How we rate
How Movie Knight rates family viewing
We are not trying to tell you whether a film is good. We are trying to answer the only question that matters at 7pm on a Friday: is this okay for the kids in this room, tonight?
Age tiers come first
Every title carries one age tier, derived from its official rating in your country. The tier — not popularity, not a rating average — decides what appears next to it anywhere on the site.
- All agesSafe to press play with the whole room watching.
- Watch with a parentFine for most kids, a few moments worth a parent nearby.
- TeensBuilt for older kids and teens.
- Age guidance pendingWe have not confirmed an age rating for this title yet.
Nothing above PG-13
Titles rated R, NC-17, TV-MA or their international equivalents are not listed, not searchable and never recommended. This is a hard boundary in the database, not a filter you can switch off.
Recommendations never age up
An all-ages title only ever suggests other all-ages titles. A teen title never suggests something harder than itself. Suggestions are also limited to titles we carry, so nothing unvetted appears.
Two ratings, both plain
The reviewer rating is the share of our published reviewer notes that recommend a title. The family rating is the share of signed-in families who rated it 3.5 stars or higher. Both are percentages you can recalculate from the reviews on the page.
Family Favorite
A title earns the Family Favorite seal when our reviewers broadly recommend it, at least five reviewer notes are published, and at least one comes from a reviewer whose family coverage we track. The seal reflects our own editors' reading of our own reviews — it is not a rating from any other publication.
Who writes the reviewer notes
Reviewer notes are written by the Movie Knight newsroom and by family-media reviewers we invite, each focused on what a parent needs to know: language, peril, themes, and whether younger siblings in the room will be fine. Every note is signed and, where it is sourced, linked.
Family reviews are moderated
Anyone signed in can rate and review. Every submission goes through a moderation queue before it is published, and a review that spoils, attacks or slips in adult content does not get through.
Corrections
If we have an age tier wrong, tell us — that is the correction we treat as urgent. Ratings recalculate instantly whenever a review changes.
See Family Favorites