It's amazing to me that uncreative, pandering storytelling is a requirement of the MPAA. These are movies, not after-school specials. I do sympathize with the board's suggestion that young people could see the film and it might encourage drug use, but such thinking would suggest that people are going to kill robots because they see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
I know the drugs/sex versus violence argument is pretty old, and that's not what I'm getting at. What really bothers me is that if the filmmakers put something trite and predictable into the film, such as Meryl Streep crashing her car after smoking weed, then the film would land a PG-13 rating. This just encourages the "movie ideal" that life is simple and bad actions have immediately, obvious consequences. This doesn't reflect life and I don't see how the MPAA could think this would be a good thing to expose children to either, unless of course they plan on indoctrinating the masses to keep up the sale of popcorn and sour patch kids. Oh wait, they do.
Good for Universal for sticking by the filmmakers. Steve Martin even video conferenced in to plead the scene's case to the MPAA. I do think it's funny that the MPAA approved a scene in the trailer in which its obvious Ms. Streep and Mr. Martin have been smoking (Martin's holding the joint), a trailer which is approved for all audiences and can play in front of PG crowds even, but won't allow it in the finished film.
It's a shame that many families who were perhaps considering taking their more mature children to a nice Christmas romantic comedy will now be stuck viewing Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeekuel.
Here's the L.A. Times piece on the issue.
And the trailer below:
