Documentary Review: This Movie is Not Yet Rated

This Movie is Not Yet Rated (2006) 

Directed by Kirby Dick 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Kirby Dick, Becky Altringer 

Release Date September 1st, 2006

Published December 22nd, 2006

Documentarian Kirby Dick's snarky, sarcastic, irreverent approach can be a little off-putting, especially when he has a real point to make. In his latest documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Dick has some real strong points to make about the machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America, the group that basically decides what movies Americans can see in movie theaters.

The doc is highly entertaining and very smart. However, when Kirby Dick wants to, he can be a real arrogant, pedantic prick. It's all part of this wonderfully amusing and highly important little movie that I highly recommend, despite it's creators foibles.

I have long felt that the M.P.A.A played a valuable role in the film industry. As long time President Jack Valenti so often pointed out, the motion picture ratings board was what stood between the film industry and government censorship of film. What Kirby Dick demonstrates with sharp, expert interviews is that the M.P.A.A incorporates censorship rather than prevents it.

The argument is thus, remove the MPAA from the equation and force the government to attempt to rate movies. The government being subject to the law would be forced to abide the first amendment. The MPAA being an industry institution is not subject to the law. Filmmakers can work around the MPAA if they like, but theater owners refuse to run films that don't have the MPAA seal which leaves that film basically in limbo.

There are other important points made about the MPAA in This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Among them is the very obvious homophobia of the ratings board members. An interview with director Kimberly Pierce reveals her struggle to avoid an NC-17 rating for her film Boys Don't Cry. Though films featuring graphic sex between men and women sailed to R-ratings, Pierce's love scenes featuring Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny had an impossible time getting past the ratings board.

Atom Egoyan struggled with similar issues on his film Where The Truth Lies and when he challenged the ratings board and demanded to speak face to face with raters he was denied. He appealed to the ratings and asked to speak directly with the appeals board and was also denied. His case however, revealed something about the board that is one those great gotcha moments of This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

An interview with Trey Parker of South Park fame revealed two more strange things about the board's taste in movies. The first is the different treatment of violence vs sexuality. On South Park Bigger Longer Uncut, the creators of South Park were able to get away with any and all forms of violence and yet when it came to the sexual content of another Parker-Stone creation, Orgazmo, the cuts requested by the board were deep and seemingly arbitrary.

The other side of that debate was the ease with which the studio that produced Bigger Longer Uncut made it through the ratings process, despite it's highly offensive content, versus the uphill battle that faced the far more innocuous, independently produced Orgazmo. Remember the MPAA is a studio creation, thus it is fair and well argued in This Film Is Not Yet Rated that their is a bias against independent movies.

The most controversial aspect of This Film Is Not Yet Rated and it's most inventively snarky inclusion, is Kirby Dick's choice to hire a private investigator to identify MPAA raters. What he finds is even more hypocricy than that demonstrated just by the ratings the board has given out. Though the MPAA claims that the ratings board is made up of parents of young children, Dick and private investigator Becky Altringer find that few of the raters have children in their teens or younger. A few raters are even single childless men, not a shocking revelation but something MPAA doesn't want us to know about.

And that is the key. What the MPAA does not want us to know about. Why isn't this process more open to scrutiny. Why can't filmmakers speak with raters and plead their case instead of having to simply bend to the will of these non-artists. Why is appeals process even more secretive? And, in another of the films gotcha moments, why is the opinion of church officials so important to the ratings appeal process?

As Dick reveals, a pair of priests reside on the appeals board and one of them even submits to an on camera interview. The priests have no vote in the final process but are allowed to voice concerns over a films content.

Kirby Dick is an arrogant, pushy, jerk. It's what makes him a great editorialist. He has a point to make and will do whatever he can to make that point stick in your head. His work is as off putting as it is persuasive and while you may walk out of This Film Is Not Yet Rated not liking Kirby Dick you will likely still end up agreeing with many of the valuable points he makes about censorship and the MPAA.

Like Michael Moore however, Dick's editorial approach  effects the perception of his film as documentary. Most documentary films are meant to observe a story and come to conclusions only after the facts have been explored. For guys like Michael Moore and Kirby Dick, a documentarian begins with a point of view and seeks only information that conforms to that point of view. That, of course, leads to fair accusations of bias and indeed calls into question some things you may see in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

If Kirby Dick is only seeking information that backs up his opinion that the MPAA incorporates censorship into the film business then what is the other side? What are we not hearing. Kirby Dick would likely not care. I guess if the MPAA has a problem with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, they should make their own documentary or at the very least respond to the various charges that Dick makes that have thus far gone unchallenged by the MPAA.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is muckraking, editorial journalism with a whole lot of snark and circumstance. Kirby Dick has an axe to grind with the MPAA and grind away he does invading the homes of the MPAA and taking the fight against film censorship right to the people he feels are incorporating it. Is his style arrogant, overbearing and peevish? Oh yeah. But, is it effective? Definitely.