This Film is Not Yet Rated

February 21, 2007

Rated: NR Runtime: 97 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Normally I’m not a big fan of documentaries but Kirby Dick has put together a very interesting story here about how movies obtain their ratings, and how the rules of theMPAA keep some movies from ever being made. He’s also shown he has a HUGE pair of cojones.

This Film is Not Yet Rated In case you didn’t know, the ratings system is “voluntary”, there’s nothing keeping a director from skipping the ratings process and having his film released as Unrated. Well, nothing except that most newspapers won’t run ads for unrated movies, networks won’t play the commercials and theater chains won’t show them. Ever wonder why the only place you can see an unrated movie is a small back-room “art” theater in major cities? That’s why. What’s worse, even though theMPAA has a classification for movies that aren’t suitable for kids (NC-17), most newspapers/networks/theaters won’t show these films either. What’s the point of having an NC-17 rating if getting such a rating dooms the movie at the box office?

A good portion of this documentary focuses on what makes a movie switch between the various ratings, and unsurprisingly it finds that sex will get a film slapped with an NC-17 much faster than violence will. In fact, it gives examples of movies where nothing but LANGUAGE will get an NC-17 rating! It also gives numerous examples of how inconsistent ratings are from movie to movie, sometimes it seems very dependent on who the director or distributor is.

Just who are the people who decide what rating a movie receives? This is the question Kirby asks and is giving some standard info (they are people with school aged kids, a mix of society, etc.) but that their identities are kept a secret so that they can do their job without getting harassed. Kirby decided he wanted to know who they were so he could check to see if what he was being told was true, so he hired a private investigator to find these people and get their histories. We learn that many of them do have kids.. but some are in their 30’s!.. some don’t, all of them seem to be from the same general cross-section of society, and several of them have held their positions for much longer than theMPAA claims is normal.

What’s really amusing about this is that we actually get to see the investigators going through their trash, filming them in restaurants, following their cars, etc. Not only that, but we do get to see their faces, we do see their names, basically we know exactly who they are by the time the movie is over. Now here’s where Kirby proves he has solid steelcojones… once the movie was done, he submitted it to the MPAA for a rating! Hilarity ensues.

Documentaries can tend to be boring, but this one isn’t at all. We get movie clips from NC-17 movies, we have interviews with directors who talk about their experiences with theMPAA , and we get to see private investigators tracking people down. The editing is top notch to keep the story moving and the story itself is very interesting. Highly recommended for any movie fan, easily earns 5 stars from me.

Posted by John | Filed Under 5 Stars, Allison Anders, Becky Altringer, DVD, Darren Aronofsky, David Ansen, Documentary, Kirby Dick, NR