# What movies ratings have been the most incorrect? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 19, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500 "2008-08-19T00:22:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/61 "2008-08-21T12:13:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Here, maybe you haven’t seen it in a while. > > Please tell me how, at 4:28, the emaciated, dissolving dog that is struggling as it is consumed by the Thing’s tentacles is not dying horribly. > > Oh, and at 4:38, the dog that is being strangled but still twitching as it is shot through the chest with a shotgun – that’s not horrible and violent? I remember it perfectly. I stand by my earlier statements – the slime-covered dog would still pas your average PG movie filter. The shotfgun blast wasn;'t particularly disturbing (they let THAT one stand when broadcast on CBS.) [quote] Quote: Mind you, I wouldn’t show it to a child or anything. Which is why it doesn’t belong in this thread. Not remotely. [/quiote] It does, absolutely. I’m making a point here cabout what’s allowed and what isn’t/ As it stands, the scene with Doc Copper losing his hands and the two shots to the head would’ve been sufficient for the “R” rating, but I feel pretty certain that’s not what garnered the film its rating b-- it was the rest of the grossness, as evidenced by how ludicrously cut and re–arranged the film was for its one and only networjk broadcast. But the things shown there would not, by the usual definitions, be what would be forbidden – it’s not showing the death, desxtruction, or dismemberment of living creatures, but activities of a wholly imaginary creature. Of course, if you’re not paying close attention, or aren’t essentially a functioning adult, it’s easy to mistake those scenes of the Thing with a dog being mutilated, a guy’s head being split iopen, ot being torn off, or his stomach splitting open. All those scenes got chopped by CBS. They left in the scene at the end of the composite Blair/Dog/tentacled thing, precisely because it COULDN’T be mistaken for anything else. Consider another example brought in upthread – the chest-burster from **Alien**. Alien gets an R, too. There are other disturbing scenes (you get a brief flash of a skull being broken and the brain inside), but that chest-burster scene has to be a big part of it. But you get a chest-burster scene in **Spaceballs** , too. And with the same actor, no less. Spaceballs gets a PG. Don’t say that it’s because it’'s played for laughs. When the beastie first appears it looks just like the chest-burster in Alien, except it’s got eyes. It’s only after a brief setup as the horrific thing that it smiles, puts on a boater, and breaks into Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese’s “Ragtime Gal”. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the scene it’s parodying. Except there’s no blood and guts. So a film can garner an “R” rating for containing a scene which is totally unreal and made-up, with plenty of clues that it’s not something real and gory, if, in the opinion of the rating people, it still looks too much like something real and gory. I don’t think these were cases of – “I’m not touching you; I’m not touching you” skirting of the law, trying to just barely get around the letter. The filmmakers in both cases wanted to show realistically what would happen if an alien parasite puts its young in a human body, or assimilated creatures in a realistic manner (you can still show Caltiki the Immortal Monster, or the Blob assimilating people on the 4:30 movie, as long as there’s no blood and guts) ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/62 "2008-08-21T14:24:43Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] **A Streetcar Named Desire**. I believe I rated it as the second most important Hollywood film in my 50 Most Important Hollywood Films list. [/QUOTE] No, that was rated M / PG on its reissue in 1970. The oldest movie to get an R rating (on reissue) was a screen adaptation of a different Tennessee Williams play, _[Baby Doll](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0048973/)_ (1956). ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/63 "2008-10-06T07:35:41Z")
> [@Drakkar\_Sauna](#): > > I own a neat little flick called [Primer](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/) that’s rated R, and yet has not a word of profanity, drop of blood, or sexual content in the entire film. We just watched this movie, and I went searching for threads which discussed it. 🙂 > [@Student\_Driver](#): > > discussion above made me go check my copy of Primer. It says PG-13 on the case. We just rented it from Netflix, which comes without the case. It claims it is R onscreen, for language. We were quite surprised that a movie could get an R these days just for language. I think there was some mild profanity, nothing anywhere deserving of an R. Perhaps not even worth a PG-13. But I’ll have to listen more carefully when I watch it again and try to figure out WTF was going on in the last third of the movie… 🙂 \*\*\* Ponder ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/64 "2008-10-06T08:20:31Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > One of the most egregious I remember was the PG-13 for _Whale Rider_ which had no violence, language, or sex. But in one scene, in the background, was (supposedly) a bong, and that’s what did it. Was the bong mentioned in that one scene? Did anyone handle the bong or was there a close-up of the item? Was drug use (even casually or implicitly) ever referred to in any other way? No, on all counts. I don’t even remember seeing a bong anywhere. But someone caught it, and that was enough for the higher rating. I remember that Roger Ebert was mad at the MPAA over that. If memory serves, a bong was on the couch next to our heroine’s older cousin (or somesuch) in one scene. In context, it’s a pretty clear “drugs are bad, m’kay?” message, so it’s rather puzzling that that led to a PG-13 rating. ---
**Author:** ![barrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/da6949/32.png) [@barrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barrum)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/65 "2008-10-06T13:43:31Z")
Current movie, Fireproof, rated “PG for thematic material and some peril” ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/66 "2008-10-06T20:54:12Z")
I’ve hard from more than one source that _Jumanji_, which was rated, what, PG-13, is probably the most terrifyingly violent\* movie they’ve ever seen. \*Terrifying violent in the sense of chaos, peril, gotcha! moments, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Nader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Darth\_Nader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Nader)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/67 "2008-10-06T23:47:49Z")
_The Breakfast Club_, rated R in 1985 for pervasive swearing and infrequent sexual innuendo. No boobs. No gore. And they didn’t care about the weed. Or the flare gun in the locker. It was all about the “No, Dad, what about you? FUCK YOU!” thing. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/68 "2008-10-07T00:05:54Z")
Ahh, movie ratings: a subject that’s debated endlessly but will never be changed for the simple reason that by the time you care enough to _do_ something about it, you’re old enough to see whatever film you want… so why bother? Anyway, my nomination is that last SW movie, _Revenge of the Sith_, I think. Rated PG-13 for no reason I could see whatsoever… I would have no problem believing the film board was lobbied to give ROTS a higher rating merely to make it appear more edgy and adult than the previous two movies. ---
**Author:** ![TheBoltEater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheBoltEater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBoltEater)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/69 "2008-10-07T06:36:39Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Yeah, yeah, Siskel & Ebert have been pushing for that for over 20 years now. I know there were mistakes with the way the NC-17 rating was introduced, but I don’t think it really mattered. Any adults-only rating will be rejected by mainstream advertisers as too controversial. Plus films that would get A-Ratings are non-mainstream, arthouse fair, and they don’t give a shit about them to begin with! > > And the hardcore “Hollywood is evil” people don’t consider an ‘A’ Rating progress, even if it delineates between sex & violence, because they’d rather roll things back to the Hayes Code (i.e. pure restrictive censorship!) I’ve always believed the same way as you, but I’m beginning to wonder if things are starting to change. NC-17 didn’t work because theaters refused to run NC-17 films. But in the last year, theaters actually have begun to run Red-Tag trailers (essentially R-rated trailers) which I never previously thought they would run either. So maybe there is some hope for an A rating after all… or not, what do I know? And for me, the two films that always leap to my mind about the subject of ratings are Pretty Woman and Nuns on the Run. I know, it’s a strange combination, but they were released within a week or so of each other in 1990 and I happened to see them as a double feature (probably of my own making). The thing is, while Pretty Woman has no nudity, it was rated R, presumably for the near-rape and adult themes and the occasional bad word. But Nuns on the Run has a lengthy seen that takes place in the convent shower, with dozens of naked woman showering or chatting with the main characters (for what felt like hours, but was probably more like 3 or 4 minutes); and somehow, presumably because it was a comedy, it only scored a PG-13. They stick out in my mind, of course, because they are exactly the _opposite_ of what we can generally expect from the ratings board. Pretty Woman really is an adult themed film, and casual nudity or bad language in a comedy really shouldn’t be that big a deal. But typically, the board lives by the code, expressed so elegantly in the South Park movie, “Horrific, deplorable violence is OK, as long as you don’t say any naughty words.” ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/70 "2008-10-07T06:47:14Z")
> [@TheBoltEater](#): > > But typically, the board lives by the code, expressed so elegantly in the South Park movie, “Horrific, deplorable violence is OK, as long as you don’t say any naughty words.” Horrific, deplorable violence inevitably gets an R rating — just like naughty words. ---
**Author:** ![DarRRva](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/53a042/32.png) [@DarRRva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarRRva)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/71 "2008-10-07T07:06:54Z")
Our Film Classification Censor Board or whatever they’re called over here in New Zealand occasionally go a bit nuts… **Passion of The Christ** was R15 (or possibly 13) when it came out. This means that you have to be that age to see it, parents or guardians be damned. - I worked at the cinema and got so sick of telling parents they weren’t allowed to take their kids in. Then people got all angry about it, so it was dropped to M which meant that anyone could see it, with or without a parent. I just wanted to scream at every parent who took their 5 year old. That film was like cutting a live cow open, climbing inside, and just shakin’ it all about for 90 minutes. **Cruel Intentions** was rated R18 when it came out, which was insane - Basically they rated highly because although it’s actually fairly mild, the semi-incent and downright immorality of the characters meant they didn’t want high school kids to see it and get ideas. It ended up being dropped to R16, which I think is still too high. We studied **The Frighteners** in class a few weeks ago, and I was shocked to learn that it was given an R rating in the US. It was like PG over here, I remember seeing it when I was about 10. ---
**Author:** ![DarRRva](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/53a042/32.png) [@DarRRva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarRRva)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/72 "2008-10-07T07:25:42Z")
Oh yeah, another couple sprung to mind, I remember when I was working the the cinema thinking this was the most bizarre ever - **Sorority Boys** was rated R16 here, I guess because it’s about guys dressing up as girls, whereas **40 Days and 40 Nights** , featuring a sea of boobs was rated M, because Josh Hartnett’s ticket selling power doesn’t extend to the over 16s. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/73 "2008-10-07T08:36:36Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > We just rented it from Netflix, which comes without the case. It claims it is R onscreen, for language. We were quite surprised that a movie could get an R these days just for language. I belive that’s actually in error- when I rented it from Netflix, the little typed description on the sleeve the DVD comes in ended with something to the effect of “Please note this film is rated PG-13, not R as claimed on the DVD itself.” According to [the MPAA’s official ratings listing](http://www.cara.org), the official rating and descriptor for _Primer_ is PG-13 for brief language. > [@RikWriter](#): > > Jaws was rated PG…nowadays, it would be at least PG 13, maybe even R. There was no PG-13 rating at the time _Jaws_ was released, so the ads actually added a bit to the MPAA rating: “Parental Guidance suggested. Some material may be inappropriate for pre-teenagers…but may be _too intense_ for young children” (emphasis theirs). ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/74 "2008-10-07T08:47:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > But you get a chest-burster scene in **Spaceballs** , too. And with the same actor, no less. Spaceballs gets a PG. > > Don’t say that it’s because it’'s played for laughs. When the beastie first appears it looks just like the chest-burster in Alien, except it’s got eyes. It’s only after a brief setup as the horrific thing that it smiles, puts on a boater, and breaks into Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese’s “Ragtime Gal”. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the scene it’s parodying. Except there’s no blood and guts. _Hello! Ma Baby_ was written by Howard and Emerson. You’re probably confusing it with _The Michigan Rag_, which **was** originally written for the _One Froggy Evening_ short by Jones and Maltese. Of course, _Spaceballs_ also features a line that would probably get it at least a PG-13 today: “Out of order? FUCK! Even in the future, nothing works!” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/75 "2008-10-07T12:37:39Z")
Yeah, I came in here to say _Beowulf_, too. I’ve seen a couple NC-17 movies and this was the most egregious combination of violence, gore, and nudity I’ve ever seen in a movie, and it certainly would have been NC-17 if it wasn’t so digitally altered. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/76 "2008-10-07T14:46:23Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Anyway, my nomination is that last SW movie, _Revenge of the Sith_, I think. Rated PG-13 for no reason I could see whatsoever… I would have no problem believing the film board was lobbied to give ROTS a higher rating merely to make it appear more edgy and adult than the previous two movies. Revenge of the Sith? Really? The same movie where Anakin Skywalker (the hero, remember) cuts off both of Dooku’s hands and then decapitates him, murders scores of children and then gets dropped into a pit of lava and burned alive. Yeah, that’s not adult at all. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/77 "2008-10-07T16:38:35Z")
Well, yeah. Having Luke lose his hand wouldn’t earn _Empire Strikes Back_ a PG-13. And there’s no scene of Anakin killing kids - he walks into the chamber, music swells, then later you see the result - an oddly bloodless layout of uninjured bodies that look no more dead than my six year-old does when she is “shot” and acting “killt”. ---
**Author:** ![Arglefraster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@Arglefraster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arglefraster)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/78 "2008-10-08T18:19:14Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > The MPAA’s standards are almost laughably inconsistent. Regarding his movie, **South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut** , Trey Parker said that the ratings board would send the movie back with notes about particular scenes that were unacceptable. “Then, we’d make it five times worse and twice as long, and they’d say, ‘okay, that’s better.’” Similarly, Fight Club originally had Marla Singer saying the line “I want to have your abortion”, which is the line from the book. The censors didn’t like it, so they changed it to “I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school”. Apparently a joke about pedophilia is an improvement over a joke about abortion. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/79 "2008-10-08T22:02:32Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > It was rated “M” (a recommendation, but not a restriction, against being bought or watched by anyone under 15) for “Mature themes”. I can only assume that this just so that small children don’t get hopelessly confused. > > My example is a game rather than a movie. Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification refused classification for the game _Fallout 3_, for the game’s “realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method (bringing) the ‘science-fiction’ drugs in line with ‘real-world’ drugs.” As Wikipedia says, this means that it is illegal for anyone in Australia to get a copy: > Thus, the OFLC proved that they’re a bunch of idiots. The OFLC objected to morphine being one of the many in game drugs. All the other drugs have goofy brand names like Buffout (which is, in effect, steroids). There was some talk of releasing an Australian market version, but the developers finally decided to just rename morphine to something less realistic. As it stands now, all versions of the game will have the same content, including quite a bit of purportedly graphic violence and bad language. ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500/80 "2008-10-09T06:32:54Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > _Amadeus_ was, if I recall, PG when it was released. But the DVD Director’s Cut got an R rating because of the addition of a brief scene with breasts. Idiots. But what nice boobies they were! 🙂 Now, I’m no prude, but I personally wondered how Dark Knight got away with only PG-13. The Joker’s abuse as a child was pretty graphically described and he later murdered someone by impaling some guys head on a pencil. And SOUTH PARK gets an “R” RATING? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-ratings-have-been-the-most-incorrect/460500.md?page=5)