The film "The King's Speech" doesn't seem like the type of movie to generate very much controversy. A serious historical drama about King George VI overcoming a speech impediment, it has a cast of acclaimed actors - Colin Firth as the King, Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen, Geoffrey Rush as the speech therapist -- and is already being pushed as a major contender for many Academy Awards. No surprise, it's the exact thing that the Academy loves. Expect nominations for everyone, especially actors, writers, and costume designers.
That's not what is generating controversy, instead it's the rating the film has been given. The King's Speech is rated R in the US, a rating which has caused outrage throughout the cinematic community. While the film is likely not going to be a big draw to the under 17 crowd, the rating seems a little ridiculous, because it's being given to a film which has no sex or violence.
The reason for the rating is based on one scene, where the King unleashes a stream of profanity as an attempt to overcome his stuttering problem. As the scene contains several instances of a certain word which begins with F, the MPAA gave it an automatic R. This is a rating more strict than Clash of the Titans, which featured, as described on the Internet Movie Database, "One graphic, but brief scene where a man gets torn apart in half." Not to suggest the Clash of the Titans deserves a stricter rating - it's all a bunch of cartoonish fantasy nonsense after all -- but surely a man getting torn in half is a bit more concerning than several rude words.
The thing that really gets people is that, in context, the language isn't that bad, but since there's a lot of it, the rating is automatic. The words are directed at nobody and part of the point is that they're not something a king should or normally would be able to say. In context, it's not something particularly objectionable, and it's the rudest thing in the film.
The idea behind a rating system is essentially to help parents figure out whether or not their kids should be allowed to see a film, which is why the MPAA controversy is relevant here. While the movie gets a PG rating in Canada, if a parent looks online, the first thing they see is going to be the MPAA's rating for the film. That rating is going to give a distinctly different picture than the film itself deserves.
Which is a shame, since this really isn't the kind of film a parent should be worried about, though perhaps it's not the kind of film an average teenager might want to watch. The worst that can happen is that kids with a bit of a stutter will lock themselves in their rooms and start swearing as much as they can in order to get rid of it, like the King does in the movie. If that's the case, it does little harm, and if it actually works in reality it's hardly a bad result. In fact, it could be argued that this would be a good film to watch for a kid who is having trouble with their speech, profanity or no profanity.
I don't intend to say that films should be filled with as many bad words as possible, but if the context isn't malicious and the film itself is otherwise harmless, there should not be an issue. This film is a PG picture saddled with an R rating, and that really isn't fair to either viewers or the picture itself.
