Name A Movie Where You Disagreed With The Rating (G, PG, PG-13, R, etc.)

All of the original "Apes" movies were rated G (except "Conquest" which was PG). Some pretty harrowing/disturbing stuff -I've held off watching them with my 9 year old because they kind of traumatized me! I remember seeing "Escape" in the theater and the ending was pretty grim.

 

I know I've seen an R-rated version of A Clockwork Orange on DVD. Is that different than the X-rated original?

 

Ryan's Daughter was rated GP (formerly "M"), not PG. They're not quite the same thing and GP tended to imply a movie meant for adult audiences but without "adult content" per se. Many GP movies were later re-rated PG-13.

True Grit was also rated "M" originally, not G. The G-rated version was edited.

By the same token, I would say that the 2010 version of True Grit is unusually gory and nasty for a PG-13 movie.

There is some confusion over the rating of Clockwork Orange. It was originally rated X, then edited for reissue and rated R. The versions on DVD and Blu-Ray are, to my knowledge, the uncut originals, however they bear an R rating even though the movie was never re-rated.

 

Regarding 'A Clockwork Orange,' if I recall correctly, the scene that prevented it from receiving an R rating originally was the threesome between Alex and the underage girls which was sped up in fast motion with the "William Tell Overture" accompaniment. That's off the top of my head, but I recall seeing something about it in a Kubrick documentary years ago. That scene in particular was singled out; something along the lines of "just because an explicit sex scene is in fast motion does not change the fact that it is an explicit sex scene."

 

LaLa Land should have been PG or possibly G. It got a PG-13 because they dropped a superfluous F-bomb in it to goose the rating.

 

The Getaway (1972). Sam Peckinpah is known for his violence, and there is plenty here. Especially in the final act. It's a great film, but not a PG movie.

 

2001 has a G rating. Should be pg-13. A computer killed 4 astronauts.

 

Is it a common practice to give a film a different rating years later? The PG-13 rating didn't exist until '84 as the result of films such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which many agreed was far too graphic for a PG rating but perhaps not graphic for an R rating.

 

Hard to say - so few women sport pubes these days that it becomes tough to judge their impact!

"Wolf of Wall Street" had full-frontal female from a few years back, and last year's "The Bronze" had full-frontal female as well. I'm sure they're not alone.

It'd be ironic if suddenly "flapping wangs" were A-OK in Hollywood but not naked women - for eons it's been the other way around...

 

Some adults will simply not watch a PG or G-rated movie, it can hurt box office revenue. So the studios target certain ratings depending on the material.

People have to realize that most MPAA ratings are marketing signals for the most part.

 

I don't remember the scenes in question. They were probably not main characters and just "extras" hired specifically for that purpose. But weren't they probably wearing merkins anyway?

Female nudity certainly does seem much more rare in movies these days compared to prior decades.

 

what about titanic not being rated R?

 

The whole process of giving a movie a rating is ridiculous. It's very political.

 

Regarding Jaws, Stephen King and I are in full agreement: as he said in Danse Macabre regarding the violence in the film, "How the hell did this movie ever get a PG rating?" Between the skinnydipping victim at the beginning, the blood spraying out of the little kid when he gets it and Robert Shaw's fate at the end...yeah, Jaws should be at least PG-13 (which didn't exist in 1975). And I'm sure if you could more clearly decipher some of Shaw's saltier exclamations towards Scheider and Dreyfuss during their adventure on the good ship Orca, it'd probably rate an R.

Still a great movie, though.

 

The nude scene in "Wolf of Wall Street" is from a) a lead character and b) no sign of a merkin.

"The Bronze" uses a body double but is also merkin-free. It's a surprisingly graphic scene in a lot of ways - I think it got an "R" because it's played for laughs, not erotica...

 

I think that having adult ratings just for people says certain words or people appearing nude (not having sex) is just silly. Everyone knows these words from an early age, and we are all born nude, and should stop being prudish about it.

As far as the ratings for actual sex and violence, the ones for violence are typically too low and the ones for sex are typically too high.

 

I think the most egregious modern examples are Saving Private Ryan not getting the R rating and Orgazmo not being able to get the R rating (NC-17, instead).

 

"Saving Private Ryan" was definitely "R"-rated! You thought it got "PG-13"?

 

I'll never understand why Scent of a Woman was rated R.

 

I messed up. It should have been NC-17 (due to the intense violence at the beginning) but got the R rating. That's what I was thinking of. Lots of hubbub at the time about it. It's funny to me because Spielberg has such pull and is SUCH an amazing filmmaker that the MPAA relented, but a film like Orgazmo which is filled with sexual situations and language but shows NO nudity or sex gets an NC-17 solely because it is a low-brow comedy about essentially the porn business. A lot of times the MPAA assigns ratings arbitrarily based on its members feelings, not actual content.

 

Probably because someone at the MPAA thought the title was referring to "something else".

 

Couldn't agree more. Well said.

Yep.

 

But Jenny Agutter!
(Substitute Jenny Agutter for Alyson Hannigan in this Onion headline: FCC oks nudity on TV if it's Alyson Hannigan)

 

It has been cited in past threads, but the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is an excellent insight into the corrupt, odd, confusing world of the MPAA.

It gets especially interesting once the director starts looking into *who* constitutes the board that sets the ratings, and then the debacle that occurs when he submits the documentary itself for a rating.

 

While the MPAA refuses to set precise rules/guidelines as to what swear words and how many uses of it constitutes a given rating, I think the general consensus seems to be that you can't get away with more than a couple of "F" bombs and keep a "PG-13" rating. An oft-cited famous example would be "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles", which probably wouldn't have even gotten a PG-13 and probably would have gotten a PG if not for the one scene with Steve Martin using the F word like a dozen (or however many) times in quick succession. John Hughes supposedly felt that one bit was so important to the film that he was willing to go from a likely "PG" to "R."