This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)
Independent Film Channel, BBC

Description

Kirby Dick's provocative film investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America rates films. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment, exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence, and reveals the association's efforts to control culture.

Tags

Hollywood, Censorship

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Filmstalker

Kirby delivers a superb documentary that shows the closed, self serving, dated and extremely corrupt organisation that doesn't give parents what they really need. The MPAA are an organisation who serve box office ticket returns rather than the parents who they claim to be assisting. It's very strong, well structured and edited, and utterly compelling. Oh, and it's funny too.
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9.8 DVD Verdict | Bill Gribon

You could call Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated the JFK of industry documentaries. There is a lot of great substance here. There is more than a little stunt showboating. There are people who help propel and diffuse the arguments. And the conclusions drawn are definitive, decisive, and, in more than one case, defendable.
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9.5 digitallyobsessed.com | Jon Danziger

There's a dog-bites-man aspect to this documentary, for it comes as no surprise that an organization funded by the movie studios favors the studios' bland product over independent filmmaking that can be more ambitious.
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9.0 Variety | Todd McCarthy

"This Film Is Not Yet Rated" constitutes a ballsy expose of the notoriously secretive methods of the Motion Picture Assn. of America's ratings board; the guerrilla enterprise takes, and provokes, gleeful fun at outing the heretofore anonymous panel that decides who can see what and how far filmmakers can go with sex and violence.
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9.0 Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

Clearly, Dick is on a crusade — and as such the film occasionally dips into mean-spiritedness, mocking the head of the ratings board in caricature and capturing other raters in unflattering shots. But the skewering tone seems only fitting in dealing with an organization that purports to work for the public but doesn't deign to answer to it.
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9.0 San Francisco Chronicle | Ruthe Stein

It would be fascinating to see a documentary about who serves on this influential board, their qualifications for the job and the process by which their judgments are reached. "This Film is Not Yet Rated'' is not that film. It is, however, extremely amusing and as close a look as you're likely to get at the mysterious workings of this self-appointed regulatory agency.
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8.8 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.
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8.8 The Onion A.V. Club | Scott Tobias

Dick's attempts to infiltrate the system, à la Roger & Me, amount to little more than rhetorical head-banging, but that's part of the point: Here's an agency controlled by the studios that arrogantly refuses to address its hypocrisies or even open its doors to scrutiny.
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8.8 Austin Chronicle | Marjorie Baumgarten

... 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.
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8.8 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's cunningly outraged documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America and its infamous, dogged ratings board, is a movie that might just shake up the world of movies.
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8.0 Amazon user reviews

If it has a flaw, it's this: In his attempt to generate transparency, Dick (Twist of Faith) arguably crosses the line. It's one thing to identify the board members; it's another to divulge their vital statistics. Whether or not these "guardians of morality" are working for the common good, they're still entitled to a little privacy. That said, this is vital stuff for anyone concerned about First Amendment issues.
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8.0 The Guardian | Peter Bradshaw

Dick suggests the films are actually being created by a set of industrial imperatives, which exist independently of any creative individual, and these imperatives are enforced by a commercial studio system which is in a position to impose its views on all the independent producers and everyone else. What a riveting documentary.
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8.0 Salon.com | Stephanie Zacharek

"This Movie Is Not Yet Rated" pulls back the curtain on the secretive MPAA movie ratings board, moral "experts" determined to protect little Johnny from pubic hair and bad language.
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8.0 allmovie | Derek Armstrong

This Film Is Not Yet Rated shows just how funny guerilla filmmaking can be, as Dick repeatedly dangles fresh meat over the MPAA crocodile pit, daring the jaws of its legal apparatus to snap shut. Dick's exposé alternates between moments of outrage, hilarity, and utter disbelief.
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8.0 DVD Talk | Jamie S. Rich

This Film is Not Yet Rated doesn't end up getting to the bottom of everything, so in the end, most of its theories are still theories. Even so, it makes for fascinating viewing, and it should be required for all consumers of entertainment.
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8.0 Eye For Film | Keith Hennessey Brown

While it has a few weak points - too much time is spent on the undercover investigations, which are decidedly sub-Nick Broomfield - This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a film that needs to be seen and, more importantly, acted upon. For the MPAA system it reveals is ultimately not so much one of classification but de facto censorship that impacts upon what we can see, reducing the choice that is supposed to be fundamental to a free market...
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7.5 ReelViews | James Berardinelli

It's long past time that a filmmaker has shown the courage to expose the MPAA Ratings Board for what they are: censors working under the guise of servants to the public good.
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7.5 Combustible Celluloid | Jeffrey M. Anderson

Though Dick ventures into territory that has needed scouring for years, the entire package has a slapdash feel; like Michael Moore, Dick attacks giant, powerful corporations and must do so with a series of small, random blows.
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7.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

... the narrow scope of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” makes it more of a culture-war broadside than a nuanced work of cultural inquiry. It is, nonetheless, an engaging and entertaining movie, one that tries to illuminate an aspect of moviemaking — and moviegoing — that is deliberately left in the dark.
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7.0 DVD Times | Gary Couzens

It’s an unintentional irony of Kirby Dick’s film that a documentary which is in large part about the problems of an American censor rating not allowing any children under seventeen, is restricted to the over-eighteens in the UK. And no-one is likely to object to that.
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5.0 filmcritic.com | Chris Barsanti

The MPAA is less a responsible watchdog organization keeping the country safe from sexually explicit material than it is a corrupt industry tool, keeping the fig leaf of respectability not so firmly in place.
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