Pixar’s “Brave” Gets a PG Rating

Posted on May 11, 2012 at 11:12 am

Pixar usually hits the G-rating sweet spot but for this year’s highly anticipated “Brave,” the first Pixar film to feature a female lead, they have received a PG rating from the MPAA, for “some scary action and rude humor.” The “rude humor” is evident in a cute fake ad being used to promote the movie.

But for a better idea about the “scary action” you’d need to take a look at the Japan-only movie trailer.

It may be that Pixar heightened the action to make sure that boys would not be turned off by a girl-led story.

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MPAA Asks Parents What They Think About the F-Word

Posted on March 12, 2012 at 4:48 pm

One of the most unfathomably boneheaded policies of the MPAA ratings boards is its position that a PG-13 film can have one or two uses of the f-word as long as it does not refer to sex.

Even a PhD in semiotics could not make sense of that rule. Either the word is fit for the ears of middle schoolers or it isn’t. If it is, it makes no sense to allow it to be used in a hostile or threatening way but not in reference to its actual meaning. If it isn’t, then allowing it once or twice is too much.

Now it appears that the MPAA has a new survey on the topic, which the ratings board cited in ruling against a PG-13 rating for the documentary, “Bully,” but which they have not released.

Parents and educators who would like to share their views on this subject with the MPAA can reach them here:

Joan Graves,
MPAA Ratings Board
15301 Ventura Blvd., Building E
Sherman Oaks, California 91403
(818) 995-6600

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Roger Ebert Cites Me in MPAA Ratings Op-Ed

Posted on December 12, 2010 at 7:34 pm

I am honored to be mentioned in Roger Ebert’s outstanding op-ed about the MPAA ratings, and thrilled with his support for what I do. Last week, on appeal, the MPAA lowered the rating of “Blue Valentine,” a searing portrait of a deteriorating marriage, to an R. Its explicit sexual material had given it an NC-17, which meant that many newspapers would not accept ads and many theaters would not show it.
Ebert says:

The MPAA should have changed its standards long ago, taking into account the context and tone of a movie instead of holding fast to rigid checklists….It’s time to get pragmatic about this. The current ratings system is useful primarily for the parents of small children who are concerned that images or situations may be disturbing for young minds. They know a G film is harmless and a PG almost certainly is, and a PG-13 may or may not be. It’s an open secret that some naturally PG movies have an element or two thrown in to earn a PG-13, so teenagers aren’t scared off. That’s not a step forward.

Obviously, what parents really want is an evaluation, exactly what Mr. Valenti said the MPAA could not provide. When they’re informed that a PG-13 contains “language, some intense situations and smoking,” what have they learned? On the Internet, useful guides to content are everywhere. Critics like Nell Minow, the “Movie Mom,” write intelligently for parents about the content and context of films.

Another Bad Call from the MPAA

Posted on November 1, 2010 at 10:45 pm

The ultra-violent “Saw 3D” gets an R. The ultra-explicit and disgusting “Jackass 3D” gets an R. But how does “The King’s Speech” get an R? This is an acclaimed historical drama about the King of England (Colin Firth) who has to have speech therapy to help his stutter. As a vocal exercise, he has to say some bad words. And so it gets an R rating. The LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein has an excellent article about the arbitrariness of the MPAA’s rules and the outrageous results.

To call the decision crazy and unhinged would be to let the MPAA off too lightly. Its ratings decisions, which frown on almost any sort of sex, frontal nudity or bad language but have allowed increasing amounts of violence over the years, are horribly out of touch with mainstream America, where families everywhere are disturbed by the amount of violence freely portrayed in movies, video games and hip-hop music.

He quotes Tom Hooper, director of “The King’s Speech.”

“What I take away from that decision,” says Hooper, “is that violence and torture is OK, but bad language isn’t. I can’t think of a single film I’ve ever seen where the swear words had haunted me forever, the way a scene of violence or torture has, yet the ratings board only worries about the bad language.”

And he quotes me:

he ratings board judges violence on a far more amorphous and clearly subjective sense of overall tone. That discrepancy sets up the MPAA for all sorts of criticism, much of which has come from Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert whose must-read Movie Mom blog has frequently taken the MPAA to task for its inconsistencies.

“The ratings decision on ‘The King’s Speech’ is just another example of how completely out of touch and useless the guidance is that we get from the MPAA,” Minow told me Monday. “The one thing we want from them is a general sense of where a movie fits into our family values. But by putting ‘The King’s Speech’ in the same ratings category as ‘Kill Bill’ or ‘Scarface’ or ‘Saw,’ then it really makes a mockery of the whole system.”

What does PG-13 Mean?

Posted on June 17, 2009 at 3:58 pm

Two movies are opening this week, both rated PG-13, but they are at opposite ends of that very broad spectrum that reaches from the suitable-for-grade-school PGs to the 17-and-up R rating. I will go into more detail in the reviews, but “The Proposal” is a romantic comedy with a few bad words, some sexual references, and nudity that does not reveal anything that would be covered by a (small) bathing suit. But “Year One” is a gross-out comedy with jokes about incest, castration, circumcision, orgies, and lots of bathroom jokes.
Parents should always be very cautious about PG-13 films, especially comedies, because it is impossible to predict, based on one film with that rating, what any other PG-13 will include.