The Ratings Game #1
Film, Humor December 30th, 2007 |Some time within the past couple years, it seems to have become standard (whether voluntarily or by decree, I don’t know) for all new DVDs to flash the MPAA rating on screen for a few moments just before the movie begins. Additionally, for the past few years the MPAA has been including a brief description underneath the rating of why the movie in question has received its particular rating.
I’m constantly amused by these little blurbs and their attempt to rationalize, in fifteen words or less, what prompted the MPAA to assign the rating it did to each movie. So, I thought we could try a little game: every so often (whenever I get around to it, hopefully no less than once a week), I’ll post the MPAA rating and rationalization. Your goal is to try to guess the film, based solely on the MPAA’s rating and their description of its faults. I’ll post the answer either after someone guesses it correctly, or later on if it has remained a mystery.
Number one, then…any guesses?
[See also: The Ratings Game #2 | Star Trek Optimism | Too cool for words | Lock, Stock and Logan’s Garden Stomper | Shadow of the Vampire ]
4 Responses to “The Ratings Game #1”
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Pythoner
jan
spunkycomics
Michael Hanscom
Ryan Waddell
December 31st, 2007 at 8:29 am
Hmm … I love these just for their own sake. They’re often funny and sometimes quite detailed — on the order of “Comic violence, scenes of animal endangerment, and a seance.”
The “Classification and Rating Administration” sounds like a government agency of some kind. I wonder what their budget is.
And what the heck is a “thematic element”, anyway?
My guess on this one was ‘Dogma’, but I’m pretty sure I’m mistaken.
Anybody know of a site where all of these are cataloged? I found a snapshot in time here, but it’s by no means exhaustive.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Actually cataloging them all would be quite an undertaking. That list is pretty impressive, though.
Not ‘Dogma’ here, though (has Kevin Smith done anything PG-13?)….
January 1st, 2008 at 9:20 pm
This one was from The Simpsons Movie.
January 1st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
[…] Given that I don’t have enough of a regular readership to really make this a game, and that I don’t want to have to constrain myself to any sort of real schedule, I’m going to change the way I’m doing this ratings game thing. Seeing as how the point is really just about the silliness of the MPAA’s ratings rationales, I’ll just toss one up whenever I feel like it. I won’t immediately give away which movie the rating comes from, but you can click through the rating to figure it out. It’s all just for fun, after all! […]