Since I have always been a film nut and everything about the movies has drawn my attention, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is one of those things that has fascinated me even though I didn't understand it. Movies like Jaws received PG rating. I remember Clockwork Orange being rated X; it was always a mystery what those ratings board guys were thinking. Kirby Dick's film This Film Is Not Yet Rated tries to explore how the ratings were figured in the past and how the MPAA is working in today's film world.
The documentary is about the once corrupt MPAA and also and education on the procedures or rules that are applied to movies in order to obtain a rating for them. Director Kirby Dick apparently figures that he is teaching a classroom or making a 16mm how to film instead of making a documentary film for adults and film enthusiasts. Unfortunately his directing style is just too juvenile for such a savvy audience and had he stuck to just a boring talking head style documentary the film would have been better for it.
This film takes on a lot of complaints against the MPAA board and tries to explain them rather than taking on definitions of the MPAA and its purpose head on. The members of the MPAA are anonymous as to keep feature filmmakers from appealing to them directly. Originally the ratings was the way to keep government from censoring the movies and Hollywood, but at least the government would have created solid rules to follow rather than the random and often conflicting way the early MPAA handled the film industry. The MPAA insists that it applies its rules evenly but the procedures are secret so nobody can tell what they are. If something is not allowed it is simply against the invisible rules.
There is some good work in the film. Not a lot of history and not a lot of making sense of the nonsense, but some good work. There is Matt Stone from Southpark, Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), Allison Anders (Grace of My Heart), John Waters (Hairspray). While there is interest, especially to film geeks everywhere, the storytelling needs some censoring of its own. There is also a bit of one-sidedness the the film which is to be expected from any documentary except when that one side needs the other to hold the attention of the audience.
After watching This Film is Not Yet Rated you'll no doubt be mulling the questions of censorship, government involvement in the Hollywood machine, how power can be misused and all that big machine power sort of stuff. Or you may more likely be wondering why this movie wasn't any better with such a topic to be trounced. *
* The poster holds my attention and not because of the naked model. In some, if not all, the postings of this advertisement the butt has had to be censored by a black box. Sometimes the irony does make its way through.
The documentary is about the once corrupt MPAA and also and education on the procedures or rules that are applied to movies in order to obtain a rating for them. Director Kirby Dick apparently figures that he is teaching a classroom or making a 16mm how to film instead of making a documentary film for adults and film enthusiasts. Unfortunately his directing style is just too juvenile for such a savvy audience and had he stuck to just a boring talking head style documentary the film would have been better for it.
This film takes on a lot of complaints against the MPAA board and tries to explain them rather than taking on definitions of the MPAA and its purpose head on. The members of the MPAA are anonymous as to keep feature filmmakers from appealing to them directly. Originally the ratings was the way to keep government from censoring the movies and Hollywood, but at least the government would have created solid rules to follow rather than the random and often conflicting way the early MPAA handled the film industry. The MPAA insists that it applies its rules evenly but the procedures are secret so nobody can tell what they are. If something is not allowed it is simply against the invisible rules.
There is some good work in the film. Not a lot of history and not a lot of making sense of the nonsense, but some good work. There is Matt Stone from Southpark, Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), Allison Anders (Grace of My Heart), John Waters (Hairspray). While there is interest, especially to film geeks everywhere, the storytelling needs some censoring of its own. There is also a bit of one-sidedness the the film which is to be expected from any documentary except when that one side needs the other to hold the attention of the audience.
After watching This Film is Not Yet Rated you'll no doubt be mulling the questions of censorship, government involvement in the Hollywood machine, how power can be misused and all that big machine power sort of stuff. Or you may more likely be wondering why this movie wasn't any better with such a topic to be trounced. *
* The poster holds my attention and not because of the naked model. In some, if not all, the postings of this advertisement the butt has had to be censored by a black box. Sometimes the irony does make its way through.