The King’s Speech has already made about sixty million dollars in the United States and a total of almost one-hundred and ten million dollars on the planet. It’s going to greatly parlay its many deserved Oscar nominations into much more cash, making its fifteen million dollar budget and similar number in prints and advertising seem like chump change.
It’s a big hit already and it has become a critical juggernaut. So, one would say that it’s accomplished its mission and gone way above and beyond. Open and shut, right?
Wrong.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, mogul/producer/indie legend/tamperer/conqueror Harvey Weinstein isn’t content with this amazing film being amazing and telling a compelling, uplifting, and widely appealing story with an R rating. He’s considering having it re-edited to make it even more broadly appealing by making it PG-13. It’s doing gangbusters everywhere with its current rating. It’s proven a valuable point for an unfairly maligned rating.
When will Harvey learn that his amazing eye for material and talent and business is enough? Let the artists do their thing and stay out of the way.
A rating isn’t a scarlet letter. I grew up in an age where the R rating was a guide but not a blockade. And here’s what’s going to happen. Parents are going to buy their ticket, protect their innocent children from bad words on their way to the concession stand, and then when they’re in the bathroom some guy in the urinal is going to accidentally piss on his shoes and call them “faux leather motherfuckers”.
PG-13 movie? Moot.
The King’s Speech, if you would have asked me… is a movie the whole family can enjoy. There’s not one tentacle rape in the thing. Not one exploding baby. The profanity [one scene in particular is loaded with it] is used to such great comic effect in the movie that I think it does a good job of demystifying the “bad words” being used in its own right. It gives them a context and explains their power in a way I think is extremely valuable to a young mind.
Leave a great film alone, large and powerful man.