I’m a lover of screen violence, gore, mayhem, cursing, nudity, and all the great stuff that R rated movies have to offer. However, I’ve noticed that the movies I enjoy the best tend to be rated G. And I’m not talking about Disney crap, I’m talking about real movies. And not old movies or foreign films without ratings, I’m talking modern, American films that were actually rated G. Here are the great G movies I’ve seen, I may be forgetting a few:
2001
The Straight Story
Koyaanisqatsi
OK, it’s only 3, but I’d say out of my 10 favorite movies of those that have been submitted to the ratings board, most are rated G. Anything other great G movies out there?
I recently saw what had to be the “hardest” G rating ever given: Sweet Charity (1969), starring Shirley MacLaine as a dance hall hostess and occasional prostitute. This is the one where a line of slutty, grim looking dance hall girls sing, “Hey big spender, spend a little time with me,” and Sammy Davis, Jr. plays a new-age evangelist presiding over a congregation of pot smoking hipsters.
Some more fine movies for adults that were rated G:
1968: Finian’s Rainbow, For Love of Ivy, Funny Girl, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Hot Millions, Ice Station Zebra, Oliver!, Paper Lion, Shoes of the Fisherman, The Subject Was Roses, Support Your Local Sheriff!, Yellow Submarine, The Young Girls of Rochefort.
1969: Airport, Darling Lili, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Hello Dolly!, Krakatoa, East Of Java, Marooned, Oh! What a Lovely War, The Out-of-Towners, Ring of Bright Water, Salesman, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Trilogy, True Grit, The Wild Child.
1970: The Andromeda Strain, The Battle of Neretva, Cromwell, Let It Be, A New Leaf, Scrooge, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth.
I like some Disney movies. Walloon has listed some real gems. I guess it just goes to show a movie can be aimed at all ages and doesn’t need sex and violence to make it entertaining for adults.
The Green Berets, John Wayne’s Vietnam propaganda film fiasco was rated G. It might give Sweet Charity a run for its money in the hardest G film race. No telling what the body count is, but there’s one relatively gruesome impaling death that I don’t see how anybody could give it less than a PG.
But I wouldn’t call it a great film (or even a good one), G rated or otherwise.
Head, the Monkees’ nail in the career coffin of a movie also had a G rating. Strange considering the drug inspired scattershot motif of the film, the group attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge (shown twice), some cute references to pot when the boys are stuck inside a vacuum cleaner and find the roach of an “El Zoom-o” as they call it, and use of footage from the infamous Saigon street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.
The Motion Picture Association of America began its letter ratings system in 1968, four years after My Fair Lady was released. Dozens of movies released before 1968 were given an MPAA letter rating when they were reissued after the ratings system was implemented. My Fair Lady did receive a G rating when it was reissued theatrically in 1970.
Trivia: The oldest movie to receive an R rating was the sexually themed Baby Doll (1956), starring Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, and Eli Wallach, upon its reissue in 1969.
The ratings system back then (late 60’s – 70’s) was much more lax. I remember seeing the PG rated Tommy. Which featured sex, drugs and of course rock and roll. PG films in the 70’s could have nudity. The MPAA standards change with standards of the time but once a film is rated the rating stays that way forever.
Babe - Should have won Best Picture, instead of Braveheart. I think that was the last G movie to be nominated for Best Picture.
Some movies have been rerated more strictly on re-release. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was originally G, (despite the climax featuring some guy boinking an android), but the DVD Special Edition got a PG, because the reworked soundtrack was more “menacing”
And count me in with those who love everything Pixar had done so far.
I meant “Disney crap” as a shorthand for “movies made for kids”, which is what Disney is known for. The “crap” is a bit exaggerated, I tend to think most Disney kid’s movies are good for what they are. The Straight Story might be a Disney film, but it is not made for kids.
The MPAA rating changes only if the film’s distributor resubmits the film for rating. An example of the rating moving in the other direction was The Wild Bunch (1969), originally rated R. When it was resubmitted to the MPAA a few years ago, it received an NC-17 rating for violence. The distributor decided to keep the old MPAA rating.
When Fox Home Video submitted several Shirley Temple movies from the 1930s to the MPAA for rating (Blockbuster will not stock unrated movies), two of them received PG ratings! Meanwhile, Sweet Charity, Planet of the Apes, and The Green Berets are rated G.
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