Has anyone noticed that we very, very rarely see PG movies anymore that aren't explicitly aimed at kids?
It used to be much more common. Apparently Apollo 13, Contact, Groundhog Day and A League of Their Own are all PG.
Those are all great movies. I wonder if they would still be rated PG if made today.
I genuinely have no idea what PG even means anymore. I remember the Nostalgia Critic did a pretty good video on the subject a couple of years ago.
Edit: Here it is, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL4vRihNk4s
Watched that video. It was fairly interesting and he's right that the ratings system is sometimes inconsistent, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that we don't have any idea what PG means today. Though the thing about it is that we see so few PG movies now that it's difficult to come up with many recent examples.
I mentioned in the OP that A League of Their Own and Apollo 13 were rated PG when they were was released. Those still strike me as examples of films that, if released today, should get a PG rating. The thing is though, we don't see a lot of movies like that released today, and furthermore it seems like the ratings board now wants to automatically default to PG-13 any time a film is not explicitly a kids or family movie.
After looking at the video a bit, PG basically just means a kids/family movie nowadays. They'll be slapstick but no kinds of violence whatsoever.
It's honestly wild the films that you & the Critic have mentioned that got the PG rating back in the day. Yeah, that stuff would NOT fly today in a PG rated movie
The Disney & Pixar stuff have basically taken over that rating now. What's G then I wonder? I guess the lil kids stuff maybe
Yeah. Before PG-13 came around, a lot of stuff was given a PG rating that today would be PG-13. But at least for a while, PG was still used, even for adult films.
But today, I mean, when was the last time you saw a non-family film get a PG rating?
Apparently Life of Pi was rated PG. That's the most recent example I could find.
PG has more or less replaced the G rating, which now has the stigma of being stuff aimed at preschoolers, like Barney's Great Adventure (1998). The recent Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019), despite being inspired by a preschool-age TV show, was rated PG. Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks films are now usually PG. Today a G rating can doom a film.
What used to be G has now become PG; the original PG is now PG-13.
I think that's pretty much accurate. A film that's not explicitly a kids or family movie, but doesn't deserve an R, seems to get PG-13 by default.
Honestly I wish we saw more movies like those mentioned in the OP -- adult-oriented films that are still clean and wholesome. Films like those seem to be an endangered species today.
> PG has more or less replaced the G rating, which now has the stigma of being stuff aimed at preschoolers, like Barney's Great Adventure (1998)
I applaud any parent who managed to sit through that. No kids of my own, but I remember Barney's heyday very well -- my niece was a toddler at the time. All toddlers loved Barney. All adults hated his purple and green guts.
Kids soon developed a hatred for Barney, too, once they were no longer part of the target age-group. Anti-Barney songs circulated around elementary school playgrounds. A milder example was a parody of the show's theme song:
I hate you; you hate me,
Let's hang Barney from a tree.
There were other song parodies that featured lyrics about blowing his brains out or burning him.
> I hate you; you hate me, Let's hang Barney from a tree.
LOL! I missed that one somehow.
We've gun an outdoor gun range near here. One day I and two other shooters were practicing there when a fourth man showed up with a life sized Barney poster. He generously let us share in the fun; all four of us took turns shooting at it. Plugging Barney with 9 mm rounds felt so good!
The US's torturers in Guantanamo Bay literally used the Barney song as an instrument of torture. Like they played it on a loop in prisoners' cells for 24 hours straight or some length of time like that.
share> The US's torturers in Guantanamo Bay literally used the Barney song as an instrument of torture. Like they played it on a loop in prisoners' cells for 24 hours straight or some length of time like that.
Ouch! Personally, I'd rather be waterboarded than have to endure that.
I think some of the reason for this too is that kind movies have gotten a touch racier. Pixar seems to understand that parents will take the kiddies out more if they can give the parents a bit of a chuckle from time to time instead of putting them to sleep.
shareShrek I think was a turning point. It was the first major family film that really tried to appeal to adults with the sort of hidden, backdoor humor that would go over the heads of the kids. I'm sure some of that existed before Shrek but there's no doubt that Shrek created a blueprint that studios began following.
share> I wonder if they would still be rated PG if made today.
I could see Apollo 13 getting a PG-13. The astronauts being in peril could scare younger kids. Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) is drunk at the party at his home in the opening scene. There's a sex scene of sorts where Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) showers with a woman, just before getting the phone call telling him he's to replace Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise). There's enough smoking in the movie to be of concern for some parents.
That's probably correct, especially in light of the fact that the ratings board seems reticent to give any adult-oriented movie a PG rating today. I feel confident that Contact, Groundhog Day and even A League of Their Own would end up with a PG-13 rating for one reason or another.
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