Reviewing nudity
In the week's movie coverage, a story that appears to be bigger abroad than at home is the rating for Beowulf. That film has received a PG-13, and a variety of players — including Angelina Jolie — have said the rating is too low, too easily dismissing the violence and nudity as computer-generated.
That debate can continue on its own. From a writing angle, the most interesting impact is how the reviewers react. Adding Angelina to the mix, some reviewers, like those at the Los Angeles Times and USAT, choose to ignore the micro-shock to a good degree. They're within their rights to do so, finding the critical importance — for better or worse — in the macro effects. But other reviewers go the micro route, starting at the moments and spinning them outward into the greater effect. I think these reviewers have more fun.
In increasing order of fun, we start with the Boston Herald.
This "Beowulf" wouldn't know a Geat from a Scylding. But it knows from hot-bodied Jolie, who does some spectacular near-nude, 3-digital sashaying in the film, complete with whipping satanic tail, enhanced boobs and built-in stiletto heels. I must admit that the males in the theater held their collective breath when Jolie's digitized sexbomb made her bewitching entrance.
Ma is Angelina Jolie as interpreted by someone who apprenticed by doing airbrush portraits on custom Harley gas tanks. She's all sleek, gleaming catgirl, and Jolie's great beauty is deployed for its intimidation value as much as for its allure. And thus we learn the curse of Danish kings, a curse that would last another few hundred years when a fellow named Hamlet fell for it. They like the beauties too much, even if they be demons or moms, no matter the consequences.
As Grendel's mother, she appears to rise from a completely different gene pool than her hideous boy, and keeps on rising out of one pool of water after another, dressed in nothing but a sheath of golden water. (There are going to be a lot of 13-year-old boys hitting puberty in medieval Denmark this year.) Jolie looks like an extremely well-proportioned Oscar statue, which may be as close as this movie gets to one.
The New York Times, the review's lede.
You don't need to wait for Angelina Jolie to rise from the vaporous depths naked and dripping liquid gold to know that this "Beowulf" isn't your high school teacher's Old English epic poem. You don't even have to wait for the flying spears and airborne bodies that — if you watch the movie in one of the hundreds of theaters equipped with 3-D projection — will look as if they 're hurtling directly at your head. You could poke your eye out with one of those things! Which is precisely what I thought when I first saw Ms. Jolie's jutting breasts too.
The Chicago Sun-Times, with Mr. Roger Ebert.
Now about the PG-13 rating. How can a movie be rated PG-13 when it has female nudity? I'll tell you how. Because Angelina Jolie is not really there. And because there are no four-letter words. Even Jolie has said she's surprised by the rating; the British gave it a 12A certificate, which means you can be a year younger and see it over there. But no, Jolie won't be taking her children, she told the BBC: "It's remarkable it has the rating it has. It's quite an extraordinary film, and some of it shocked me."
Here's the exact wording from the Motion Picture Academy of America's code people: "Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity)." How does that compare with a PG rating? Here's the MPAA's wording on Bee Movie: "Rated PG (for mild suggestive humor and a brief depiction of smoking)."
I have news for them. If I were 13, Angelina Jolie would be plenty nude enough for me in this movie, animated or not. If I were 12 and British, who knows?
Makes you think. How would your life be different if you grew up British? I try to imagine as much, and I fail. I end up as one of those kids in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or as one of the kids in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or as Paddington Bear. Bears, we know, like marmalade. But what do they make of Angelina Jolie?
