News
PG-13 imperative to 'Fired Up?'
By Robert Marich
Feb. 20, 2009 – I haven’t seen Fired Up! and based on Lou Lumenick’s review in the New York Post I’ll probably not get around to it. But that’s not to say the Sony/Screen Gems raunchy teen comedy from isn’t an excellent case study of the marketing phenomenon of “ratings creep”.
Reviewer Lumenick notes that he the film stretched with “strenuous efforts to suggest R-rated smuttiness within the box-office-friendly confines of a PG-13 rating. There’s a lot less on-screen action than there is talk about it, more male nudity than female, and some of the biggest laughs derive from the filmmakers’ extreme inventiveness in sexual euphemisms. A sample: ‘You can winky tinky on my face, just don't tell me it's raining.’”
It’s fascinating to see reviewers look to Hollywood’s motives to examine a film from a film classification perspective. Crafting film content to be just-short-of-the-edge is increasingly common in Hollywood, because such content is a magnet for the teenage audience but avoids the R rating—ages under 17 must be accompanied by parent or guardian.
The second edition of Marketing To Moviegoers, which was published last month, notes that the Federal Trade Commission in a 2007 report spoke approvingly of critics who suggest there’s been a “ratings creep” in recent years. The FTC doesn’t engage in censorship, so that’s as strong as an endorsement as the agency gives.
This suggests that the Classification and Ratings Administration has permitted more violence in PG-13 films, apparently in keeping with changing society mores. Criteria has moved with society since the rating system launched in 1968.
Screen Gems unit distributes non-studio films for Sony Pictures.
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www.nypost.com/seven/02202009/entertainment/movies/to_yell_and_back_155988.htm