coffee cup says that she has schnapps and drinks from the cup, a woman drinks a glass of wine on a rooftop, and six men and women drink shots of liquor in a bar where mixed drinks and beer bottles are seen on tables. A man carries an unlit cigarette and a disposable lighter on his patio.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Death, Jewish customs, faith, atheism, communication, honesty, relationships, love, marriage, fidelity, pregnancy, conflict, reconciliation, letting go, maturity.

MESSAGE - Families can produce strange relationships.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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