Wish Dragon | 2021 | PG | – 1.3.2

Why is “Wish Dragon” rated PG? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “mild action and rude humor.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes some flirting and hand-holding, a few deaths without gore, references to child abuse and severe poverty, a man transforms into a dragon and back again, a few martial arts style fight sequences with no visible injuries, and some mild language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

---

A poor teen boy (voiced by Jimmy Wong) finds a magic teapot containing a dragon (voiced by John Cho) that will grant him three wishes. However, three bumbling henchmen of a wealthy businessman (voiced by Will Yun Lee) try to steal the dragon before the boy’s wishes are fulfilled. Also with the voices of Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Constance Wu, Bobby Lee, Jimmy O. Yang, Aaron Yoo and Ronny Chieng. Directed by Chris Appelhans. [Running Time: 1:38]

Wish Dragon SEX/NUDITY 1

 – After a dragon changes into a man, his tail reappears as he speaks with a woman at a party; the tail slaps the woman on the buttocks, she bats her eyes, smiles and giggles, and chases the man around the room, calling out that he is playing hard to get. A young boy and young girl hold hands and in a later scene, they hold hands as adults.
► We hear that a rich man once had 17 wives.
► An elderly man wears a sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts in two scenes and a teen boy wears a sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts in another scene. A teen boy’s suit falls apart at the seams and his trousers fly away on a gust of wind, leaving him in only a sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts.

Wish Dragon VIOLENCE/GORE 3

 – The camera passes through a colorful wormhole and then a man appears at a tall gate in the sky, arguing with a guard wearing armor, who changes him into a long purple dragon and puts him into a teapot; in several scenes on Earth the dragon shoots out of the teapot with large clouds of purple smoke and we hear that the man has been a dragon that grants wishes for 1,000 years as punishment, and he later tells a teen boy that he asked for another 1,000 years as a dragon.
► A 9-year-old boy and a female classmate adopt a baby chick and they are later shown putting feathers on the chicken’s grave that is marked with a headstone and the girl cries; then the boy and the girl take out fried chicken legs and eat them and the girl later admits that it was her idea to cook the pet chicken.
► A young girl and a young boy hold kite strings and are pulled across many tiled roofs and finally into a small rooftop shed that falls to pieces, but they are uninjured. A teen boy falls from a roof in one scene and a wooden scaffolding in another; he bounces from awning to awning and lands with a thud on the ground, unharmed. A woman and a man run across tiled roofs.
► A man fights a teen boy using martial arts moves in several scenes on the ground, on a wooden scaffold, and on a thin cloud in the sky; the fights include hand strikes, kicks, and flips without injuries. A man kicks three guards several times each, kicking two of the guards into walls and leaving them unconscious. Two men fist fight briefly and fall off-screen. A large dragon rushes headlong into a plate glass window and later into an iron fence, without injury.
► A man on a high scaffold grabs a teapot and his hand turns to gold, he kicks another man off the scaffold and down to the sidewalk, where the second man gasps and dies (no blood is seen) in his crying adult daughter’s arms; a dragon appears later and creates a glowing light that shines on the dead man’s chest and he comes back to life. A man jumps off a scaffold and into a van with two other men and a teen boy jumps onto the back bumper as they speed away; the door opens and one of the men fights with the boy until a dragon uses magic to fill the van with hundreds of puppies to stop the fight; the dragon jumps in front of the teen boy and the man punches him, turning himself and the dragon to solid gold, and the van turns to solid gold and veers off a bridge into a river below and the man breaks to pieces when he hits something in the water; the dragon hits the river bottom with a thud and the boy surfaces unharmed to float on a sheet of broken wood.
► A scene in the sky and clouds shows a dragon now changed into a man as he argues briefly with a guard at a gate, who changes him back into a dragon. A dying man sits up in a bed as he shakes his fist because his family and friends are not with him. Three men argue among themselves for a few seconds.
► A hologram made of dotted outlines shows a man and his slaves as they build a statue of him and an arrow passes harmlessly with a whoosh through the body of a teen boy looking at the hologram; two slaves then carry the body of a man with an arrow stuck in his chest on a stretcher.
► A young man and a young woman stand on a silver platter and slide down a long flight of stairs into the street and hide from pursuing men under a large dragon costume in a parade; the men put on a dragon costume and the two costumes fight up a flight of stairs and onto a roof, until both sail off the roof; one costume crashes immediately and the other costume crashes a minute later in a blur of popping firecrackers, but no one in either costume is hurt.
► A small apartment is crammed with at least a dozen people in one family and as they stand in line for the bathtub and a pipe breaks and causes water to spray through the roof. An elderly man lives in a room without walls or a ceiling, but has one partial wall with an entrance door on it. Two men have a swordfight in a TV scene (no injuries). A man and a woman in a TV scene argue for several seconds in a soap opera.
► A young boy is beaten by his mother with a wooden spoon and a rolled up sheaf of papers until he is an adult. In a widespread traffic jam, angry men and women drivers honk horns, shake their fists, and scream out their car windows. A man enters a shop, closes the door that faces the camera, and we hear the first man punching the male shopkeeper several times and hear the victim groaning.
► In a Kung Fu demonstration, a man is pinned to a wall by many flying darts through his clothes (there are no injuries). A woman unexpectedly sees a billboard of her face, is startled, and falls down, uninjured. In another scene, she falls on a short staircase, but is unharmed. A dragon is frightened by a ringing cell phone and a TV, squealing each time. In the background of a scene, a speeding van sideswipes a parked car, and we hear a muffled thud, but we cannot see the damage.
► A man drinks out of a toilet in a public washroom and sits against a wall as another man enters the room and we hear but don’t see urination; the first man runs into the hallway and spits water that we see into the air. A teen boy in a taxi flatulates and says he had a big lunch. A large dragon posing as a costume in a street scene drinks a large pot of yellow soup and vomits it all over the street (we see the liquid). A woman snores in bed loudly in one scene and a teen boy snores loudly in a later scene. A small dragon slurps soup audibly.

Wish Dragon LANGUAGE 2

 – 1 scatological term, name-calling (stupid, crazy, simpleton, silly, ignorant, dumbest, twerp, weird, peasant, peasant boy, just some girl, old man in a skirt, son of a cabbage farmer, ridiculous, jerk, dirt bag, snake eyes, dump), exclamations (shut-up, heck, Great Wall of China, jeez, pow, boom, wow, man, whoa, argh), 6 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, God, I Am A God, the heavens have opened, you dare reject the will of the gods). | profanity glossary |

Wish Dragon SUBSTANCE USE

 – Servers at a party hold trays of glasses of champagne and men and women hold glasses of champagne in their hands, a man drinks two glasses of champagne, a man and a woman throw their empty glasses on a floor and the woman says she does not need any wine, and a woman shouts for several seconds and demands to know from her teen son if he drinks alcohol (he says he does not).

Wish Dragon DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Trying to please everyone, Asian religions, mythical beasts, heaven, death and afterlife, reincarnation, poverty, secrets, lies, fear, ambition, success, failure, business bankruptcy, greed, murder, bringing back the dead by magic, friendship, family.

Wish Dragon MESSAGE

 – Hiding one’s background and social status is a mistake.