50 Shades R rating, To the despair and disappointment of fans and general moviegoers alike, Fifty Shades Of Grey has failed to win a coveted PG-13 from the MPAA. Despite implicit promises of somewhat toning down the graphic sexual content from E.L. James’s best-selling novel and explicit promises that the film wouldn’t contain Jamie Dornan’s penis, the feature film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey has indeed been awarded an R-rating from the MPAA as of yesterday afternoon. The official reasons for the rating are, and I quote, “strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language.” Yes, one of the descriptions is indeed “unusual behavior.”
The MPAA has a history of occasionally awkward rating descriptions, with perhaps the all-time classic being Twister being rated PG-13 for “intense depiction of very bad weather” back in 1996. But “ unusual behavior” is such a generic description that I may have to start applying it to every MPAA rating past and present. Dolphin Tale 2 - rated PG for some mild thematic elements and unusual behavior. Okay, in all seriousness, we’re all well-aware that “unusual behavior” in this case is the bondage and sadomasochistic sexual behavior that has made the literary trilogy a major culture talking point over the last few years. But really, who is the MPAA to judge what constitutes unusual behavior?
Jokes about the lower-rung ratings aside, I was hopeful a long time ago (like when the project was first announced) that this might be the next great test case for the commercial viability of the NC-17 rating. But even though the film cost just $40 million and is quite possibly going to be ignored by most general moviegoers outside of the fan base, the filmmakers have been going out of their way to assure the very audiences who would write the film off or avoid it due to their respective sensibilities that the film is totally okay for them, which I would argue is a somewhat odd choice. It’s a little like assuring general audiences that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone won’t have that much magic after all, so feel safe to buy to buy that ticket, ye Muggles!
Nonetheless, with just over a month until the film’s February 13th debut, all that’s left is the initial wave of reviews and seeing how well this unorthodox picture fares at the box office. I frankly don’t care if the film is any good or not. The fact that we have a major release, a franchise starter no less, explicitly targeting adult woman and emphasizing sex over violence, makes me hopeful that this one makes me hopeful that it breaks out at least enough for Hollywood to reassess just a little bit in terms of for whom it fashions its blockbusters. And that this female-centric franchise-starter actually has a female director (Sam Taylor-Johnson) and female screenwriter (Kelly Marcel) also makes it something of a novelty which makes its performance more important than mere “movie wants to make money and spawn a sequel” situation.
There are worse things that could happen in Hollywood than a deluge of female-directed, female-written, and female-targeted adult-skewing R-rated erotic dramas playing in multiplexes alongside the more conventional male-centric melodramas. Anyway, there will be time for all of this when the film opens. In the meantime, Fifty Shades of Grey, starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, is indeed rated R for all the reasons you assumed it would be rated R. It opens February 13th from Universal (Comcast CMCSA +3.14% Corp.) but not before premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 11th. As always, we’ll see…
