Boyhood: A Wrongly Rated Movie

The MPAA or the, Motion Picture Association of America, is an association that establishes a certain “rating” to the movies being played in theaters. The MPAA does this because many people want to be informed of what they are getting themselves into before they actually watch the movie. Not only for this reason, but mainly, this rating system allows for parental supervision. It allows for a “protection” of younger audiences from films that are considered to be “too much” for them. “Too much” meaning extreme acts of violence, sexual situations, and vulgar language and acts. So basically, anything that would not negatively influence a young child.

However this “rating system” can also be incredibly restrictive and problematic in terms of vocalizing or presenting a film. Artists (actors, directors, editors, etc.) want to engage a group of people and sometimes this rating system interferes with the overall communication of art piece.

The movie Boyhood (2014) is a particular victim to this dilemma. To start off, Boyhood was a movie wholly based on a boy named Mason Evans Jr. Beginning at the age of 6, we see a progression of the boy’s 12 years compacted into a less than two hour movie. The young boy’s life is dramatically portrayed to emphasize family dysfunctions and the cruel stages of “growing up”. In all, without ruining the movie, this movie is a must see. It’s dramatic but it’s also very much relatable and thus, I believe it should be seen by more than a R-rated audience.

Surprisingly, such a movie that is seen as a “coming of age” movie is not allowed to be screened by audiences who are in the “coming of age” stages. Teenagers would not be able to see this, and I think this audience was what the director was trying to communicate to mostly.

Why, now, is this movie R-rated?

I don’t even know.

Apparently, this one scene where you see the young Mason and his friends huddled around a Playboy Magazine is the defining factor of the whole film and therefore is “justifiable enough” to make this movie R-rated. There may be other aspects of the film that may violate the PG-13 scale; however, these aspects are not as heavily supported enough to impact the rating of this movie

Then again no one really listens to the rating systems anyway, so I encourage people to watch this movie. It’ll definitely be worth it