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Amusing Look at Pain (PG-13) and Pleasure (R)of Movie-Rating System

Posted on: Friday, 31 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News

Mar. 31--Film Fest

"This Film Is Not Yet Rated"

U.S. 2006, 97 minutes

East Coast Premiere

Documentary directed by Kirby Dick, written by Eddie Schmidt and

Kirby Dick.

7:30 tonight and 5 p.m. Monday, Prince Music Theater

"This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is an amusing and informative documentary peek at the mysterious movie-ratings procedures of the Motion Picture Association of America.

As we see in "Rated," the ratings are assigned by paid MPAA staffers meant to represent typical American parents. Their identities are kept secret to protect them from media scrutiny and "pressure."

"Rated" director Kirby Dick, taking a docu-stunt page from Michael Moore, hires private detectives to identify and locate the raters, a process of spying and prying chronicled in the film.

Yet, there is useful info to be gleaned. There is a brief history of the MPAA and censorship, and the movie does include the crucial fact - often overlooked in anti-MPAA harangues - that the universal ratings system is designed to protect movies from fragmented censorship at state and local levels (which existed before the ratings system was enacted in 1968).

The film registers the complaints of filmmakers (Kevin Smith, Trey Parker), some assigning abstract motives to the raters (they have a fear of female pleasure, asserts Kimberly Pierce).

Dick learns that many raters, however, are female, and director Allison Anders believes the raters' problem is with pleasure, period, leading to a familiar discussion of why the MPAA seems more comfortable with violence.

Here the film undercuts its own anti-censorship argument by quoting filmmakers, like Smith, who believe that violence, rather than sex, should be hit with restrictive ratings.

Best bit: outrageous puppet-sex excerpts from Parker's "Team America," which he inserted just so the MPAA would have something to remove, leaving enough material to make the scene work.

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Source: The Philadelphia Daily News

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