This Film Is Not Yet Rated
There is a lot to like about Kirby Dick’s 2006 documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It is punchy, sharp, and fiercely determined. However, what works about the film’s demeanour also often works against it. Dick’s film about the MPAA is compelling and engrossing, but it also feels an awful lot like grandstanding and a bit too much like showmanship. As the narrative swings back and forth from the central detective work done by Dick and some private investigators to the opining of the talking heads, the film loses a step each time until the finale feels a lot less important than it should.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated assuredly raises several valid points about the MPAA process, which we will delve into more completely in a moment. Dick’s film has vitriol and a sarcasm about it that, at times, helps his cause. Moments in which Dick speaks to management at the MPAA or to lawyers are hilariously snarky with the animated counterparts and voices. The information given by the MPAA’s various insiders and experts, such as filmmakers and former MPAA reviewers, is compelling and needs to be heard. The idea of hiring a private investigator to discover the identity of the members of the appeals board works in theory, but in execution it leaves a lot to be desired. Overall, I’m recommending This Film Is Not Yet Rated because I felt the experience and the information was important enough.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a documentary, as mentioned, that studies the ratings system utilized by the Motion Picture Association of America or the MPAA. The film talks about the idea that the MPAA, which is a non-profit business and trade association in the United States, is run by certain corporate interests. The members of the MPAA, at this point, are The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures Viacom – DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox (News Corporation), Universal Studios (NBC Universal), and Warner Bros. (Time Warner). The MPAA has instituted a voluntary ratings system.
This ratings system is used in the United States of America, as Canada has a different ratings system. In Canada, there are two separate ratings systems. In Quebec, the Regie du Cinema rates films and videos with a G (General), 13+, 16+, and 18+ set of ratings. In the rest of Canada, the categories and logos used to rate films and videos come from the Canadian Home Video Rating System, which is administered by the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association or the CMPDA. The CMPDA’s rating system rates films as G, PG (Parental Guidance), 14A (14 Accompaniment), 18A, R (Restricted to those 18 and older), and A (Strictly Adult). In Canada, each province holds the responsibility to rate the films, as there is no solidified governing body but rather, as mentioned, a conglomeration of symbols. As such, the ratings in Canada in terms of film content have been, by my examination and experience, to be significantly more liberal than those standards of the MPAA in the United States.
Now, the MPAA in America actually has trademarked their rating system. Films under scrutiny by the MPAA are rated with a G, PG, PG-13, R, and the dreaded NC-17 (which is the most controversial of ratings and constitutes a box office death warrant, as This Film Is Not Yet Rated illustrates). In my view, Dick’s film would have been stronger had it focused on the MPAA’s ratings versus some of the other ratings systems in the world. Framing his film in that context would have made things clearer, but instead Dick chases things down an unnecessary and unfamiliar road and alienates audiences. He seems preoccupied not with the notion of the ratings board per se, but rather with the notion of “who” is on the ratings board. This is where the private investigator comes in.
Kirby Dick hires a private investigator to discover the names, license plates, and eating habits of people that work for the MPAA. The MPAA workers, the ones who review the films and slap a rating on them, are unknown to the public, so Dick, incensed at the idea and rightly so, decides to make their identities known. His argument is that if filmmakers are going to have their films be judged by others, they should know who the people are that are judging their art. This is a valid point, but something lacks in the execution of it and, in my opinion, too much time was given to tracking down various people in cars and following individuals into restaurants to discover hidden identities using old spy tricks. When the squealing tires started to overtake the valid points raised in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, I started to yawn.
Dick’s film achieves its goal, though, and the MPAA Ratings Board members are revealed. Joan Graves is the Chair of the MPAA Ratings Board. She is a registered Republican, which is noteworthy for….I don’t know why it’s noteworthy. Graves “appears” in the film in a telephone conversation that is among one of the film’s more amusing moments. Graves is in charge of personally hiring all members of the Ratings Board and anyone else in the Classification and Ratings Administration. She was appointed to the post by long-time President of the MPAA, Jack Valenti. Valenti is given tons of airtime in the film as the one who started it all but, by all accounts, knew very little about the validity of the process he instituted.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated does an admirable job at shedding light on the MPAA and its convoluted, idiotic, moronic, stupid, stubborn, outdated, outmoded, and silly process of rating films in America. It also tackles, briefly but boldly, the idea of some copyright laws and how Valenti was one of the largest champions for copyright laws in the history of the United States. There are many conversations in This Film Is Not Yet Rated that should be had and the film’s closing sequences in which the film itself is up for rating by the MPAA are illuminating, frightening, and hilarious all at once. There is a great deal of good stuff in Dick’s film and it is worth seeing by anyone interested in what those ratings mean, why they exist, and whether or not they do us any good.
Trailer:
