Bashing the MPAA is always fun, and I will never miss an opportunity to do so. So let’s join the party A.V. Club started yesterday with their list of the 15 most egregious MPAA screwups. In a piece entitled “This film is questionably rated,” they began with the film Once:
In early summer of 2007, two films were released with R ratings. One featured a scene where a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another naked woman slashes her with a scythe and bathes in her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together, falling in love, and opting not to act on it. In spite of their comically vast discrepancy in content, Hostel 2 and Once both required a parent or guardian to accompany minors under 18 years of age, and the contrast between them underscored the vagaries of the R rating. If a hyper-violent piece of torture porn could fit under the same umbrella as a sweetly melancholy, sex-and-violence-free tale of unrequited love, then what does the rating even mean? And by preventing indie-minded kids from checking out a big-hearted musical with a little salty language, what did the MPAA seek to accomplish?
And it only gets angrier and most mystified from there. Click on over to A.V. Club to see the rest of their choices, then come back here and share your own?
What films are the most inappropriately rated?
The ratings don’t need to be limited to those from the MPAA, of course. Did some film weirdly get a too-restrictive — or too-loose — rating by a ratings body beyond North America? Tales of ratings idiocy from everywhere are welcome.
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
