Year One was originally rated R in the United States for “some sexual content and language”. Producer Judd Apatow and writer-director Harold Ramis appealed the rating a few days ago, but to no avail.
Now, says the Hollywood Reporter, the quasi-biblical comedy has been re-cut and successfully re-rated PG-13, for “crude and sexual content throughout, brief strong language and comic violence”.
Note how the R-rated version only had “some” sexual content, according to the MPAA, whereas the PG-13 version – the one with less footage, and specifically less of the “adult” footage – has crude and sexual content “throughout”.
No doubt this reflects how extremely relative the ratings process is, and how each rating brings a different set of expectations to the movie: As R-rated movies go, this one was apparently kind of mild, but as PG-13 movies go, it’s right there on the edge.
Oh, and apparently “comic violence” doesn’t even bear mentioning in an R-rated film, but when it turns up in a PG-13 movie, it becomes the sort of thing that the MPAA figures parents might want to know about.
The deleted footage will no doubt see the light of day on DVD, of course.
