I finally brought myself into the new millennium by getting a DVD-ROM for my PC. Since I finally had the means to watch DVD movies, I decided to get The Powerpuff Girls Movie. One of the things I noticed while at Target was that the DVD box had both the rating and a reason for the rating. In a box below the PG rating were the following words:
Non-stop Frenetic Animated Action
Bells, whistles, and flashing lights went off in my head. Mainly it was the bullshit meter and the asinine alarm, though a couple other lights, warning of impending loud vocalization and impending pulsating vein in my forehead, also flickered briefly. I muttered to myself, "what the fuck," and thought about this as I looked for an open checkout lane.
I mean, one of the main target audiences are kids. Kids have short attention spans, period. If they're going to sit and watch something in a theater for 73 minutes, it better keep the kids engrossed enough by action so the adults can catch the jokes that are going over junior's head.
I know parents like to know more about the content of a movie beyond a one or two letter rating. However, it's getting more than absurd, and completely out of hand. Now, this sounds a bit paranoid, even to me, but the whole thing makes me wonder when movies are going to be labeled for anti-capalitist or anti-corporate views, "unpatriotic" views, or other kinds of "subversive" content.
And what would spark this particular warning, anyway? My idea is that some parent somewhere thought the fast paced storyline of a Pokemon movie made their kid hyper. They probably didn't stop to consider the $25 of movie theater candy and Jurassic-sized cola (at 400% markup, natch) gave them a sugar and caffine high that would make Robert Downey Jr. look like an amature act, and make Chris Farley look like a lightweight. The kids probably had to use the restroom several times, and with all the sugar and caffine, were very animated about it.
Of course, usualy, the push for such warnings come from organizations like ChildCare Action Project, which has such a funny-mentalist bent that most people I know read their reviews for laughs. Humor sites like Fark even link to CAPalert movie reviews as humor peices. Unfortunatly, those of us who still have a few shreds of common sense usually go on about our business while the a very vocal and well organized minority presses their views upon us. Some of these views are just slightly to the left of Osama bin Laden, if you catch my drift.
Yea, I know. My radical ideas about The Death of Common Sense have already occured to others.