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The MPAA is a joke!
Sep. 16th, 2013 05:06 pmSo I see they are rereleasing The Wizard of Oz in 3-D. Guess what the MPAA rated it? PG! I am personally gobsmacked. There is literally NOTHING in that movie that any parent would find objectionable. It is completely harmless and vanilla. True, it scared little kids back in the day but there is not a modern kid alive who would be scared by it now. And anyone that WOULD be is clearly too young to be in a movie theater so the problem would be with the parent and not the movie.
The MPAA has taken a lot of criticism for the arbitrary reasons they hand out R ratings (see Bully) but I think their softer ratings are equally bothersome. Why? Because they don't actually tell parents anything!
I saw Planes a couple of weeks ago and was a little bummed when I saw it was rated PG. I expected it to dumb down the Carsverse even more and have characters even stupider than Mater and a whole bunch of fart jokes. Nope. Nothing. In fact I'd say Cars 2 was more deserving of a PG rating than Planes because it had body function jokes AND real peril. Why was Planes rated PG? Probably because Disney asked it to be because PG cartoons sell more tickets than G ones. It's completely arbitrary.
The new MPAA buzzword is "thematic elements" which I imagine would be no useful help to a parent whatsoever. What theme is it referring to? Action? Sexual Suggestiveness? The MPAA offers no clue and seems to hand it down equally to movies that contain one but not the other. I had thought the entire point of the movie rating system was to help parents know what movies their kids should see. If anything they make it even MORE confusing.
Look at The Dark Knight Rises and Green Lantern. How in the HECK are both of these movies rated the same (PG-13)? There is nothing as REMOTELY objectionable in Green Lantern as the bonecrunching violence and brutality of Rises. If the MPAA was TRULY non-biased Rises would have been rated R for it's brutality. But Warner Bros has deep pockets and unlike an idenpendent documentary with a few F Bombs like Bully they can grease the wheels to get the rating they want.
Back to Green Lantern. It seems like the MPAA just rates every single Superhero movie PG-13 whether it warrants it or not. There is hardly any blood in Lantern, the language is no more foul than an average 80's PG movie lke E.T. or Goonies, and most of the violence is of the fantasy/sci-fi type. It deserve a PG rating and a MILD PG at that. I'm betting WB simply ASKED the MPAA to give them a PG-13 rating mistakingly thinking it would lure adults and they did. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. They did the same thing to The Amazing Spider-Man and that movie is even less violent and objectionable than Green Lantern.
EVERY single kid superhero movie is rated PG-13 whether it deserves it or not. I guarantee you if the Chris Reeves Superman film had been released today it would have gotten a PG-13. And that's ridiculous.
What's the point of even HAVING G and PG ratings if you aren't going to use them properly? Shouldn't parents know that a perfectly mild and sweet movie like The Wizard of Oz is NOT equivalent to the raunchy humor and swearing in say, Shrek?
Someone really needs to look into the MPAA. They cause more problems than they fix and they don't help parents a jot. People say Chris Dodd was in big business' pocket when he was a Senator and running for President. His tenure as head of the MPAA just shows how true those accusations turned out to be.
The MPAA has taken a lot of criticism for the arbitrary reasons they hand out R ratings (see Bully) but I think their softer ratings are equally bothersome. Why? Because they don't actually tell parents anything!
I saw Planes a couple of weeks ago and was a little bummed when I saw it was rated PG. I expected it to dumb down the Carsverse even more and have characters even stupider than Mater and a whole bunch of fart jokes. Nope. Nothing. In fact I'd say Cars 2 was more deserving of a PG rating than Planes because it had body function jokes AND real peril. Why was Planes rated PG? Probably because Disney asked it to be because PG cartoons sell more tickets than G ones. It's completely arbitrary.
The new MPAA buzzword is "thematic elements" which I imagine would be no useful help to a parent whatsoever. What theme is it referring to? Action? Sexual Suggestiveness? The MPAA offers no clue and seems to hand it down equally to movies that contain one but not the other. I had thought the entire point of the movie rating system was to help parents know what movies their kids should see. If anything they make it even MORE confusing.
Look at The Dark Knight Rises and Green Lantern. How in the HECK are both of these movies rated the same (PG-13)? There is nothing as REMOTELY objectionable in Green Lantern as the bonecrunching violence and brutality of Rises. If the MPAA was TRULY non-biased Rises would have been rated R for it's brutality. But Warner Bros has deep pockets and unlike an idenpendent documentary with a few F Bombs like Bully they can grease the wheels to get the rating they want.
Back to Green Lantern. It seems like the MPAA just rates every single Superhero movie PG-13 whether it warrants it or not. There is hardly any blood in Lantern, the language is no more foul than an average 80's PG movie lke E.T. or Goonies, and most of the violence is of the fantasy/sci-fi type. It deserve a PG rating and a MILD PG at that. I'm betting WB simply ASKED the MPAA to give them a PG-13 rating mistakingly thinking it would lure adults and they did. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. They did the same thing to The Amazing Spider-Man and that movie is even less violent and objectionable than Green Lantern.
EVERY single kid superhero movie is rated PG-13 whether it deserves it or not. I guarantee you if the Chris Reeves Superman film had been released today it would have gotten a PG-13. And that's ridiculous.
What's the point of even HAVING G and PG ratings if you aren't going to use them properly? Shouldn't parents know that a perfectly mild and sweet movie like The Wizard of Oz is NOT equivalent to the raunchy humor and swearing in say, Shrek?
Someone really needs to look into the MPAA. They cause more problems than they fix and they don't help parents a jot. People say Chris Dodd was in big business' pocket when he was a Senator and running for President. His tenure as head of the MPAA just shows how true those accusations turned out to be.
