At the Cineplex

Here's a little something I wrote awhile back...

It is not very often that I get to watch movies anymore. The rising prices at the box office have made me think twice; there are better uses for ten dollars in my mind. So I often just wait for a film to come out on video. Also having two kids makes it difficult. I can’t bring them with me, and it’s hard to find babysitters.

But there’s another reason I don’t go to the movies anymore. Maybe it’s a sign of my age, or maybe I’m just becoming old-fashioned, but there aren’t a lot of really good movies that I consider worth the ten dollars’ admission price. My wife and I have a sort of unwritten rule when it comes to watching movies: if it’s rated R, it’s very unlikely that we’ll see it. We figure if it is rated R, it probably deserves it for some reason. And it probably contains things that we don’t need to see or hear. So with rare exception, we don’t go see R-rated movies.

Now this makes it difficult to go see the “really good” films. I am a huge movie fan and I love watching the Oscars every year. But it becomes less and less meaningful for me each year because there are fewer and fewer nominated films that I have seen. Just in the last two years, eight of the ten best picture nominations were rated R.

So why do all the good films have to be rated R? Why do the great works of writing and directing and acting also have to be filled with sex and drugs and violence and profanity? Does it take these things to tell a great story?

The answer, obviously, is no; however, Hollywood producers are no dummies. They know that a little skin and a few big explosions attract big audiences and, therefore, fill their wallets. It’s all about the money.

I guess that is why I am such a fan of the classics. Although there has been sex and violence since the silent era, most films from back in the day were pretty wholesome, mostly because society didn’t allow much of what gets a film an R rating today. They were great films that didn’t rely on nudity and gore to sell tickets.

I have noticed a trend over the last couple of years, though. Many studios are producing more “family-friendly” films. Producers have realized that there is a huge market for PG-rated films. There is a large portion of our population that doesn’t want to see naked bodies and hear the f-word. Although I don’t see these films taking over the market as a whole, it is nice to see that Hollywood is paying attention to people like me. Now all they need to do is cut ticket prices in half and provide free childcare and I’d be happy to make regular visits to the local Cineplex.