This Film is Not Yet Rated: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the MPAA

After I saw this film I went home and wrote:

"A documentary that was a good show... in the way that rich people call losing a bit of money fun, after the guy next door films it. I mean this is a bunch of jerk face blah blah! If you have a hard time living in our society--what with our intense movie-rating system--I'm sure you can try your part at being a hermit, and the very concept of entertaining others will be ina dimension beyond you or anybody you know."

I just came back to it, and feel, perhaps, I should re-iterate. Tonight, I would say:

This film (Is Not Yet Rated) was charming and quick and cohesive. I never felt lost or dis-interested. Still, it seemed pretty derivative of movies like Bowling for Columbine, and that pack of spelling bee documentaries. The way Eragon held onto the tail of Harry Potter, and, what's this? The Spiderwick Chronicles are coming in '08? Safe, fun film making. We see it all the time. But I guess I have to pause... when a documentary is as trendy as the fantasy novel remakes. The CG-celebrity-voice-acted-jokes-that-go-over-kid's-heads-Pixar-or-Dreamworks flicks. There are obnoxious, but unavoidable, trends in the movie industry. That's fine. But Documentaries are supposed to be about truth. About recording reality. Journalism ought never to be a fad.

But it is. And a documentary about the distribution of movies in America is proof. Who, really, is hurt by the MPAA's rating system? Artists at best, businessmen at worst. This Film is Not Yet Rated can't quite muckrake, because it is about a negligible isue. I guess I felt bad worrying for movie directors, when the afor-mentioned Columbine, and many other great docs, tell tales of the truly hurt. This film was an interesting discussion into the way entertainment is set up, and--granted--how that might be a little flawed. But did I learn anything about the strange parts of the world? Did I make realizations about what it is to be a human being? Did I learn to see the world along a new dimension? Not so much. This documentary was less truth and more entertainment.

I had more fun at Fahrenheit 9/11.