Eat Wheaties Parent Guide

Sid Straw (Tony Hale) has a pretty good life with a stable job, his own place, and a nice car. He’s even been invited to co-chair the committee responsible for his college reunion, which is especially exciting for Sid as he went to school with actress Elizabeth Banks! While working on the reunion, Sid signs up for Facebook and starts reaching out to old classmates, including Elizabeth. But Sid’s enthusiasm quickly ruffles some feathers at her agency, and Sid finds himself on the wrong end of a restraining order, one which could preclude him from attending the reunion. As things spiral out of control, Sid increasingly wonders if he’ll ever figure his life out…

With movies that haven’t been rated by the MPAA you can get a real grab bag of content issues. Here, there are hardly any. Brief social drinking and incredibly infrequent profanity are about all parents have to worry about. If it were up to me, I’d say this movie comes in at a PG-13 level, but it’s not far off from a PG. That said, the subject matter is probably a little dry for younger viewers, so this is more likely to appeal to teens.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that Eat Wheaties isn’t exactly a laugh-out-loud comedy. If you’re looking for a real side-splitter, you might want to keep looking – but if you do, you’ll be missing out. Eat Wheaties is one of the most endearing, kind-hearted little pictures I’ve seen in….forever, I think. Characters are, for the most part, well-intentioned people trying their best to treat others kindly. You don’t see that too often.

Of course, that does come at the cost of some of the movie’s humor. As W.C. Fields said, “Comedy is merely tragedy happening to someone else”, and if you limit how tragic you’re willing to be, you cut off some of the more conventional avenues for the genre. Not to say that this isn’t funny, which would be unfair, but it’s a different kind of funny. Instead of guffawing over pies in the face or playing “gotcha” with people’s flaws, this is a movie that prompts wry smiles or gentle laughter over the relatable foibles of its characters. For my money, at this point in a seemingly interminable pandemic, on a roller coaster of ineffective half-measures and (in my area) poor governance, a little kindness seems to be just the thing – and I don’t even like Wheaties.