"Not Yet" Time

I recently watched a documentary film entitled This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a look at the fickle and secretive Motion Picture Association of America's "ratings board." This is the small group of anonymous people -- all parents, we're told -- who sit in a room counting kill shots, curse words, pelvic thrusts, and so forth, and come up with the rating each American film receives when released to theaters.

The documentary focuses most on the blurry line between R and NC-17, the latter a kiss-of-death rating that ensures few theaters will screen a film, and that prevents advertisements for the film from running in virtually any venue. Because of this, the ratings system is less a method for informing parents about the content of a film their child might be watching, and more a form of censorship by a shadowy organization with no accountability. So as a loather of censorship, this film had me before it even began.

Unfortunately, it slowly lost me from then on. It's not a bad movie, but I felt like it had surprisingly little to say. Its 100 minutes are divided roughly equally into two kinds of material -- railing against the review board, and trying to use private investigators to expose the identities of its members.

The film makes its point about the first subject rather well rather quickly. There are telling examples of how largely similar material falls under a double-standard: female directors seem to be rated more harshly, as do female depictions of "experiencing pleasure" (as opposed to male), as does any gay themed material (compared to contextually identical straight material). Violence gets a virtual blank check compared to sex. But then the film sort of belabors these points. Instead of whining on about the unfairness and fickleness of it all, which seems to me a given, I found myself wishing the film would issue more of a call to action.

And as for what the film suggests to do about any of this? Well, that's the part that really left me underwhelmed. The caper to unmask ratings board members doesn't really come off like the entertaining heist I imagine the director envisioned. I found myself unable to invest in any of these individuals as the bad guy so much as the people they work for, or the kind of "group think" that emerges from them as a collective entity. This part of the film seems to think it's Ocean's Eleven (the re-make), but comes off more like Ocean's Eleven (the original).

Perhaps I'm doing the film a disservice, trying to force some kind of unnecessary pretense of impartiality about it as I watched it (and now review it). But I can't help but feel like if I, someone firmly in agreement with the film's thesis, was not much entertained or compelled by it, what possible impact could it have on anyone else? I don't suppose every documentary has to be a "call to action," but this one seems to fall short of even less than that. Though it did point me toward some other films I think I'll now want to check out. I rate the documentary itself a C+.