Story

Based on the children’s book by Alison Lester, Magic Beach is a collection of short animated stories. It’s about children’s imaginations and the different ways that they see and interpret the beach where they meet each day to play and explore.

Through the eyes of 9 children and a dog, the movie creates imaginary worlds with underwater scenes, mermaids, pirates, sandcastles under attack, and more. The final scene shows all the children playing happily on the beach while the sun goes down.

Themes

Imagination; books and storytelling; imaginative play

Violence

Magic Beach has some violence. For example:

• A large fish eats a smaller one.
• A possum drops berries on a dog’s head.
• A dog steals sausages from a butcher, who chases angrily after it.
• A dishonest trader, called Salty, lures smugglers to the deadly rocks, which ‘could rip you apart like teeth’. The ship sinks, and all the smugglers perish.
• There is play fighting on the beach. Children use a wooden trebuchet to throw sand at a sandcastle. A boy throws sand stars back in return.
• Two characters in robotic suits clash into each other.

Sexual references

There are no sexual references in Magic Beach.

Alcohol, drugs and other substances

Magic Beach shows some use of substances. For example, Salty smokes a cigar and has a drink, which looks like alcohol.

Nudity and sexual activity

There’s no nudity and sexual activity in Magic Beach.

Product placement

There’s no product placement in Magic Beach.

Coarse language

There’s some mild coarse language and insults in Magic Beach, including ‘I’ll be damned’. Also, Salty calls the smugglers ‘mutton heads’.

Ideas to discuss with your children

Based on the classic children’s book of the same name by Alison Lester, Magic Beach is a mixture of animation, claymation and live action.

The imaginary stories are shown in either animation or claymation, which clearly distinguishes them from the characters in the live action sequences. This makes the imaginary stories less scary for children. Magic Beach is suitable for all ages, but we recommend parental guidance for children aged 4-5 years because it has some scary scenes.

The main messages from Magic Beach are about the wonder of stories, the power of the imagination, and the way your imagination can take you anywhere you want to go.

Values in Magic Beach that you could reinforce with your children include the importance of:

• reading to children
• sharing stories
• playing and having fun.

Magic Beach could also give you the chance to talk about how our imaginations can sometimes create scary characters and scenarios. You could reassure children that these are just stories and there’s no need to be scared by them.