New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

God bless the Motion Picture Association of America. Whether you consider their ratings system a helpful tool for discerning tastes to determine the relative (in)appropriateness of a film's content for themselves and their loved ones, or a deeply cynical marketing tool meant to ensure that a given product pulls in as many dollars as humanly possible, it is hard to deny that in the 13 plus years since the MPAA began publishing a written description of why a film is rated what it is rated, this period has been an epoch of extreme delight for anyone with a George Carlin-esque inclination towards the absurdities of the English language.

I have long harbored an idea for a board game wherein one of the elements is attempting to identify a film based solely on the MPAA's written description. This sprung out of my discovery that the 1996 blockbuster (and really, does anyone these days still wish to have his or her block busted yet again?) Twister received its PG-13 rating for - wait for it, wait for it - "intense depictions of very bad weather." Say that phrase aloud and savor it for a moment. Share it with a friend or your own loved one close at hand. It is nothing if not accurate, but to me it is a poker-faced punch line, the first of many proofs that the MPAA has a sense of humor. This may in fact be the only sense that collective board exhibits, but such purple prose cheers me up in times of dire seriousness. Although there are a lot of generic "for violence and language", etc, there are more than enough unique descriptive copies to constitute hours of sober - or otherwise - entertainment.

Consider the breathless description for Natural Born Killers. It is "Rated R for extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking images, and for strong language and sexuality." I can almost hear Wayne Gale reading that aloud as copy to promote one of the episodes of the show-within-the movie, American Maniacs. If that had been printed on a poster back in 1994 or if red band trailers had been in vogue back then, who knows how much extra cash NBK might have grabbed whilst in theaters. I also love the assessments that bring moralistic values into the equation and unintentionally raise the issue of whether the MPAA is more akin to a censorship board.

To wit, Trainspotting is granted an R for "graphic heroin use and resulting depravity, strong language, sex, nudity and some violence." Harmony Korine's bizarre midnight movie Gummo received an R (after being edited down from an NC-17) for "pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles including violence, substance abuse, sexuality and language." Each description features at least one solid turn of phrase and I conjure up the mental picture of this group of anonymous citizens experiencing an entertainment like Gummo and then being forced to somehow capture that in words that go beyond "disturbing images."

Continued:       1       2       3       4