Okay, I loved Bridesmaids. Yes, it had its moments of raunch, which usually aren't my thing, but they made the movie funnier. Therefore, it's R-rating was earned. And, this movie, whether it was rated G or R, had a soul. The characters came first. I cared about them and wanted everything to work out for them. Even the moments of raunch were character driven, not just stuck in there to be gross for the sake of being gross. Future R-rated comedies take note.
Another R-rated comedy that worked for me was Going the Distance. The dialogue was witty and frank. The cursing was funny and natural sounding. The nudity was comedic. Good chemistry between Justin Long and Drew Barrymore. R-rating earned. However, I think the R-rating hurt this film. It was promoted as a simple rom com, not the raunchy R-rated comedy that it was. The rom com crowd didn't want it, the raunch crowd didn't know about it. Ironically, it's one of the best rom coms I've seen in a long time, it just happens to be rated R. It was much, much funnier than the more successful No Strings Attached, which lacked in chemistry and character development.
I enjoyed Horrible Bosses, but I didn't think it needed to be rated R. I mean, Aniston didn't even get naked. No R-rating there. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day have all proven to be hilarious on network television with no swears. Plus, there should have been more Golden-Globe-Winner Colin Farrell. He was hilarious. And sorely underused.
Bad Teacher definitely didn't need to be rated R. Take out an unfunny dry humping scene and a couple out-of-place f-bombs and it could've easily been PG-13. Why is it so uncool to be PG-13? Maybe I'm biased because I tend to write PG-13 comedy. In real life, I love to swear. It's a vice I relish in. Oddly, I always find it hard to make my characters swear. In my writing, profanities are like exclamation points; I use them sparingly for emphasis.
This pattern in my writing stems back to my teenage years. When I was in high school, all I wanted to do was go see movies. I lived in a small town and there wasn't much to do if you weren't causing trouble, so I spent a lot of my free time at the movie theatre. And the box office lady, nicknamed Skeletor, was the Guardian of the Realm of the R-Rated. She knew exactly who was seventeen and who wasn't, and it was her sacred duty to protect our innocent eyes. And, shockingly, my entire adolescence I was under seventeen. So movie options were limited.
I think I'm always writing for my sixteen-year-old self. Yes, I write scripts about adults, for adults. But I remember when I was a teen I wanted to see movies about adults. I wouldn't have wanted to see Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester trouncing around Europe (not that there's anything wrong with that). I would've wanted to see Bridesmaids. I would've wanted to see Horrible Bosses. I would've wanted to see Bad Teacher. And I would've wanted to see Crazy, Stupid, Love.
As an adult, I'm still excited to see Crazy, Stupid, Love. It looks like it has soul. I hope all the high-schoolers, and everyone else, show up and prove that it's profitable to make a funny PG-13 movie so Funny = R is no longer the law of the land.
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