This is coming at a time when the MPAA has announced that they will be particularly hard on movies that seem to glorify smoking, whether among teens or adults, so movies that feature a character grabbing a smoke in between killing people might now get an R-rating for the former rather than the latter. Bruce Willis' John McLane may want to take note, because early word is that 20th Century Fox is going for a PG-13 on his latest adventure, Live Free or Die Hard, presumably cutting back on the bloody violence of the first two movies. Either that or the MPAA has just become rather desensitized to the amount of violence in movies to let more things slip by. Likewise, Universal has decided to go for a family audience with Evan Almighty, their sequel to Jim Carrey's biggest hit to date, though one expects that the sequel's star Steve Carell might go for less raunch and sexual innuendos than Carrey.

What's odd about this is that one of my favorite movies this year (which uncoincidentally opens this week and is this week's Chosen One), John Carney's Once, is a movie with no sex, no nudity and absolutely no violence whatsoever, and yet, it's been slapped with an R-rating by the MPAA. And you know why? For "language." And this isn't frank discussions about graphic sex or anything either, this is basically a couple innocent F-bombs and a song made up of them, dedicated to the lead character's ex-girlfriend. Really, you can't get much more innocent and if the parents that make up the ratings board are so worried that their teens haven't heard the F-word before then maybe they should spend some more time with them at school.

Oddly, last week's Chosen One The Hip Hop Project, was also given an R-rating for the language used by the young rappers in the movie, but THINKFilm was able to appeal and win a PG-13 rating which makes some sense considering the importance of the film's message. Once doesn't necessarily have a message but it's so much better than the PG-13 romantic comedies churned out by the studios and it really seems like it's being held back for no reason. At ShoWest in Las Vegas, representatives of the MPAA announced that the process for getting ratings appealed would be easier, but here they are slapping R-ratings on movies that are perfectly fine for younger teens and thereby hurting an industry that really needs help, that being low budget independently-produced films like Once.

Even more shocking is that the MPAA last week announced their ratings for Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II, which got an R for "sadistic scenes of torture and bloody violence, terror, nudity, sexual content, language and some drug content", while the Sundance comedy The Ten got its own R for "pervasive strong crude sexual content including dialogue and nudity, and for language and some drug material." So you're telling me that a movie that is perfectly innocent and possibly even beneficial to teens learning valuable life lessons deserves the same rating simply for a couple of F-bombs? Heck, last year, Adam Sandler's Click had so much raunchy humor including inferred bestiality and yet that was given a PG-13 rating.

So it's all fine and good that the MPAA wants to protect kids from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes--they don't seem to be as concerned about violence--but for F*CK's sake, any kid who doesn't know that word by the time they're 13 probably needs to get out in the world and experience life more. There's plenty of other movies that parents can take their home-schooled kids to see this weekend if they're so worried about them experiencing life and the four-letter words that go along with it, but I can guarantee you that life is more like Once than just about any other movie currently in theatres or out in the next few months.