It's Rated 'R' For A Reason!
Maybe I am just finally getting older and as I age, I become more conservative. Maybe I just notice things more and I have a harder time shutting out some of the minutia from everything around me. I am not sure, but I do know this. An 'R' rated movie is rated 'R' for a reason.
The MPAA (The Motion Picture Association of America) defines the 'R' rating as follows:
R — Restricted. Children Under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian. An R-rated motion picture, in the view of the Rating Board, contains some adult material. An R-rated motion picture may include adult themes, adult activity, hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements, so that parents are counseled to take this rating very seriously. Children under 17 are not allowed to attend R-rated motion pictures unaccompanied by a parent or adult guardian. Parents are strongly urged to find out more about R-rated motion pictures in determining their suitability for their children. Generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated motion pictures.
I bolded and underlined the last sentence, apparently there are far too many parents out there that do not believe or trust this statement. Case in point, yesterday we went to a 4:30 PM screening of 'End of Watch' (click the title to see my review) at the Joliet Cinemark; the theaters are not large at all, but they offer films nearing their end run at a significant discount. While we try and see nearly everything first run, there are those that escape us and so we head to the Cinemark discount theater.
In this particular showing of 'End of Watch' - there are at least three, yes I said THREE, different families with young, VERY young children. 'End of Watch' is a pretty hard 'R' rated film. By hard I mean the language is very course and the violence very brutal. What these parents were thinking is beyond me. Even when we had three very young children, and some nights we were desperate to get out to a movie, we would never have bought our kids to an 'R' rated film. Heck, we debated letting them go when they were 16, let alone 8 or 9!
Now the debate around a parents choice of what to expose their kids to is just that, a debate. We can go back and forth with the desensitization of our youth to the possible lessons the kids may learn from these films. To be honest, I almost don't care about that (although I do believe we are desensitizing our kids to violence by exposing it to them too early).
What I care about is how having young children at an 'R' film effects the viewing pleasure of the other adults around them. It is hard to watch a movie that brutally portrays the actions of a crime filled area when you hear little voices asking questions like "Why did that man tie up those babies with tape Mommy?" or "What does $%*@! mean?" - while the last one may be a bit funny, it is uncomfortable. I find myself cringing at scenes, not because the scene is well written, directed or acting, but because I am worried about what the little child next to me is either going to feel or even see. Let's not even go to the nightmares they will have later that night!
I like the theaters that have a strict no one under 17 admitted to an 'R' rated film policy, even if they are accompanied by an adult. Maybe I am old fashioned that way, but kids don't need to see that stuff - it is rated 'R' for a reason and while I would never suppose to tell you how to raise your kids; they simply don't belong in a 'R' rated film. Leave them home; get a sitter or wait for it to come out on DVD.