This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)

Documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick manages the impressive feat of being both eminently reasonable yet combative in this exposé of the American film rating system. In the United States most theatrical films are rated by the Motion Picture Association of America (or MPAA) an industry financed group whose primary purpose in rating films was to have been to avoid imposed government censorship. Unlike the ratings systems in many countries the MPAA is notoriously secretive about its film rating process, offering few guidelines (which are often arbitrarily enforced) and shielding the identities of the film raters themselves (said on the MPAA website to all be parents of children ages 5-17). In his film Dick hires some private investigators to uncover the identities of the raters, many of whom turn out to not even meet the MPAA’s own stated criteria for the job. The movie also features interviews with various filmmakers who feel their work has been unfairly treated by the MPAA in the past.

Among the more fascinating facts in this genuinely intriguing documentary is how the MPAA has consistently applied tougher standards to independent and homosexual material then to studio financed and much heterosexually oriented material (foreign art films that get NC-17’s while teen raunch feasts get passes to as general and audience as PG-13’s). Also surprising is that two members of the clergy (a Catholic and an Episcopalian Priest) are members of the MPAA’s appeal board, where filmmakers who think their films designated rating to be unfair get a generally futile chance to have it overturned (though to be ’fair’ films that re-edit ‘for content’ can often get another rating). A great idea for a documentary, informative, well executed, and surpassingly likable, though by virtue of its subject matter not for all tastes, but for me it’s Thumbs Up.