Name a movie with an egregiously inappropriate MPAA rating.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

I watched a movie last night called "Wendy and Lucy," a story about a woman who loses her dog and tries to find her. The MPAA decided on an R rating. There's no sex. There's no drugs. There's no violence. There's one scary scene involving a bum muttering the word "fuck."

Apparently the MPAA decided that young kids and teenagers should not be allowed to watch this movie because it might make them feel sad.

[Broken_Hero]

1. Jaws and Spaceballs

both are rated PG, at least the dvd versions I have.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. Might be before they instituted PG-13.

"The Right Stuff" is rated PG and has multiple uses of "fuck" in it. (Including Gus Grissom's repeated reply, "Fuckin' A, bubba!" and Alan Shepard's "prayer": "Dear Lord, please don't let me fuck up.")

[rcrush]

6. Back in the 80's PG movies had boobs

There was no PG13 garbage.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. Airplane!

There is a one-second shot of a woman with her breasts all out flashing across the screen. Rated PG.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Yeah, it was before PG-13.

I mean, all it has are people being eaten by sharks and only the climax is moderately gruesome.

I've got no problem with kids watching that.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Office Space is pretty tame for an R rating.

I guess one too many "fucks" in the dialogue, but other than that and Jennifer Anniston's naked leg, there's nothing really bad about it.

The new "Alice in Wonderland" is rated PG but from the previews it looks like is more than enough to give some kids nightmares (Isn't that why they rated "Jurassic Park" PG-13?). But I doubt there's anything objectionable other than freakishly weird Tim Burton content.

[nomorenomore08]

10. Does "ass-pounding federal penitentiary" ring a bell?

That (repeated) line seems a bit graphic for PG-13, at least to me. Also the unedited Geto Boys song at the beginning.

But otherwise I agree - as R-rated films go, "Office Space" probably is on the tame end of the spectrum.

[rcrush]

15. The death of the printer was pretty graphic.

[gmoney]

35. The breast exam?

[Blue-Jay]

40. "Hey Peter, man, check out channel 9...."

[rcrush]

4. Just one "fuck"?

Usually a movie has to have 2 or 3 fucks before they bump it from pg13 to R.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. I think there may be a "Christ" in there somewhere.

They really fucked up on this one.

[LostInAnomie]

9. Pinocchio

At least by today's rating system it wouldn't receive anywhere near it's G rating. The word "jack-ass" is used several times not in reference to a donkey. There are several instances of kids smoking, drinking, and gambling. Today, it would be at least PG-13.

[Bicoastal]

11. "Waiting For Guffman"

No nudity. No drug use. No violence. There's ONE SCENE in which a wannabe actor auditions (hilariously) for a show with a scene from "Raging Bull" and, in character as Jake LaMotta, says the F-word a lot. The character is never seen again. Due to that one scene, they gave this harmless comedy an R rating.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. A Swedish movie, "My Life as a Dog", was rated PG...

....but from what I recall, it had at least one instance of adult nudity and another instance of child nudity.

Who knows, maybe that is PG material in Sweden...

[nomorenomore08]

14. I think you're right. And I think their rating system is slightly stricter RE: violence.

nt

[Taverner]

13. Over the Edge

I mean that movie should have been a G - and they made it an R

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. OK.

But what's that movie where all the teenagers go bezerk and lock up all the parents at a PTA meeting? I think it's got a young Matt Dillon.

[Taverner]

17. No - that IS Over the Edge

And I remember as a kid thinking "THIS IS FUCKING COOL!!!!"

I was all of 9 when it came out, and all of 11 when I saw it

It's a freaking classic, up there with Bless the Beasts and the Children, Outsiders, Suburbia and Repo Man...

Funny how many of those movies have Matt Dillon. He was in Rumble Fish too...hmmmm

[Doc_Technical]

18. About 25 years ago.

I was watching a movie that was a parody of those 1980s
teenage slasher films when about a third of the way through
the movie it cuts to a middle aged man behind a desk in
a cluttered home office, looking into the camera and saying
something to the effect of:
"This film is rated "R" and you probably have noticed that it
contains no nudity, graphic violence, or profanity.
Hollywood producers know that more people will come see a film like this
if it is rated "R" rather than a "PG" rating.
So the producers of this film want me to say, "Fuck You."
And now back to our movie."

[geardaddy]

19. A Clockwork Orange

was rated X when it first came out.

[namahage]

20. As was "Midnight Cowboy"--the only X-rated film to win Best Picture. n/t

[geardaddy]

21. Interesting

I didn't know that.

[hedgehog]

23. True story: my uncle took my aunt out to see Midnight Cowboy

he thought it was a Western.








Another true story: friend of my dad's took his wife out to see Ulysses, thinking it was a sword and sandals epic until he saw Buck Mulligan's naked ass.

[11 Bravo]

25. You beat me to it.

[mikeytherat]

22. Original cut of "Clerks" with an NC-17

Nudity? None.
Sex? None.
Violence? Two guys having a "push and shove" into a rack of Fritos in a convenience store.

So, why did it get the NC-17? Salty language. True, it was very salty, but still, when crap like "Saw" or whatever "splatter-fest-psycho-who-kills-a-bunch-of-whiny-teens" gets a "R" and Clerks gets an NC-17, something is very, very wrong.

True story:
Watching part of a rerun of "The Sopranos" one night in a bar. It's on A&E - an episode where Joe Pantoliano gets whacked. You get to see Joe's severed head, neck gore and all, held up to the screen and displayed in all its gory glory. In an earlier scene, however, where Tony is in bed with one of his girlfriends, the woman's butt-crack is pixelated, to save us from ourselves. So - full-frontal gore? Fine! Nice ass, but we can see the crack? OH MY GOD, WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

mikey_the_rat

[Fire Walk With Me]

24. WALL*E.

That's some truly scary shit, adequately tempered by the truly wondrous and positive. A spoonful of sugar....

[mikeytherat]

26. When I first saw WALL-E, and learned the life probe was named EVE,

I turned to Mrs. Rat and said, "If WALL-E doesn't turn out to be a Christ figure, I'll eat my hat." Then WALL-E dies while saving humanity, and gets resurrected.

mikey_the_rat

[Fire Walk With Me]

28. Of all the Christ symbology I've noted in film, I completely missed this!

:thumbsup:

Last time I saw it was in "Grand Torino".

But why was "Eve" a trigger for you? I am still missing something probably very obvious. Not "Eve" as in Adam and Eve...?

[mikeytherat]

42. Yep. Adam and Eve.

Remember, Eve carried the bio-life inside her, almost like a womb.

mikey_the_rat

[Fire Walk With Me]

43. And I missed the womb symbolism as well.

(slaps forehead)!!!

I was evidently too attentive on the dystopian aspects...pure virtual reality, the danger of seats/transports from which one need never leave (including toiletries, implied, didn't see a bed in the one room shown in the film), the mile-high dirt storm through the city at gale force, the seeming absence of all life on Earth excepting a single cockroach and one plant, the corporate take-over of all things and the associated devastation, computers becoming our masters, all that.

Do you think that there is a link (Brad Bird) between the "Flaming Moe" Simpsons episode and Homer's fever dream therein, "Mmmm-Moe" and the voice/name of little "M-0"?

At least I got something out of it. Thanks for the much-needed perspective. I =cannot= believe that I missed all of that! At least I'll have new fun when I watch it again!

[Hissyspit]

27. Everyone should watch "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (2006), a documentary on the MPAA

It's funny, entertaining and anger-provoking.

[XemaSab]

30. "The Celluloid Closet"

is another very good film that discusses what's allowed in movies.

[LeftyMom]

37. +1

Fantastic movie!

[Blue_In_AK]

29. Midnight Cowboy

Originally rated X.

From Wikipedia

The film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay; it is the only X-rated film to win an Oscar in any category, and one of two X-rated films to be nominated for an Oscar (the other being Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange). Coincidentally, the previous year had seen the sole G-rated Best Picture winner, Oliver!. Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor awards and Sylvia Miles was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, in what is one of the shortest performances ever nominated (clocking in under four minutes of screen-time).

In 1994, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

[begin_within]

32. What is it rated now?

Honestly I think X was the appropriate rating for it in 1969, because it is pretty frank about sexual things, though no actual nudity there are sex scenes including even a blowjob in a gay porn theater, frank language and drug use, so by 1969 standards it was pretty raunchy. Today of course it wouldn't even cause a stir, by today's standards it's probably just a PG. But 1969 was a different time culturally. I think it's a great film with a great theme song (the actual Midnight Cowboy theme, not the insipid "Everybody's Talkin') and some fine performances by both Jon Voigt and Dustin Hoffman. A pretty good encapsulation of America in the 1960s.

[Blue_In_AK]

33. It was re-rated R in 1971

according to IMDb.

[DerekG]

31. The Dark Knight should've been rated R

No gore. No nudity. No cursing. Yet Ledger's Joker simply does not belong in a PG-13 film.

[Forkboy]

34. In France 16 year olds could see Nekromantik in all it's glory.

Maybe not the wisest choice ever, especially given it's rather, ah, notorious ending.

All the more reason to like France.....

[gmoney]

36. How Brüno managed an R, I'll never know

There's a very close shot of Bruno's junk being waved around at the camera... seemed like 5 or 10 seconds or so to me. (You'd never see a full-screen shot of a vagina for that long.) There was a lot of S&M stuff going on, the swingers actually fucking with just a little "Gotti Box" on the actual penetration point, Ron Paul, etc.

[Initech]

38. True story: First time I saw Spaceballs, my 8th grade history teacher thought it was OK.

Because it had a PG rating. It gets to the scene where Dark Helmet is like "I knew it! I'm surrounded by assholes!!!" and he's like OK, let's turn this off. :rofl:

[Forkboy]

41. My 8th grade music teacher took the whole class to see The Kids Are Alright, about The Who.

We got high before class after the rest had gone into the theater.

Best teacher ever!!!! :D

[lib_n_proud7650]

39. rushmore