Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Kevin Smith
Maria Bello
Jack Valenti
Directed By:
Kirby Dick
I don't think the common folk realizes there's any problem with the MPAA rating board. You go see a movie, you browse the selection at your local theater, choose and that's it. That's why there are people like Kirby Dick, who get inside the movie industry and explain things. If the MPAA rating board has remained so quiet and out of public ire is that their motive rating often makes or breaks a film. If they select NC-17 (No Children Under Seventeen allowed, formerly known as Rated X), a movie will receive absolutely no advertising budget and will be turned down by most theaters in America. They have become, for films that like to risk and push the envelope, almost the soul holder of their fate. And too many times they turn the movies down. That's why, fellow viewers of awesomely violent movie, you have to often find the best films from internet forums or from obscure arthouse video clubs. That's also why Kirby Dick is onto them and made THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED to expose how biased and unreliable the rating board is.
You have to admire Kirby Dick's resolve to get to the bottom of this. He hired an actual private detective to work with him and pierce the thick veil of secrecy around the MPAA rating board. It's common knowledge that the raters names aren't made public, but these people work in a gated building with high security and they are jealously kept anonymous by the MPAA overmind which art the moment was a gentleman named Jack Valenti. Dick and this lovable lesbian PI (they actually talk about it during the movie) go as far as searching the garbage bags of raters for evidence and they find some. They find work sheet where movies have been rated, only to realize this system isn't clear at all. They found the sheet for GEISHA for example, who was rated PG-13 despite having some scenes of a crude sexual nature and GET RICH OR DIE TRYING (the hilarious 50 Cent attempt at making a biopic about three years into his career), who's rated R almost for violent language alone. What kind of rating system is that?
Also, even within their own "official" rating criteria, the MPAA board are confusing and sometimes all-out unfair. While violence with graphic depictions of blood will cause a movie to be rated R, a film with what has been called "aberrational conduct" will be rated NC-17. What aberrational conduct means, I don't know, but it can be stretched pretty fucking thin. Wayne Kramer, director of THE COOLER has seen his movie rated NC-17 because it depicted...female orgasm...and has about half a second of female pubic hair also. It's a beautiful scene between Maria Bello and William H. Macy and it's being called aberrational conduct? Any depiction of sex that goes beyond the face-to-face, we're doing the missionary for two minutes, are qualified as aberrational conduct. THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, also states (altough they didn't prove it) that they count the hip thrusts during intercourse. What is that? Why would every movie would have to be family friendly. How about real? Anybody still remembers what it means?
Kirby Dick has shot an unbelievably irritating movie, but that's how a good documentary should be made. It should inspire its viewers into action. The movie climaxes with this great scene where Kirby Dick appeals of the NC-17 rating he was given for the movie you're actually watching. He gets to talk to a lawyer from the appeal board, who rude beyond belief. Dick is a pretty smart guy and keeps his demands reasonable, so Mr. Lawyer, displaying his best showcase of command presence, makes a fool of himself. It's quite something. So what's the MPAA rating board? A bunch of random people who have gained a grip on Hollywood and don't want to let it go. They are self-congratulatory and pedant, at the image of their grand dooda Jack Valenti. They have become childish and unreasonable and THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED exposes them with great efficiency. In the end, what makes this movie awesome is that it breaks through every closed doors and a Hollywood juggernaut gets owned by a guy named Kirby Dick.
SCORE: 89%