This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) and Other Thoughts on the MPAA

The MPAA and its ratings are helpful if at a glance you’re trying to decide what to see. In other words, you don’t follow movie releases very closely and you’re just looking for a good show to watch. Shows that are for kids will be G or PG, with an occasional good adult movie being PG. Your typical action, or comedy, or romantic-comedy without too much graphic content will be PG-13, and shows with more mature or raunchier content will be R or above, with an occasional gem there too. The MPAA is good for those who don’t take movie watching all that seriously.

For those who do care about movies, it borders on a waste of existence. I get more information on the content of a movie from websites I frequent (rottentomatoes.com, commonsensemedia.org, imdb.com, kids-in-mind.com) than the vague and usually unimportant rating the MPAA slaps on a movie. While cinephiles and directors usually gripe about all the wrongs committed by the MPAA in giving too hard of a rating (R or NC-17), Hollywood still churns out more R-rated movies than any other. If more people are willing to pay for your lower rated films, which generally are less graphic in content, why not give the people what they want instead of forcing what they (Hollywood) think we want on us?