HOW low can Hollywood go – and still manage to escape an R rating?I’ve just seen a new, PG-13 rated movie in which the devil (played by Harvey Keitel), anally violates a cross-dressing Hitler with a pineapple.
The scene in Adam Sandler’s new comedy “Little Nicky” is funny and not especially explicit. But is it really appropriate for the unaccompanied 10-year-olds who are likely to go see it?
And it’s hardly the only instance of PG-13-rated movies pushing the envelope.
Anal rape (an act that drew an X rating the first time it was depicted in a mainstream Hollywood movie, 1970’s “Myra Breckinridge”) also turned up in another “family” comedy this summer.
A major comic scene in Eddie Murphy’s “The Klumps: Nutty Professor 2” shows a giant lab rat having his way with an uptight professor – again, nothing explicit, but there are several jokes about it afterwards, including a character describing the prof as the lab rat’s “bitch.”
This movie, too, carries a PG-13 – which has turned into a very popular rating for Hollywood filmmakers.
An R-rating – which theoretically bars unaccompanied teenagers under 17 – can cost studios millions in revenue. They’d often much rather have a PG-13 (“parents strongly cautioned that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13”), which leaves it up to parents to decide who gets to see a movie.
In their current election-year obsession with the marketing of R-rated movies to children, politicians have overlooked the more disturbing trend of movies that in the past would have received an R rating going out with a PG-13 tag, often to major box-office success.
Whether the ratings board’s standards have declined or the studios, as many believe, are negotiating ratings and/or repeatedly resubmitting films with minor changes until the desired rating is achieved, the PG-13 label has boosted the grosses for violent action thrillers (“Mission: Impossible 2”), war movies (“U-537”) and even an upscale slasher movie (“What Lies Beneath”).
“Meet the Parents,” the PG-13-rated Robert DeNiro-Ben Stiller comedy that has led the box-office for the last four weekends, is loaded with sexual innuendo and drug references. Ditto “Bedazzled,” with Brendan Fraser.
It’s also rated PG-13, as is “Charlie’s Angels,” opening today, which frequently places its three stars (Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu) in highly suggestive clothing and situations.
This week’s other new PG-13-rated movie, “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” features a scene where the female lead (Charlize Theron) performs a striptease in an attempt to seduce her ex-fiancé (Matt Damon), as a 10-year-old watches in amazement.
But while the ratings board has become highly lenient, it hypocritically draws the line at repeated uses of the F-word.
Language alone has condemned “Billy Elliot,” a highly artistic movie about a 10-year-old Scottish boy who aspires to the ballet, to an R rating.
Julia Roberts’ “Erin Brockovich” was also rated R solely for language; it sold more than $130 million worth of tickets at the U.S. box office, but it would have done even better at PG-13.
An R rating definitely hurt “Almost Famous,” another superb film. Its offense wasn’t the F-word but a brief flash of Kate Hudson’s naked breast.
Here’s the bottom line: the ratings board isn’t going to protect kids any more than grandstanding pols are. It’s up to parents to review potentially problematic material beforehand.
