Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Rated What?

Recently I saw a movie in the theatre....or actually a couple movies....that left me with little to no confidence in the movie rating system these days. I, by no means, consider myself a prude or excessively conservative, but c'mon. A movie that would've been rated "R" 10+ years ago, would most definitely be PG now. And what is PG-13 or R now should have a subtitle "enter at your own risk" because who knows what nasty things you're gonna see or hear.

I know because I am a bit older now, and a mom, I see things through different eyes; I am more aware of what my kids will see and hear. I have concerns with some of the PG animated movies that are totally marketed to kids and feel that they just barely squeak by that PG rating so parent WILL take their kids. And then I have concerns that the teenage generation (i.e. my siblings) will believe that what they see in the movies is socially acceptable and normal.

I'm these are the same concerns my parents had when I was younger, BUT seriously! (I remember my mom not letting me watch Dirty Dancing [one of my most favs by the way] and now thats a laugh in comparison). All you have to do is pop in a movie from 10-15 years ago and laugh at what was considered "bad" or "controversial".

And one of the movies I'm referring to got an "A" review from the critics (which is RARE). What the heck? I mean, maybe if the critics are extreme pot-smoking, f-bomb dropping, un-safe sex having, and no-job-illegal-immigrant supporting people.........then that would make sense.

OK, off my soapbox now and on to swim lessons.

8 comments:

Chris Grover said...

Amen! I'm so curious what movies you saw, because I have a few on my list to see and wonder if you're talking about any of them. It's such a shame that things have changed so much. The world seems to constantly be pushing the limits. Ughhh!

Debbie said...

i think we can all relate to this post, it is so sad!

i am also curious to know what movies you saw.

Jamie and Family said...

Okay okay, so the two most recent I'm talking about are (the main one) 1) Knocked Up - sort of embarrased I saw it, but... and then I was also a little bit unsure when I took my kids to see 2) Shrek the Third. It was more geared to older kids and adults than I had anticipated. But there are many more than these two that fall into the same category.

A cute one I saw recently was the Devil Wears Prada - it was cute and clean.

Eliza2006 said...

I agree, but must admit that I exposed Eliza to an R rated life today when I had to flip off a truck driver for honking and riding my butt...oops!

Tiffany

Jamie and Family said...

Tiff, don't worry. now-days, that would only be rated "G", so you're okay ;-)

jme

Beth said...

I totally agree. I think the world sence of humor has become preverted!

Unknown said...

If you saw knocked up was written by the same person that wrote 40 year old virgin (huge sign for me) anyway- we don't see too many movies now days. We actually haven't watched an R since Savannah was born and Now most PG-13 should be R! So scary.

Anonymous said...

The MPAA is completely out of touch and useless when it truly comes to perform the task they initially were organized to do. It needs to be disbanded and something else should be put in its place. Just watch "This Film is Not Yet Rated" to see how messed up they really are. (but don't really see it because it originally had a NC-17 rating for the movie clips used to illustrate what depictions can be used for each rating.)