An interesting and decent documentary and I applaud him for his research, but his main quest throughout the movie wasn’t exactly exciting. This movie is about the MPAA and how they review movies and gives them ratings (i.e. R, PG13, etc). They have a bunch of good research and insight and how wrong our system is.
Official Site
IMDb: 7.9/10 (751 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users:B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 83% / Average Rating: 7.2/10
IFC Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
MY RATING: 6.5/10
Due to the fact that the movie posters are NOT WORK SAFE, I’ll only be posting links:
This Film Is Not Yet Rated Poster 1
This Film Is Not Yet Rated Poster 2
Spoilers: (Show)
The overall theme of the story is how the MPAA, which strives to protect “our children” by having this movie rating system, is not transparent and clear on how they rate movies. There is no specific guidelines and it appears to be on the whim of the few reviewers that watch it. Even after a movie has been rated, there appears to be people who can overrule their decision.
Also, there is no set of guidelines of where the line between each rating is. How does one define when a movie can be PG-13 and when is rated R? Another interesting fact is that the MPAA doesn’t disclose any of the reviewers and makes it somewhat like a secret society. One of the film’s main quest is to expose all the current reviewers. I personally don’t really care who the reviewers are, unless they’re like some big shot studio CEO. If they’re just regular people working, I could care less. I mean I guess some people would like to know, but I’m more interested on the overall process, which they also do a very good job of.
What’s always been funny to me and they iterate this point over and over again, is the fact that they are much more lenient on violence than on sex. People can have their body parts chopped off, heads decapitated, and blood squirting everywhere and still get an R rating. But if people have sex in the wrong position or focus too long on the pleasure, they automatically get an NC-17. And as I found out, if you get an NC-17 rating, basically no theater will play your film as there just isn’t any audience for it. Seems somewhat backwards right?
When you get a specific rating, if they’re nice, they’ll tell you what you can cut and make it a lower rating. If they’re not feeling nice, they’ll just tell you that the overall movie felt like an NC-17 and leave you at that. There is an appeal process, which is even more funny. Apparently, you can try to state your case, but you’re not allowed to refer to any other movie. How the heck are you suppose to appeal if you can’t refer to other movies and their ratings? Also without a clear guideline on where the line is exactly between ratings, you’re on the whim of the appeal board, which are different from the reviewers. The director asked if he could know the people on this appeal board as any public appeal system should allow you to know who’ll be judging you. But apparently that’s a no-no too. Funny thing is, the appeals board is sat in by CEOs of theaters, movie studios, etc, basically Hollywood moguls.
