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This film has now been tainted.

Paul Aragon | Virginia | 08/08/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Kirby Dick's documentary about the unjust practices of the MPAA takes a very light hearted and rather adolescent approach to what is very serious subject matter. The MPAA is the main censorship organization in The US and has the power to kill any film it wants to right in its tracks. A film slapped with an NC 17 rating can not be advertised, and will not be sold on DVD in most of the major store chains. Since cinema is arguably the most widely consumed form of entertainment by The American public, this means that The MPAA has its finger tips squarely on the pulse of American culture. A pretty scary amount of power considering that The MPAA is not an elected body, and is there for not answerable to the citizens of the country that it is supposedly protecting from mental harm. Instead of treating this issue like it was of national importance by making a stern uptight investigation, Kirby Dick's approach was one of airy easy going humor. This is an approach that can be quit off putting for many viewers. After all, one does get the feeling while watching this movie that Kirby Dick is merely playing pranks on The MPAA like some kind of authority defying school boy.



The gags in TFINYR consist of showing those MPAA offending excerpts that had to be removed from existing films in order to receive that much coveted R rating. Other gags consist of having a set of rudimentary cartoon characters display the language and actions of all the different rating board levels in American films. When those cute smiling cartoon cut outs engage in NC 17 aberrational sexual behavior, it is hard not to laugh out loud at what you're seeing. Another gag in this film is to tally up a count of sexual pelvic thrusts from NC17 movie sex scenes. While each of these Sesame Street styled numbers pop up on the screen, they are accompanied by the ding of a food service bell. All of these gags are actually fairly effective devices, not only because they are quit entertaining, but also because it does clearly demonstrate just how silly this MPAA moral snobbery actually is.



At its worst, TFINYR seems so randomly constructed that it feels sloppy and rudderless half of the time. It is hard not to feel like this film made all its major points in the first half hour and then tried to stretch itself into a feature length film with a bunch of filler. Its best moment was to play R rated heterosexual scenes side by side with identical homosexual NC 17 sex scenes. This display brilliantly lets the viewer know that The MPAA is absolutely biased and thinks it should enforce the notion that homosexuality is somehow amoral and un-American. Another point that clearly comes across is that The MPAA works for and favors the major Hollywood studios while issuing an unfair double standard against independent film makers. These are all great points that needed to be made. It is just that as a cohesive whole, TFINYR feels about as loosely put together as a bowl of oatmeal.



Kirby Dick should of known better!



TFINYR works great as an informative tool to not only show the public that a new and better form of film censorship is indeed needed in our culture, but also as advertisement for movies and film makers that have been given the shaft by The MPAA. As off putting as its laid back style may be, TFINYR is actually speaking the language of the layman by choosing entertainment over seriousness. I was in fact, overjoyed to learn that one of my very favoite films of all time, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, is the actual movie catalyst that caused The MPAA to be invented in the first place. This to me is the ultimate badge of honor for my personal film taste. TFINYR accomplishes what it sets out to do, and I would of gladly given it four stars had only Kirby Dick just been a little bit more thoughtful as to which film clips he chose to use while making his ultimate point that violence is far more accepted then sex in American movies.



The film clip he should of used to drive this point home, is that of Arnold Schwarzenegger using an innocent bystander as a human shield on an escalator while spraying the bad guys with a barrage of machine gun fire in Total Recall. Something like that. What he showed the public instead was the pre-rape footage from Straw Dogs by Sam Peckinpah. Not only does this completely defy the very point that he was trying to make in the first place, but it showed an overall lack of understanding and caring about one of the most important films in cinematic history. If the point of his documentary is to make a stand for the integrity of cinema and movie makers alike, then why insult the very history of cinema by cheeply inserting violent images from a black listed film simply because they are visceral? Kirby Dick has to know that Straw Dogs has never once been accepted for even a single solitary second during its 40 years of existence due to nature of the voilence in those very clips he so flippantly inserted into his film. Kirby Dick has to know that the violence in Straw Dogs will never be acceptable in the eyes of the general public, but he chose to insert these clips anyway. He must of thought that like him, no one would care, or know the difference.



We all have our sacred texts.



Not only is it completely asinine to make a point about the acceptance of violence over sex by showing sexual violence of all things, a choice that is utterly stupid, but the violence in Straw Dogs goes well beyond being mere entertainment anyway. Straw Dogs is not The Long Kiss Goodnight or Die Hard. There are no chases, escapes, explosions, acrobatic gun battles, raining cars, or painless death. Straw Dogs shows violence that hurts and gets under your skin and damages you. It is violence that hits you on all levels, especially the sexual psychological level. Straw Dogs shows violence against everything imaginable, including the most controversial rape scene ever depicted in the history of cinema. Till this day, I have never meet a single woman who can watch Straw Dogs all the way through, that is how unforgiving and unrelenting the violence in this film is. I will go on the record by nakedly stating that Straw Dogs is the purest film on violence ever made, even more so then A Clockwork Orange. There is nothing to celebrate or emulate in Straw Dogs. No charming humble narrator like Malcolm McDowell to root for, no futuristic setting to soften the blow. Straw Dogs is a film that forces us all to hold a mirror up to ourselves and cringe at what we see. To think that little Kirby Dick actually thought that he could pass off clips from this masterpiece as if it is the acceptable standard of American entertainment film violence is both laughable and insulting. This single choice by Kirby Dick ruined it for me. That is why I'm going to be stuffing my copy of TFINYR into a coworkers stocking come Christmas time. He has a lot of nerve to display any part of Straw Dogs so completely out of context just to make a stupid point. I guess that this only goes to show that I shouldn't of expected any better from him anyway. After all, he has always been a Kirby Dick."