‘Wrinkles the Clown’ Age Rating & Parents’ Guide

Does the new Wrinkles the Clown movie have any kind of age rating or parental advisory? Is it OK for children to watch? The answer is a little more complicated than you might think.

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Wrinkles the Clown Has No Rating, But the Documentary Does Have Brief Nudity

The movie was just released on October 4, but despite being about a clown, this documentary has parts that are just not appropriate for children.

The movie itself is unrated. So you won’t be able to get any advice on whether it’s OK for your children based on whether it’s PG vs R.

However, the movie does have nudity during one brief part that might make you think twice. At the very least, you might want to skip over that section if you’re watching with your kids.

To be more exact: about 38 minutes into the movie, there’s a scene with nudity in a strip club. If you’re watching at home and want your kids to watch it too, I suggest watching the movie first and finding a way to skip over that part. It’s very brief, but there’s female nudity during the strip club scenes that happen quite unexpectedly.

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The Movie Also Has Moments with Strong Langauge & Some Scary Scenes

The documentary also has some strong language and a couple of scary scenes that sensitive children might find disturbing, so give it a watch first and then decide. There’s one scene that shows Wrinkles putting blood over his face in a depiction of a horror film scene.

There are scenes where children are interviewed, and it’s interesting to see them talk about Wrinkles and their reactions to him. It certainly could open up some interesting conversations with kids. But the best advice for parents is to watch through the entire documentary by themselves first and decide which parts they want to skip over or if the movie really is appropriate for their children at all.

Ironically, Michael Beach Nichols, the movie’s director, told Heavy that one of the most shocking moments for him was listening to Wrinkles’ voicemails and learning just how many violent threats were left for Wrinkles from children.

“Only about 5 percent of the calls were actually parents who were calling to use Wrinkles as a misbehavior tool,” he said. “The majority of calls were actually kids who, in most cases, were calling to basically let Wrinkles know that if he showed up outside their house at 3 am, they’d be ready to defend themselves and they’d cut his head off basically. A lot of kids were basically taking their power back… They wanted to make him aware that they were ready to use deadly force to defend themselves. A lot of the calls were super violent, super profane. I definitely felt very shocked by the sort of language the kids were using… You just have kids speaking in a way that sort of doesn’t really line up with them being 10 years old when they’re saying these really obscene things.”

As of the time of publication, people who’ve seen the movie haven’t added any parental advisories with details to IMDb.

READ NEXT: Wrinkles the Clown Review: An Unexpected Documentary with a Fresh Look at Myths

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