This Film Is Not Yet Rated

In This Film Is Not Yet Rated, documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick launches an incendiary full-frontal assault on the MPAA's Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA), the entity responsible for film ratings. This secret, unregulated organization—whose members have no specific qualifications—wields disproportionate power over the film industry but operates on a very subjective and prejudicial basis. Using mockumentary techniques, Dick mercilessly targets individual CARA members with such zeal that he occasionally risks losing audience sympathy, but he also successfully brings attention to the conflicting and contradictory standards the organization uses when labeling movies with questionable content. Filmmakers and critics weigh in on various absurdities perpetrated by CARA, and the organization's pointed rules on certain aspects of human behavior—such as the length of time a filmmaker may allot to the showing of a female orgasm—come in for a richly deserved pummeling. Dick overstates his case when he drags in archival footage of the House Un-American Activities Committee in a ham-fisted attempt at further discrediting CARA, but he also makes plenty of strong, valid points. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary (by writer-director Kirby Dick, writer-producer Eddie Schmidt, film critic Drew McWeeny, and featured private investigator Becky Altringer), five deleted scenes (10 min.), a Q&A with director Dick at the 2006 SXSW Film Festival (9 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a solid documentary.] (E. Hulse)