NTS: Movies are Rated R For a Reason

It's been a while since I've watched a rated R movie. I gave them up like 10 years ago when Billy was at that "I'm old enough to do anything I want" stage of boyhood and was acting like a big jerk. I felt like a hypocrite telling him a movie was not appropriate for him to see, but yet Bill and I would go see it. I don't know why it was different for him than it is Kyra. Maybe because Kyra doesn't push the issue and I know she won't see it if I tell her not to. With Billy, his mom would let him see whatever he wanted. At least he knew he wouldn't be discussing it with us, because we wouldn't watch it.

Really the only R movies I've seen lately have been war movies so it was all about the violence and some bad language. The language was usually yelling, war language, so it wasn't typical conversation language taking place in a house. You get the difference, right? People talking to their spouse and children, throwing the F bomb every other sentence is just different to my ears than, say, guys swearing at each other as their limbs are getting blown to pieces by machine gun fire.

I broke my anti-R rule tonight and saw a movie with my friend. I really wanted to see The Kids Are Alright, but whooshta! It got great reviews, I love Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo, the girl from Alice in Wonderland was in it, and well, it just seemed like a different story that was supposedly well done. Holy Schmoke! As we left the theatre my friend said, "Yeah, I'm really glad I didn't bring my daughter to that one." (She's 15) I asked, "was that abnormally R, or am I just not savvy anymore?" She confirmed that it was a bit over the top in the sex scenes and the language, again saying that she was really glad she didn't bring her daughter. Yep, I can see that.

I think that the next time I consider breaking the anti-R rule I will be a little more conservative. "strong sexual content" plus "nudity" was a little much. What was I thinking?

It was kind of funny that when the father figure (alright, he was just the sperm donor) was in front of the kids he would say, "shut the front door" instead of swearing. It made me giggle every time he said it. Guess you had to be there.