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This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary
Written by:
Kirby Dick
Eddie Schmidt
Matt Patterson
Directed by: Kirby Dick
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 1, 2006
DVD: January 23, 2007
Running Time: 97 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Kirby Dick, John Waters, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Atom Egoyan, and Maria Bello
Academy Award-nominated director Kirby Dick takes on the MPAA.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Chain Camera Derrida Twist of Faith
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Film Threat Eric Campos
It's vital that everyone who cares about film see this documentary.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Kirby Dick's indispensable guerrilla attack on the film-ratings system gives Hollywood a swift, smart and hilarious kick in its institutional, hypocritical ass.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
It thoroughly eviscerates the MPAA and makes a solid case that the culture has paid the price for its censorious practices. His (Dick's) attacks are the equivalent of shooting ducks in a barrel, but these ducks had it coming.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
A revealing, compelling, scabrous and funny look into a system characterized by through-the-looking-glass logic and Kremlin-style secrecy.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
An impassioned piece of activist filmmaking that's as persuasive and entertaining as it is disturbing.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
The movie is both clever and ruthless at exposing the ratings board's inconsistencies and hypocrisy.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
In the ultimate test, Kirby submits this very documentary to the tender mercies of the MPAA. It gets slapped with an NC-17 for graphic content. He appeals. He loses -- ten votes to zip.
Variety Todd McCarthy
Never really addresses why aspects of the ratings don't work, proposes concrete improvements or compares the system to those in other countries. Still, picture's bracing, hilarious and out-there elements make it a landmark.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Yet, like it or not, the MPAA ratings is a system in which we all participate – which makes this film important to see if anything is ever going to change.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
Gets under your skin as another thought-provoking wake-up call about the power of studios and the corporations that back them.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Ultimately, Dick subordinates scholarship to passion, which may be exactly what it takes to convince mainstream moviegoers that they should care about a system that shortchanges THEM when they go to the movies.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
While This Film Is Not Yet Rated does not suggest an alternative to the ratings board, it does expose this Tinseltown sham to some well-deserved public ridicule.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The filmmaker doesn't exactly let anyone off the hook.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Despite being a little rough around the edges (as is often the case with the work of maverick documentarians), This Film Is Not Yet Rated is more than just an angry diatribe against the MPAA.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
There is no question that the organization is a riveting subject for a film.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Any investigation into Hollywood inevitably mutates into a noir.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Unlike the object of its scathing attention, Kirby Dick's documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board is merry and bright and loads of fun.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Dick's strongest points are that these raters receive no training and are given no standards by which to judge movies. Experts in child psychology or media or social studies are not consulted. Nor are they allowed on the board. The days of counting F-words or pelvic thrusts need to end, and in the film's quieter moments, Dick makes this case compellingly.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
As the movie shows, the whole furtive business of ratings is indeed ridiculous and should be overhauled.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Rob Nelson
This Film Is Not Yet Rated has a refreshingly snotty sense of humor.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
This Film Is Not Yet Rated performs a great service, though not especially well.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
100 percent right about our corrupt and hypocritical industry-controlled movie ratings system. Being right, however, doesn't automatically make for a strong documentary. I enjoyed a lot of it. Yet fully half of what's on screen is beside its own point.
Read Full Review >Premiere Jared Shimizu
Raises some probing questions about the secrecy of ratings decisions in a way that entertains and educates audiences with or without agendas to protect film integrity.
Read Full Review >Empire David Parkinson
Packed with amusing graphics, animated sequences and damning testimonies, this is a landmark denunciation of Hollywood infantilisation and protectionism.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The main activity charted in the documentary is a kind of adolescent mischief, as Dick and a private investigator seek to uncover and expose the anonymous MPAA employees.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jim S gave it a2:
I was extremely disappointed by this movie. There really was nothing to 'expose' and no great insights. In the end I had more respect for the MPAA board than the filmmaker who in typical liberal Hollywood fashion finds a way to blame the wrong group. The real blame should be on the big companies that won't back NC-17 movies. That's your real censors.
Chad S. gave it a7:
To my surprise, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" doesn't climax with the outing of the MPAA board. This very informative doc about the puritanical hypocrites who count pelvic thrusts instead of bullets, somewhat loses its shape after the film's selling point is made. Everything that follows is anti-climactic. The appeals process is interesting, but not as interesting as watching a private detective at work. When Becky says that she loves to spy on people without their knowledge, you wonder if those words were scripted(a voyeur doing work against an industry that's predicated on voyeurism); and also if the filmmaker chose this detective(a lesbian, with a protege who happens to be young and sort of hot) to echo the ratings board's fear of females giving females pleasure. We watch closely for any trace of sexual tension. Well, I did. In "This Film Is Not Yet Rated", much is made about how independent films get the shaft when they face the ratings board. Well, this is our faults. If more people ventured out to films such as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Where the Truth Lies", art would be allowed to be art if commerce wasn't lagging too far behind.
Riren gave it an8:
This movie raises some great questions about our movie rating system and the needlessly shadowy MPAA organization. However, it has some problems of its own. George Carlin discusses our societal problem with enjoying fictional violence and prohibiting fictional sex in his stand-up comedy with greater depth and maturity than a dozen of these directors and producers do in actually discussing it for the film. Almost the entire first half of the movie is devoted to a parade of writers, directors and producers complaining about getting a gratuitous rating for showing a sexual act or semi-erotic behavior - This Film Is Not Yet Rated gets redundant quickly for far too long on this matter. They save the really compelling problems for use in small doses, such as Gunner Palace's R-rating; it was a documentary about what real soldiers are doing in Iraq, that got an R for drug use and profane language. It is much easier to sympathize with a director who is just trying to show the American public how their soldiers work and relax than it is with a director who complains that she wasn't able to show a graphic threeway in her comedy, or that he was chastised for having a girl pick up a bottle with her labia. Several of the things the documentary defends are juvenile, and it's kind of funny to see the film makers be so defensive about it. The Pentagon's possible censorship of war movies gets perhaps 60 seconds in this 95-minute movie. Movie "piracy" gets maybe 90 seconds. The cliche of violence against women gets a semi-humorous musical montage. Yet there's plenty of time to watch the lesbian private investigator talk about her life, sit in the car on camera on stakeouts and play phone tag - this is time that should have been invested in a meaningful discussion of issues raised in the film. The film's biggest problem is the MPAA, the organization that creates and gives ratings. The MPAA is too secretive to have contributed much in the way of interviews, and so it is blasted and jabbed at Michael Moore style. Certainly after the movie they seem to have deserved this treatment, but a thinking viewer can't help but be disappointed that most of what we hear about the MPAA is speculation as to their activities and motives. The most clever part of the movie documents its own submission to the MPAA for a rating, though much like the rest of the film, this part is more entertaining than informative - voices are "re-enacted" to give antagonistic tones, cartoon faces are used to characterize board members, conversations are cut making the director look sympathetic, and so on. Still, for the information the film provides and all the questions it raises, it's absolutely worth seeing. You may even want to make a checklist of all the topics you'll have to discuss afterwards. It definitely provides more of those than your average movie, or even your average documentary.
Mase gave it a10:
BRAVO!! A must see for any American filmgoer. Don't let that it is a documentary scare you off, highly entertaining and informative. One of the most enjoyable and intruiguing movies of the year. Will surely start a good conversation afterwards as well
Joan C. gave it a10:
really sexy! very cool.
