The Motion Picture Association of America has assigned ratings to pretty much every
movie ever released during Hollywood's long history - but that doesn't mean they've always
been in the right.
Here are a few of the most bizarre reasons that movies have been given R ratings.
This drama about four adolescent boys in 1950s Oregon, who embark on an adventure to see
a dead body, has become a modern classic and something of a staple on cable television
schedules.
Based on a Stephen King novella and directed by Rob Reiner, Stand By Me features breakout
performances from its young cast - including Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman,
and Jerry O'Connell.
The coming-of-age film full of kids does occasionally feature some adult language, but it's mostly
just the kind kids often use as soon as their parents leave the room.
This handful of F-words, however, still earned the otherwise youth-friendly movie an R-rating
from the MPAA, as the organization strictly adhered to their codes rather than actually
analyzing the overall content of the film.
Columbia Pictures tried to get the screenwriters to eliminate some of the language to obtain
a PG rating, but they balked at the suggestion.
Raynold Gideon, one of the film's writers, told Yahoo:
"Norman Lear said to us, 'Don't change a thing.
If my life has meant anything, it's to keep artistic excellence the way it is; we don't
try to compromise because of ratings.'
Also, we felt that an R would make people go, 'Oh my God, I have to see that movie!'"
And people did see it.
Despite the R rating, Stand By Me managed a respectable $52 million at the box office.
Acclaimed by critics on its release, Love Is Strange focuses on an older gay couple,
Ben and George, who get married after 39 years of partnership.
When George is fired from his Catholic school teaching job after the archdiocese learns
of the same-sex wedding, however, the couple faces a myriad of both financial and emotional
hardships.
This mild but affecting drama earned four Independent Spirit Award nominations - as
well as a highly controversial R-rating for "language."
While Love is Strange does have some cursing, it's hard to figure out why a film labeled
as "delicate" in its reviews would receive the same rating as two ultra-violent movies
that opened the same weekend: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Jersey Shore Massacre.
Many critics accused the MPAA of hypocrisy and homophobia.
Michael Phillips wrote in the Chicago Tribune:
"No matter how discreet and clothed its depictions, Love Is Strange is apparently just too gay
for a PG-13.
There isn't another way to read the MPAA's actions."
R ratings can often hinder a movie's box office returns, so many studios push hard for PG-13
ratings - since they typically bring in millions more dollars.
Meanwhile, horror is a particularly profitable genre and tends to come with its own hugely
loyal fan base.
Combine the two things, and you're likely to rake in the cash - unless the MPAA hits
you with an R. After scaring audiences with his Insidious franchise, horror maestro James
Wan set out to make a "true life" haunted house flick about Ed and Lorraine Warren,
the paranormal investigators who worked on the infamous Amityville case.
Despite having no salty language, nudity, or gore, The Conjuring still received an R
because, in the words of producer Walter Hamada, the MPAA felt the film was:
"...just so scary.
There are no specific scenes or tone you could take out to get it PG-13."
Wan said he was aiming for a PG-13 rating, but he didn't seem to mind receiving an R
- even though a lot of internet critics took the MPAA to task for it.
Luckily for him, The Conjuring whipped up more than $319 million worldwide, and it's
entirely possible that the controversy behind its R rating actually gave it a boost at the
box office.
Army of Darkness is the third, slightly-less-violent movie in the Evil Dead series.
A Wired writer who wrote about watching the film with his 9- and 11-year-olds even called
it "as mild as any PG film."
The gore is limited to stuff like fake-looking fountains of blood and humans fighting skeletons,
while the F word is said just once - which is well within the limits for a PG-13 rating.
"Hail to the king, baby."
And yet, for reasons that are nothing less than baffling, this movie was not only rated
R, but actually ran the risk of receiving an NC-17 rating, which director Sam Raimi
had to fight to have reduced.
According to Mental Floss, the MPAA begrudgingly agreed to change the rating after Raimi pointed
out they'd based their decision on human-on-skeleton violence, and skeletons don't actually bleed.
In 2002, director Richard Linklater started production on an untitled film that he called
the "life project," in his hometown of Austin, Texas.
There was no script - only a vague outline.
Linklater wanted to tell the story of a boy as he grows up, but he didn't know how to
film it.
Then he had an idea: film a little part of the boy's life each year for 12 years.
The resulting movie, Boyhood, became a critical darling and constituted an incredible cinematic
feat.
As the boy ages before the audience's eyes from 6 to 19, he experiences the highs and
lows of growing up, falling in love, and finding himself - just like any other kid.
But teens themselves couldn't easily go see Boyhood, because the MPAA slapped an R on
the film for "teen drug and alcohol use."
At least one theater even decided to ignore the MPAA's guidance.
The IFC Center in New York City, which is owned by Boyhood's distributor IFC Films,
announced it would admit younger patrons at the theater's discretion, insisting that "the
film is appropriate viewing for mature adolescents."
On the surface, Almost Famous is a film about rock-and-roll in the 1970s.
But Cameron Crowe's nostalgic look at his adolescent years as a writer for Rolling Stone
is really a bittersweet coming-of-age drama with the music industry merely acting as its
backdrop.
After growing up in a strict household with a loving - if overbearing - mother, naive
15-year-old William Miller tries to navigate a freewheeling adult world he's not entirely
prepared for, as he tours with rock band Stillwater.
There's obviously plenty of sex, drugs, and all kinds of profanity present throughout
the film, which is why it earned an R rating, despite its fairly tame depiction of those
things.
This particular R rating brought Roger Ebert to pen an infamously scathing critique of
the MPAA and its moral inconsistencies.
Ebert argued the film shouldn't be rated R because "the film applies values to its content."
William himself never drinks or does drugs, doesn't use the same bad language as his hero
and mentor Lester Bangs, and his so-called "deflowering" happens offscreen.
"You're too sweet for rock and roll."
As Ebert asked in his review of the film:
"Why did they give an R rating to a movie perfect for teenagers?"
Colin Firth won an Oscar for his performance in The King's Speech as King George VI, the
stammering monarch who forges a special friendship with Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech
therapist.
When his brother, Edward, abdicates the throne in order to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson,
George is forced to take his place as King, putting even greater pressure on him to overcome
his fears about public speaking.
George and Lionel try various methods and exercises to eliminate the stammer to no avail
until they discover one technique that provides a breakthrough.
In one very funny scene, Lionel has George yell the F-word repeatedly in order to overcome
his mental blocks, which was enough to earn the otherwise tame and incredibly inspiring
film an R-rating - annoying director Tom Hooper in the process.
In an interview with the LA Times, he asked:
"How many films can claim to use swearing for its therapeutic effect?"
Once the film won Best Picture at the Oscars, the Weinstein Company decided to release a
PG-13 version with the curses muted to make it more family-friendly, which led to a new
round of questions about the MPAA's ratings system.
After all, when you've begun to censor even king's speeches, it might be time to consider
abdicating your moral throne.
Sometimes, it can be difficult for even the most puritanical film fan to figure out just
why a release received an R rating.
Take Air Force One, the story of a badass American president and action hero, who battles
terrorists who have infiltrated Air Force One.
Besides having a hugely silly premise, the film also has all the explosive violence expected
of a mid-'90s action movie.
Common Sense Media have said of the film:
"Parents need to know that violence in the film includes close-range shootings of innocent
hostages, and death threats to women and an adolescent girl."
But even that organization, which makes a point of highlighting adult themes in films,
struggled to understand why Air Force One was rated R. In their review, they wrote:
"There is also scattered profanity, but in general the R-rating is pretty surprising;
seems the MPAA has slapped PG-13s on nastier films than this."
Here's what Common Sense Media had to say about The Matrix:
"An exciting, sometimes confusing, sci-fi adventure with a brooding Keanu Reeves and
a mysterious Laurence Fishburne at its center."
Their review then goes on to point out that the film features some bad language, before
concluding that most kids 14 and up could probably handle it all just fine - as long
as they didn't find it too confusing.
None of that sounds like what you'd find in an R-rated film, but The Matrix was rated
R by the MPAA nonetheless.
Maybe it was because it was seen as confusing?
Complex writing isn't usually a factor in how the MPAA rates its films, but stranger
things have happened.
“Woah.”
Few child stars in the '90s were bigger than Macaulay Culkin.
After the mega-success of Home Alone, Culkin's father, who was his manager at the time, had
gotten wind of a new psychological thriller about a disturbed child, penned by acclaimed
writer Ian McEwan.
Culkin's father, Kit, pushed for Macaulay to star in The Good Son.
Because Kit dangled his son pulling out of participating in Home Alone 2: Lost in New
York as a threat if he didn't get the part… he got the part.
Culkin was cast as the evil lead, and McEwan was tasked with rewriting the script to accommodate
its new star...before eventually being let go from the project altogether.
What could have been a creepy film comes off as unintentionally campy because of Culkin's
presence, yet the MPAA still gave The Good Son an R rating for "acts of violence and
terror involving a disturbed child."
Nearly all the violence happens offscreen, but given just how big of a star Culkin was
at the time, perhaps the MPAA awarded the film its restricted rating simply to keep
fellow kids from seeing their Home Alone hero go psycho.
Of all the bizarre reasons movies have been given R ratings, this one is probably the
weirdest.
Snakes on a Plane was rated R not because the MPAA had some strange reason they pulled
out of nowhere at the last second, but because the filmmakers actually wanted an R rating.
In fact, they wanted that R rating so badly they went back after the film had wrapped
and shot some extra scenes to make the movie more violent.
But why?
According to the LA Times, the whole point of the movie was the ridiculous B-movie premise,
and fans of B-movies don't want to see films that have been watered down for the kids.
In fact, fans were so vocal about what they wanted in Snakes on a Plane that Samuel L.
Jackson even said they were a part of the "collaborative process."
According to Entertainment Weekly, the new additions included more violent snake strikes,
some airplane bathroom hook-ups - which also involved snake attacks - and the fed-up, profanity-laced
line delivered by Jackson which made the movie the meme it is today.
"I have had it with these motherf---ing snakes on this motherf---ing plane!”
So did this movie, like other films that have been unfairly slapped with an R rating, suffer
at the box office for it?
Well, it might have, considering it grossed just $62 million.
But it's hard to say whether a PG-13 rating would have helped.
All you can safely say is that if Snakes on a Plane had been rated PG-13, Samuel L. Jackson
would never have uttered that iconic line.
Or at the very least, it would've sounded a whole lot different:
“I have had it with these monkey fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"
And is that a world anybody wants to live in?
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