Why is this movie rated 'R' in the US?! ...and opinion.

[deleted]

Jack,

I agree completely with all your remarks. Saw the movie last night and found it completely charming, wonderfully cast (especially Garai and Fitzgerald), also think the R rating is ludicrous for such a sweet, gentle movie. No strong language, sex, or violence at all, and many PG-13 movies have plenty of all 3.

Just a note about your final question. In the wonderful opening scene of the book, in which Cassandra is sitting in the sink & writing in her journal, she meticulously describes everyone around her in the kitchen and what everything looks like, and says that she is teaching herself to be a novelist and is determined to "capture all our characters and put in conversations." As she describes their life and the castle in great detail, I'm pretty sure she says that she's writing it all down to also "capture the castle" (as well as the family), though I can't find that excerpt right now.

The book is wonderful, and the movie is very true to the details of it.

It's rated G in Canada too! What were they thinking?

Here's a good example of how us Americans are being censored.


http://www.tnmc.org/batcave/0701031.shtml



"Movies like [Victor] Vargas, Better [Luck] Tommorrow or Billy Elliot get R ratings that prevent them from being seen by teens and kids, the very people these movies are about. Why? Simply put, they feature swearing and/or drug use and thus are viewed as inappropriate to younger viewers. Never mind the fact that these films might be useful for kids to see. Billy Elliot was an uplifting film of a child in a poor working class family who fights through social conventions to become a ballet dancer.
....

Meanwhile, a film like 2 Fast 2 Furious, which shows people engaging in outrageously dangerous driving, gets a PG-13 rating. Charlies Angels: Full Throttle, a film loaded with sexual innuendo gets a PG-13. One of the all time offenders was Coyote Ugly, a PG-13 rated film that contained images of young women dancing on a bar and pouring drinks on themselves. That was a movie that encouraged such dubious behavior in young girls. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't let her anywhere near that movie. Examples like these seem to indicate the ratings board is more concerned with specific details than context. Billy Elliot does contain countless exclamations of "*beep*" but Coyote Ugly has no nudity and just a hint of swearing, so the two get the rating the other deserved."

dwasserm, have you watched many American films? Far from being "afraid of nudity" Americans are obsessed with it. Do you really claim to be ignorant of how much gratuitous nudity is used in American filmmaking? Take a look through some video stores sometime. There is no shortage of sex and nudity in American cinema. If some groups of people do not want to see it and it is rated one way or another, we must accomodate them as much as anyone else. They have every right to want to NOT see that sort of stuff as much as some people would like to see MORE of it. I personally do not like gratuitous nudity because it makes women into decorations instead of people. It's almost always women who are nude in film and the nudity is used to get young men to the theatre. I don't like my sex used as amarketing ploy, that's my beef with the whole thing. To say that Americans are "afraid" of nudity is ridiculous and stereotypical.

Some people could walk around naked all day long but to you, if they don't want to see people in film or TV doing it, they're labelled as "afraid." What a crock. I don't see why some people are so condemning of any viewpoint but their own, that if they are comfortable with violence, sex and nudity that everyone else has to be as well.

On top of that, something I bet you don't know because you are grossly ignorant of America -- the MPAA is not handing out laws. Ratings are SUGGESTED. The filmmakers are not obligated to go by them or have their films rated at all. Perhaps what you need to do is stop complaining about ratings and start telling filmmakers to shun the rating system if they don't want their stuff rated. The power of choice is in the filmmaker's hands.




And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.

Friends don't let friends vote Democrat.

[deleted]

As a former movie theater owner, I am more than puzzeled by the ratings and the fact that some religious groups will NOT see an R such as, Like Water for Chocolate or Speed, but will increase the grosses of films full of innuendos and violence.

1. Pointed profanity - by either title or lip - this includes words "God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Christ" (unless used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell," "damn," "Gawd," and every other profane and vulgar expression, however it may by be spelled.

2. Any licentious or suggestive nudity - in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice therof by other chracters in the picture.

4. Any inference of sex perversion.

6. Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races).

7. Sex hygiene and venereal diseases.

8. Scenes of actual childbirth - in fact or in silhouette.

9. Children's sex organs.

10. Ridicule of the clergy.

i am quoting the back of the book, but it says "at the end of the tale, Cassandra has not only captured the castle by matering her own thoughts and feelings, but has capture the hearts of the reader." Something like that.