This Film Is Not Yet Rated
In the end, I guess, I have to admit this is probably a really good documentary, just like if I had to, I’d probably concede that The Aristocrats, which I hated, has a place on this earth, because of the unique reaction it triggered in me. I ultimately didn’t like this movie (not quite as badly as Aristocrats, but almost), because it touched a line in me and crossed it.
The movie has interesting interviews with people involved with the MPAA and film makers who have fallen victim to its almost cult-like practices – this side I found worth my time; but interwoven with this is a quest to identify the anonymous raters on the board, and this is done via a private investigator who “will stop at nothing” to get the info she’s asked to get. The idea almost sounded like fun to me at the start, but soon enough she’s surreptitiously filming and photographing them, revealing information about their children (okay, some of them aren’t children, which is mildly amusing, but some of them are), and even going through their trash in the street. It just seemed a little ridiculous for what the doc amounts to, and frankly pretty disturbing.
Basically, if the movie says anything, it’s that a movie’s suitability for a particular audience is really only in the eyes of, well, that particular audience – there isn’t a way of protecting someone from something when you don’t yet know if they need to be protected from it … does that make as much sense to everyone else as it does to me? But while I agree that there’s a problem in any ratings/censorship system, you’re never gonna be able to totally get rid of them. While I think kids can deal with more than they’re sometimes protected against, I don’t agree, for example, with the guy here who seems to think minors should be freely allowed to see Gunner Palace – which features the real horror, violence, and language to be found at war – just because it’s real. In the age of the internet, everything ultimately reaches everyone who wants to be reached, uncut, unrated, however they want it; and the movie kind of touches on this in an interesting segment on the over-reaction to piracy etc; but y’know, doesn’t this fact kind of negate the need for this documentary? I don’t know.