[Wrap up of this brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6]

Imagine this situation:  You are heading back to your apartment one evening after work/school when you run into a friend from next door.

Your friend: Hey, a bunch of us are heading off to see a movie.  Want to come?

You: Which movie?

Your friend: [names a movie you’ve never heard of]

You: Uh…what’s it rated?

Your friend: I don’t know—but, don't worry, it's not too bad from what I hear.  So, are you coming?  We’re leaving right now…

What do you do?  Do you go and take your chances?  Or stay home and play it safe…but possibly miss out on a fun experience with your friends for no reason?  What does “not too bad” mean?  “Not too bad”…for an R-rated movie?

Do you go with your friends and then possibly back out at the theater?  (embarrassing)   Walk out in the middle of the movie, if necessary? (Even more embarrassing…)  Or--what usually happens—are you just going to end up sitting through a movie that leaves you feeling unclean afterwards, because you don't want to make a scene?   And then vowing to do a better job making decisions next time, even though you still don’t have any more means now of knowing beforehand what the next movie contains than you did this one?

A number of people have shared that this experience happened all the time in college—they want to keep some kind of standards for movies, but they just know so little about all the movies out there, even (and especially) the “popular” ones they see trailers for on TV. 

This is a common problem that affects both the singles who go out to movies on dates or with friends, and the families with kids who don’t want to undercut every standard they’ve tried to instill in their children from the time they were born through the content in the DVDs Mom and Dad rented without really knowing what was inside.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could either confidently say ‘yes’ and be reasonably at ease from the very beginning, or say ‘no’ right at the start without having to lose face backing out after the fact (or sitting through something you don’t want to)?

As a wrap-up to this series on movies and content, here are some final general principles about movie watching.

There is no substitute for research

I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I know movies pretty well.  For virtually all the mainstream films released every week, and fair amount of the independent films, I can tell you what it’s about, who’s in it, what it’s rated, why it got that rating, and any preliminary positive or negative buzz about general quality and/or moral issues.

I decided long ago that I did not want to find myself in the position outlined above: where I had to make uninformed decisions about entertainment.  If my roommate rented a DVD, or a group of friends were heading to a movie, I wanted to already know before the question was even asked what my answer was going to be.
 
When it comes to movies, there really is no substitute for research.  Someone who cares about movie quality and content and doesn’t want to waste time with movies that don’t meet their standards for either, is going to have to do the (figurative) legwork themselves.   However…

You can’t trust the rating system

As discussed earlier, concerned movie watchers won’t get much help from the rating system, which provides very general information but not much else.  And especially when it comes to PG-13 movies—easily the broadest category of the bunch—the rating says next to nothing.

[Personal anecdote:  just recently we rented “Flawless” with Demi Moore and Michael Caine, which is rated PG-13.  It has no sex, no nudity, no violence, and absolutely no profanity…other than exactly one (1) F-word in the middle, which was almost certainly put there for the sole purpose of giving the movie a higher ‘non-wimpy’ rating to attract more adults (as discussed earlier in this series).  Compare this movie to, say, “The Dark Knight”—an admittedly higher-end PG-13 movie--and you start to realize that the rating system really doesn’t help differentiate movies too well…]

[Anecdote #2:  The Scera theater in Orem, Utah is well-known for only showing ‘family-friendly’ films.  Back in 2003, a movie called “Kangaroo Jack” came out with a surprisingly high level of sexual content and profanity for a PG movie.  I had caught the buzz early on, and was mildly surprised when the Scera advertised they were going to be showing it.  A couple of days later—almost certainly after some complaints—I saw that they had suddenly removed it from the marquee mid-week and started showing the two-month-old “Other Side of Heaven” again, instead.   It appears even the Scera theater got caught blindly putting their trust in the PG rating without checking it out ahead of time…]

You can’t trust movie marketing, either

Marketing, by definition, has always fundamentally been about ‘deception’, at least to the extent of trying to emphasize the good and hiding the bad.  Movie marketing, especially in the last decade, though, has taken the ‘deception’ to completely new heights.

A few things you may not know about movie ad campaigns.

• Many movie “critics”…aren’t.  As a not-very-well-kept secret, movie studios have always invited obscure movie reviewers from obscure newspapers in obscure small towns in the US to lavish parties where they are given free screenings, free food, and easy access to the stars of the movie for interviews…and in return they give the movie a good review.  (Oh, no one forces them to give a good review, of course, but if they don’t, they aren’t invited to the next party, naturally)

• Many of the quotes seen on movie ads (“Best Movie of the Year!”, “A Thrill Ride From Start To Finish!”) are also from those obscure critics who are paid by the studio to put their name under good sounding quotes—oftentimes they don’t even see the film before they “praise” it in ads.  Some studios have even been so bold as to pass out sheets of pre-written quotes praising the movie before screenings even start, asking the participants to simply check the box next to the quote they want to appear in front of their name on the upcoming movie ad campaign.

• If bribing movie critics at junkets doesn’t work, movie studios can simply use imaginary critics—like Sony did in 2000 with “David Manning” from the Ridgefield Press in Connecticut, who was dreamed up by a Sony marketing executive as a vehicle for praising Sony movies.  (Discovered after an alert observer noticed that the fictitious Mr. Manning was (a) praising movies that were universally getting bad reviews from everyone else, and (b) praising bad movies that were all from the same company…)  In 2001, it was discovered that *five* different movie studios had run television ads the previous year featuring "testimony" from people off the street--who supposedly had just seen the film in question and were sharing their opinion outside of the theater in random interviews--but that actually featured scripted movie studio employees, instead.
  

• Even stranger, some quotes on movie ads are just…quotes.  I saw a movie billboard just last week with “The Most Important Movie of the Year!” printed on it…with no name under it!   It wasn’t even pretending to be a quote from an actual person who saw the film and whose opinion we might care about—it was just a ‘quote’!

• Even ‘real’ critics, like Roger Ebert, get involuntarily involved in this marketing process, with quotes taken out of context and posted on movie ads under his name.   [One amusing example:  for “Dumb and Dumber” in 1994, the movie ad read, “Made me laugh so loudly, I embarrassed myself”—Roger Ebert.   His actual quote from his review, giving the movie two stars out of four:  “There is a moment in "Dumb and Dumber" that made me laugh so loudly I embarrassed myself….But because I know that the first sentence of this review is likely to be lifted out and reprinted in an ad, I hasten to add that I did not laugh as loudly again, or very often.”]

Find ‘real’ critics and read them every week

If you ignore movie ads, it’s not too hard to differentiate between real film critics and fake ones. Virtually all real movie critics attended pre-release screenings 1-2 weeks before the general release, and most have websites (or use their host newspaper’s web site) where reviews are posted online for public access before the movie opens.  Finding a handful of critics you enjoy reading will allow you to keep up to date on current releases.  (Critics rarely agree, of course, so reading a variety of critics is important to get a wider range of opinions about a film)

Rotten Tomatoes is useful for compiling the general positive/negative percentage of current reviews for a movie, as well as direct links to virtually all of the reviews themselves.

Critical reviews will usually discuss the basic premise (so you know if you’d be interested in the first place), and general movie quality (so you know if it’s even worth spending the time and money to see). 

However, the traditional movie critic won’t usually comment on objectionable content issues (except indirectly) as that is not their focus.  (And they see so many films that what the common Joe off the street might consider a ‘highly violent’ movie may just get a mild shrug from an inured critic, as they’ve probably seen it all before)

Because of that…

Cross-reference with ‘parent watch’ web sites 

For specific content analysis, sites like Kids-In-Mind, CommonSenseMedia.org, and Screenit.com will discuss PSV content in films to provide more information to potential viewers to differentiate, for example, ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ PG-13’s.

Remember, context matters, though. The downside to content analysis is that context (and film quality) is not generally considered.  Most PSV sites will report the number of swear words, but generally won’t discuss contextual moral issues that may also be of interest.  Is there anywhere to go for both? 

“Moral” film critics can give you the best of both worlds

Some film critics write specifically from a ‘moral’ perspective—looking at not just how many swear words there are but any deeper, contextual moral issues that religious believers may want to be aware of.  Want to know whether the Harry Potter series is really problematic for believing Christians?  Or how true the Narnia films or “The Golden Compass” were to their respectively Christian and atheist source material?  These are the questions that normal movie critics and the parental watch sites won’t usually be able to answer.

DecentFilms.com is by far the best site out there presently for intelligent (and morality-based) film analysis.  Run by Catholic Steven Greydanus, Decent Films will discuss film quality and morality tied together in a remarkably perceptive and intelligent manner.  The only major flaw is that he just doesn’t write about all that many films.  (The Christianity Today movie section is also a good resource for similar analysis, as is the Faith & Film Critics Circle) 

And one last principle before we close:

You do not have to justify your standards in movies to anyone

If you want to keep strict standards for movies, you do not have to apologize to anyone—even if you end up skipping out on many of the ‘cool’ movies that your friends are all seeing and talking about.  Remember, movies just aren’t that important, and if “The Dark Knight” or even “Wall-E” doesn’t meet your standards, it doesn’t really matter.  Five years from now, neither you nor anyone else is going to care that you never ended up seeing it.

If your standards for movies are looser than others you know, you don’t have to apologize to anyone else, either.  The movies you watch are your business.

As it happens, I don’t watch R-rated movies, but my wife and I know plenty of people who do.  That doesn’t bother me—that’s their business.  What does bother me is the constant psychological need some people seem to have to try to justify their standards to me (and others) even when we haven’t asked.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty violent movie…but, you know, it’s a WAR movie, and that’s just how war really is, so it’s okay…”

“Yeah, it’s got a lot of sex and nudity in it, but it’s actually got a message against casual sex, so it’s okay…”

“Oh,it's not that 'bad' a movie...there’s just this ONE part that’s really bad in the middle, but the rest is really okay…”

“Yeah, it got a lot of bad content…but, you know, it’s the same sort of stuff you can find in the Bible, so it's okay…”

You know what?   Shut up.

If you want to watch R-rated movies, then just watch R-rated movies--you don’t have to defend yourself to anyone.   But, PLEASE, stop trying to tell me all the reasons you think it's okay and "not that bad".  No one wants to hear it.  Just set your own standards and live with them, and let others do the same...