Resources put parents on F-bomb alert.

Byline: Jim Keogh

COLUMN: FILM CLIPS

My daughter turned 17 recently, a watershed moment for her because she is now officially eligible to see R-rated movies without having to be accompanied by a "parent or guardian." Technically, she could assume the guardian role for her 12-year-old brother and bring him along to some of those R movies, but she won't, if she knows what's good for her.

I have brought both my kids to R-rated films, and I try to use my best judgment about whether the artistic merit outweighs the raunch. I've had my hits and misses over the years, though I only seem to remember the misses, like cringing through "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" with my son (who loved it, of course), convinced that I'd put myself in the running for World's Worst Dad.

Another time, on a broiling, boring summer day, I succumbed to his pleas and took him to "Jackass Number Two," which features the rude, crude, sometimes nude, and often very funny pranks and stunts executed by Johnny Knoxville and the whacked pack from his MTV show. The guy at the ticket counter chuckled when he saw me, said he'd seen the movie, and suggested that perhaps I shouldn't tell my wife I'd brought our son. (I couldn't keep a secret from her, so I did divulge the terrible news - months later.)

Parents today have never had so many resources to help them determine what may be appropriate for their children. Ring up any movie on IMDB.com, click on "Parents Guide" and you'll receive a blow-by-blow account of why that film has earned its rating. Subscriber Web sites such as ScreenIt.com are also useful aides to learn specifically what content has landed a movie an NC-17, R, PG-13 or PG rating. Every Friday the T&G prints the Family Filmgoer to help folks gauge a movie's acceptability.

With the explosion of cable TV, videos, DVDs - options that weren't around during my childhood - such guides have found a meaningful niche in the cultural swirl. My own father had no such online luxuries in 1974 when his 13-year-old son begged relentlessly to be taken to his first R-rated movie, "The Godfather: Part II." It was an odd choice, because I hadn't even seen the first "Godfather." But I'd grown tired of the steady stream of Disney, disaster and horror pictures that regularly showed at the Park Cinema in Cranston, R.I., my neighborhood theater (remember those?), and the hype and glamour surrounding the "Godfather" sequel convinced me this was not too be missed.

Had IMDb's "Parents Guide" been around at the time, these are some of the descriptions my father would have had to wrestle with before making the decision to attend Francis Ford Coppola's gangster opus:

A man is shot in the chest as he enters his apartment. When he stands there, stunned, he is shot in the cheek and dies. The shooter then puts the gun in his mouth and shoots him again.

A man attempts to smother another man with a pillow, but is shot in the chest by police when he is about to do so. Bullets go through the pillow he was holding, and blood is seen splattering on wall behind him.

A man stabs an old man in the gut and slices upward with the knife. Blood is seen pouring from the wound. One of the old man's bodyguards is shot and killed. When they are escaping, a man is shot and wounded by a man with a shotgun.

And so on. Would any of the above have convinced dad to steer clear of the theater with me in tow? In hindsight, maybe so. Today, similar scenes would be at home on any episode of "CSI," but in 1974 this was some serious stuff.

Fortunately, dad had no way of knowing the gruesome details of "G:PII" ahead of time, so on a Saturday afternoon he brought me to the Showcase Cinema in Seekonk, where we watched Michael Corleone coolly ordering death to the family's enemies, including his own brother Fredo.

From that moment, the ballgame was over for me. I had to see grown-up movies, and my father obliged, taking me to "Dog Day Afternoon," "Blazing Saddles" and a host of other '70s classics followed until that glorious day when I turned 17 (to say I didn't sneak into a few off-limits movies with my pals before then would be a lie).

My kids would laugh at the content that earned a movie an R rating 30 years ago: One F-bomb and some blood was about all it took. There was no PG-13 at the time; that rating was introduced as a bridge between PG and R after a spate of movies aimed at a young audience was deemed too intense for younger children ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" earned one of the first PG-13 tags.)

I believe I've done OK ushering my daughter into the post-17 world without leaving any permanent scars, and I hope to do the same for my son. And if we someday go see "Jackass 3" before he hits that golden age, I think he'll survive.

Had the resources of today been available when this reviewer was a boy, his father likely would not have taken him to see "The Godfather: Part II." Today's parents have many tools at their disposal for gauging the appropriateness of movies for their children.