This Film Is Not Yet Rated

It's about time someone exposed the MPAA for the fraud and sham that they are. I’ve been ranting and raving about the ratings system for a long, long time now so watching this documentary was right up my alley.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated tells a story long needed in regards to film history. You see, the ratings board, also known as the MPAA, has long held an agenda in how they come up with their ratings and filmmaker Kirby Dick attempts to expose that agenda. He does it in a funny way too--by attempting to expose every person on the super secret ratings board and show just how faulty the whole process is.

The MPAA looks at films in uneven ways--violence is better than sex, studio pictures get away with more than indies and woe is the film to put any kind of homosexuality in it. The MPAA claims to be made up of "normal" parents who sit in judgement of every movie released in the USA to guide other parents but Dick finds out a lot of these people have children in their 20s and aren't advising a rating at all--but actually censuring films.

I'm amazed that some brave filmmaker w/ deep pockets hasn't sued the MPAA on some kind of 1st amendment issue as they have such overwhelming power and control regarding a films ability to play in theatres by the threat of an NC-17 rating that they force artists into altering their picture to get a lesser rating. As the film shows at the start, hundreds of filmmakers, many of them legends, have had to deal with overzealous ratings board decisions regarding films that forced them into cutting their movies into something they don’t want.

If you like seeing behind the scenes docs set in Hollywood, this is for you. Lots of directors show up and talk about their own battles with the MPAA. I wish this would be the first step in getting rid of the current system or altering it into a more workable system with public raters and a more clearly defined set of parameters—but that's probably a pipedream as Dick shows in his film—the MPAA is controlled by the studios and theatres and they wouldn't have it any other way.