What parents should know about the PG-13 rating
By Adam Graham
Gannett News Service
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| Plenty of blood gets spilled in "Walking Tall" as The Rock gets his revenge and the bad guys are methodically gunned down.
MGM |
Arms are broken with one swing of an oversized piece of lumber. Bad guys are methodically gunned down. All in all, plenty of blood is spilled as The Rock gets his revenge.
Surprising? Hardly. It's just another day at a PG-13 movie in 2004.
As it turns 20 this year, the PG-13 rating has become the most-coveted rating in the moviegoing world. Kids like it because it represents fare beyond what they'd see in a PG-rated movie. Studios like it because more than any other rating, PG-13 means big bucks. And parents like it because they feel their children are safe with it, or at least safer than they would be with an R-rated film.
But some critics say parents don't realize how the content of PG-13 films has grown over the years and become edgier. The PG-13 rating has changed as society has changed, says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Says Lori Pearson, lead critic at kids-in-mind.com, a Web site that grades movies for parents, "As a tool, (PG-13) may very well be a place to start, but without additional information, I think a parent is pretty much lost, assuming a PG-13 is OK for their 13-year-old kids."
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The PG-13 rating was created in 1984 to help parents define the gray area that exists between child-oriented PG's and adult-skewing R's.
PG-13's inception came at a time when parents were upset over the content found in some of that summer's PG-rated films, including "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." That film included a character's beating heart being ripped out of his chest, and the gory "Gremlins," in which at least one gremlin was killed in a blender.
The first film released with a PG-13 was the Patrick Swayze apocalyptic World War III thriller "Red Dawn."
Since that time, the rating has continued to build steam, as filmmakers have embraced the allowances the rating grants while still being able to appeal to a broad cross-section of the audience. It has paid off for the industry.
Gannett News Service
Of the 97 films that have crossed the $100 million mark since 2000, more than half were rated PG-13. That's more than double the number that were rated PG and more than triple the number that were rated R. Similarly, more than half of the films that made more than $200 million and $300 million were PG-13. The one film that grossed $400 million was, yes, PG-13.
A revealed Halle Berry stars in the upcoming PG-13 film "Catwoman."
And that $400 million-grossing film, "Spider-Man," has a sequel opening this summer, one of the season's many potential blockbusters that will be branded with the coveted PG-13 rating. Other films carrying PG-13s include "Van Helsing," Memorial Day's global warming doomsday spectacular "The Day After Tomorrow," the Will Smith action film "I, Robot," the Halle Berry-fronted "Catwoman" and the sequel to the hit "The Bourne Identity," "The Bourne Supremacy."
The PG-13 rating is seen by moviegoing audiences — teens in particular — as "the cool rating," Dergarabedian says.
Pearson, a mother of two, says PG-13 movies have strayed from their initial purpose and continue to be problematic for parents who assume they're OK for their kids.
She cites the "Austin Powers" movies and "Mean Girls" as films that push the envelope of the sexual content that's allowed under the rating.
The rules state that PG-13 films can contain one utterance of the F-word, whereas in PG films they cannot. Also, PG-13s can have more violent content — as seen in "Walking Tall" or the epic battle sequences in "Lord of the Rings" — and sexual innuendo — "Scary Movie 3," which is rife with double entendres — than can a PG film.
