This Film Is Not Yet Rated (***1/4)

 ? Ever wonder about how movies get rated? This documentary looks at the process from start to finish. Filmmaker Kirby Dick submitted his own film and even hired a private detective to learn about the somewhat secret process employed by the Motion Picture Association of America. In addition to decrying this secrecy, Dick makes several specific criticisms of the MPAA ratings. He argues that, when deciding between an R rating and the box-office-poison NC-17 (or an R and a PG-13), independent films are treated more harshly than studio films, gay sex more harshly than straight sex, female sexuality more harshly than male sexuality, and sexual content more harshly than violence. Film clips and interviews help make these points. The interviewees include directors such as John Waters, Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry), and Trey Parker (South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut).

+ The movie pretty easily proves its points. Parker, for example, notes that the MPAA refused to tell him how to cut his independent film Orgazmo to avoid an NC-17 rating, but was willing to do so for the studio-made South Park. Even more interesting is the look at sexuality on film. Implicitly, the subject is not only the ratings system, but morality. Why are more films rated NC-17 for sexual content than violence? Even as American movies have become more violent over the last few decades, serious depictions of sexuality have probably decreased (even as comic portrayals, such as in the American Pie movies, proliferate).

- The significant portion of the movie devoted to the detective and her attempts to learn the identity of the MPAA ratings board members is not uninteresting, yet adds little to the arguments made in the rest of the movie. Some of that time might be better spent looking at the one element it somewhat neglects: the audience. For all I sympathized with Dick and the filmmakers he interviewed, I couldn’t help but continue to think that, for the most part, the rating system does reflect the values and beliefs of a majority of the public. The point is implicitly acknowledged a couple of times in the movie. It’s never made sense to me that parents would worry more about nudity and sexuality than violence, but it seems that they do. And is anyone surprised that gay sex would be seen as more objectionable than straight sex?

= ***1/4 Recommended not only for anyone interested cinema as art, or in censorship issues, but for people interested in the ways society projects its values.

IMDB link

viewed at PFS screening