This Film is Not Yet Rated- reviewed by John Hang
THIS WEBSITE IS RATED NC-17 for strong sexual content and the use of a spatula to harm a kangaroo. Who the hell gave us this rating? And where the hell did we find a kangaroo? Well the new documentary by director Kirby Dick tackles this issue.
Kirby Dick hires a private investigator and interviews many artists who have been censored by a review board that has remained anonymous…until now.
STORY: not believable at all! Complete farce! Actually with clever editing you make a documentary completely unbelievable. Actually with all the mockumentaries it has harder to distinguish the lines between reality and fiction. With this documentary, there is a blend of interviews with acclaimed directors and other commentators on the M.P.A.A.’s board or review, and interwoven is footage of Kirby Dick and a team of private investigators following cars coming out of the MPAA building. The premise lies in the fact no one knows who determines the ratings for films, which leads to no accountability for the harsh results that are laid sometimes. We are led to believe the board is occupied by regular parents looking out for the well-fair of our youth, but we learn differently.
STYLE: shot on DV cameras with plenty of stock footage of movies that have been censored, it is almost hard to believe too many shots were designed for this film. Developing a beautiful image is not even discussed for a documentary mainly because the focus of a documentary is to tell a story, hence the reason for the recent success of many documentaries. There were some cool animated and flash graphics that have become a mainstay in docu-films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me. The film runs at 97 mins because of the many interviews conducted and there is probably only about 30 minutes with Kirby and his private investigators.
SUMMARY: mehhh. When members of the review board are revealed, there wasn’t a wave of shock that wiped over me or the audience. Maybe with the build-up I was expecting the review board to be occupied by large stalks of celery or Sinbad, but it was mainly suburban parents which came to no surprise to me. I thought the bigger story was the members of the appeals committee which makes perfect sense to me and the funniest parts of the movie consisted of dramatizations with Kirby Dick and the MPAA as he submits his film for a rating to the committee. That must have been an awkward moment for board members as they realized a spy has been following them for months. The main objective is to prove how sex receives a harder sentencing than violence, which is the opposite with other review boards, and after watching this film, all I really wanted to do was watch all these films that received NC-17 ratings and maybe watching some deleted scenes for others. Viva la France!
