This Film is Not Yet Rated

This Film is Not Yet Rated | |
| Rated: | None |
| Director: | Kirby Dick |
| Release Date: | 2006 |
| Genre: | Documentary |
With hilarious warnings about movies containing "content" and "occasional language" the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system is already a satire of itself. But documentarian Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith) digs a bit deeper into the system--created by ex-ad man/LBJ aide Jack Valenti--and finds it secretive, homophobic, anti-female/indie/sex, random in its rulings, and reflexively priggish. Unfortunately, this isn't a serious movie about censorship; mostly it's about Dick, who comes off as a gratingly hep soul-patched prankster offering scolds to the converted--which sucks, because the actual interviews with filmmakers screwed to varying degrees by Valenti's Bizarro World system offer plenty of info and entertainment. Kimberley Peirce is angry/amazed at how the sexual pleasure enjoyed by the female characters of her terrific Boys Don't Cry nearly garnered it the dreaded NC-17, a guarantor of limited-to-nonexistent advertising and theater bookings. As per usual, John Waters is adorably aghast, this time at the MPAA's meltdown over his innocent pervo-thon A Dirty Shame. And a hilariously exasperated Trey Parker provides a nearly-worth-seeing-it highlight in which he shows scenes of dolls shitting and pissing on each other in Team America to the ratings board in the hopes that those bits would be cut and the healthy doll-sex stuff allowed to remain. The ploy worked.