Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway point to sexism for The Hustle's initial R-rating
Aux Features Rebel Wilson
The female-led Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake may don a PG-13 rating now, but that wasn’t always the case. When the film initially went under review, the MPAA slapped it with an R-rating. It’s worth noting that Scoundrels was only rated PG, though some standards may have slightly shifted since its 1988 release. Either way, the team behind The Hustle had to petition the powers that be to reconsider the ruling and eventually negotiating it down to the PG-13 tag we’re familiar with today.
In a recent interview with Yahoo!, Hustle stars Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway discussed gender inequality within the film industry, which Wilson cited as the cause for their earlier rating issues. “I thought it was extremely unfair that a reboot of that was given an R-rating just because us two sexy ladies were in it,” the actress stated frankly, as her co-star silently agreed. “I thought it was quite sexist that male-driven comedies were much more likely to get PG ratings … when, on a scientific analysis, female-driven comedies had less swear words, less nudity and less violence.”
Hathaway mentioned instances in previous films where jokes of hers were reframed different at the time of filming, though she’s careful to note that the decision to adjust may have been based on her own delivery: “Sometimes I felt like the joke got cut off a little bit. It could have been that I wasn’t very funny! So I don’t necessarily want to claim gender inequality for that one. I just might not have stuck the landing.”
The Hustle is currently in theaters and if you’d like, you can check out our review here.
71 Comments
Oh fuck right off “rebel”. You have beady eye mean face. You look scary, not sexy.Play the live action ursela. You are made for it.
So you’re kind of awful. How fun.
I mean, sers though.
I say Annie Lennox or Bette Midler. A drag queen that can sing would be a nice nod to Divine, the animators original inspiration though.
I vote for drag queen! That would add some nice spice to the movie
Wow that’s clever! It’s clear why you must be a writer for 2 and a half men.
Holy shit I would kill to see her play Ursula! If only she had the voice for it.Perhaps she can… STEAL ONE???
Right. The only thing women are valuable for is being objects in your pathetic fantasies. Eat shit and die, please. Have a nice day 🙂
LOL It’s always the ugly guys who have these little hissy fits.
naw im pretty.
doubtful
Is sexism the reason why this movie got 15% on RT and will also (rightfully) bomb?This is just playing the victim as damage control for making a shit movie. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the movie business if you clearly don’t understand a thing about it? It is common knowledge that the MPAA standards for movie ratings were wildly different in the 80’s. (The go-to examples are Gremlins as well as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom being rated PG. You know…the movie where a guys heart is ripped out?)
How dare you say those mean sexist words, you TRUMP SUPPORTER!
I get your point.. but sadly in this day and age, a 15% on RT could be due to sexism.
Internet trolls have ruined it for all of us =(
That being said, this movie does not look good.
I get your point.. but sadly in this day and age, a 15% on RT could be due to sexism. Internet trolls have ruined it for all of us =( Ghostbusters, the supposed front line of the internet troll culture war, has an RT rating of 74%.So I don’t think that’s a likely explanation for The Hustle’s 15%.
The 16% Tomatometer score for The Hustle is from 97 reviews by professional critics. The audience score is 44%.
Uh, there was no PG-13 rating when Gremlins and Temple of Doom came out.
And while there was definitely violence and scary scenes in them, they
were hardly worthy of an R rating. Hence the PG.
This is the Ghostbusters 2016 promotional strategy. If you don’t go see our terrible movie, then you’re part of the problem. “I thought it was extremely unfair that a reboot of that was given an R-rating just because us two sexy ladies were in it.”I mean, is that what the MPAA said? “We’re rating this R just because there are two sexy ladies in it”? And what’s the fact that it’s a re-boot have to do with anything? All reboots should be rated the same as the movies they’re based on? That’s not how ratings work.
i don’t know if it’s the case this time, probably not as this project never looked appealing to me, but sexism has been the reason for low RT ratings before.
I think there are PG movies from the 70s that would get an NC-17 today. It’s funny how much tastes change and in a lot of ways we’re much more puritanical now.
While from the early 80s, there’s no way the movie Dragonslayer would get a PG rating now. That movie haunted me for years.
Slightly different situation, but there’s stuff in the original Twin Peaks run that I still cannot believe aired on national broadcast TV.
Can’t Stop the Music has full-frontal male nudity but it’s PG!
Naked YMCA men certainly warrant parental guidance.
What PG movie from the 70s would be rated NC-17 today? The R and X ratings existed, so any movie not suitable for children would’ve received one of those ratings. Some PG movies would get bumped up to a PG-13, but that’s because PG-13 didn’t exist until the late 80s so PG covered any movie not worthy of an R, regardless of whether or not it was suitable for younger children. We haven’t gotten that much more puritanical.
What? No. You posed that question. Did you even read the article? It got the R-Rating because of sexism. It sucked because it sucked. Don’t move the goal posts. Read the article and use actual critical thought.
Except a) the story of how Rebel Wilson successfully petitioned for a rating change was already known before the movie was reviewed, so it can’t be in response to the bad reviews, and b) the petition for rating change was successful, so it can’t be that her argument had no merit.Rebel Wilson read from her legal brief on the Graham Norton show.
To contribute to your point, The Woman in Red with Gene Wilder had a PG-13 rating. It was about adultery and had Kelly LeBrock fully naked twice.
.
“Is sexism the reason why this movie got 15% on RT” Possibly? I mean, y’all did shoot yourselves in the feet with your hysteria about female-led films and your flaccid campaigns to tank them via RT so… you know, most people won’t take ratings like that too seriously anymore.
You idiots do know the CRITICS SCORE on Rotten Tomatoes is 17%. Not the user scores. It’s a bad movie. The professional critics aren’t sexist trolls spamming it with bad reviews. RT is still a reliable source unless you’re looking at the user reviews but what kind of idiot does that?
When did the reviews start coming out? Wilson and Hathaway were promoting the movie on The Graham Norton Show in the UK and talked about this. That episode aired way back on April 19th and would have been recorded at least a day earlier.A film can be shit and still have been given an unfairly high MPAA rating for sexist reasons.
To be fair, PG-13 didn’t exist when Temple of Doom and Gremlins were released. In fact, PG-13 was created specifically because of those two films. They didn’t warrant R ratings so they got PG by default.I haven’t seen this film or even any of the films, so I don’t know if the level of raunch is closer to a Judd Appatow film or an Adam Sandler film. If it’s the latter, they have a valid complaint. If it’s the former, they don’t.I also haven’t seen the original, but I imagine if it didn’t receive an R back then, it probably wouldn’t receive an R today. If the new one hews pretty close to the original, again it’s a valid complaint.Now, does the MPAA judge female raunch harsher than male raunch? I don’t know. But they’re a mysterious organization that isn’t very consistent, so for me, it’s not inconceivable. Was it the case here? Again, I don’t know but I think the possibility exists.
What male-driven comedy was rated PG? The 40-Year-Old Virgin – rated RKnocked Up – rated RLong Shot – rated RI Love You, Man – rated RRole Models – rated R
Paul Blart, and most Robin Williams movies. And… yeah, that’s pretty much it, unless you’re going as far back as the ‘80s, when the “PG” rating was nowhere near as soft as it is now.
Yeah, I’m wondering if it is a remake of DRS with added raunch, because that’s what the kids are doing these days. If that’s the case, I don’t see why they are complaining that the original wasn’t an R. I don’t recall any reason why it would have had that rating.
When Wilson talked about this on The Graham Norton Show in the UK. Anchorman was the main example she used. Among other things, she’d counted up all the penis jokes that film was able to get away with at PG-13 and compared it to the fewer vagina jokes in this that still tipped it into R.
Anchorman isn’t a very raunchy movie. I haven’t seen The Hustle so I can’t really compare in that regard. If the Hustle got an R it might be just because they said “fuck” more than one time or something.
Well, here’s the clip, she apparently appealed it herself and breaks it down in some detail:
I’m just confused about their comparison. The ratings system at the times these movies came out aside, unless The Hustle is a shot-for-shot remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels using the exact same dialog, Ratings aren’t based on the plots of movies but their content. I’m just going to hazard a guess that the content of this movie is harsher than the original.
You used to be able to have full frontal nudity in a PG-13 movie in the 80s.Ratings systems should go away.
And it’s well known that violence is wayyy more acceptable than sex or nudity
Do they also blame them for the shitty comedy, acting and subpar direction as well?With this and Amy Pohler whining that women aren’t allowed to be mediocre, I think we’ve hit the end of the Twitter fueled Hollywood faux-feminism movement.
The review noted that the movie is a straight up remake but does not mention how closely it follows the original’s plot. Does Rebel Wilson’s character spend a good bit of the movie pretending to be mentally handicapped? And if so is it broad and over the top like Martin’s performance? I can see people having a problem with that.
Male comedies get PG-13 ratings?Like, it’s not my genre, so maybe I missed a bunch of them, but I feel like some 70% of the male-led comedies that come out are rated R. Is it just that they get more ad space or something?
It’s not about your feelings, pumpkin.
Like her claim that she’s the first plus sized woman to play a romantic lead, this sounds like more talking out of her ass., which I know, its crazy to claim someone is just talking out of their ass when they cite a full fledge “scientific analysis” to back up their point.
I immediately thought of that other quote, as well. I don’t pay much attention to Rebel Wilson- is this typical of her interviews? To disingenuously just pull shit out of the sky? Hathaway- ever the class act (I love her)- knows that when you make a bad movie, you keep it simple, smile, and just get through the press junkets.
Jesus Christ man, you know how there’s those law firms that just scour fine print for things to sue people over? That’s how I feel the notallmen crowd operates. Someone blows a dog whistle and says “A woman is talking about sexism in media” and they all flock to the comments section of an article that they wouldn’t otherwise give a shit about.
Yeah, I’m as shocked as you are.
She’s speaking complete nonsense in the service of promoting her movie. The children are right to call her out on it.
Do you think that’s what they’re doing? “Calling her out on it?”
Do you think they’re holding her accountable for something?
Do you think that’s what they’re doing? Honestly? In a comments section on the internet, you think they’re performing a call-out?
I’m not being facetious, I just want to be absolutely clear: Your belief is that the people who flock to the comments section of an article about Rebel Wilson and effectively shout “liar” are in some way mobilising in pursuit of speaking truth to… power?
“This is stupid” is a fundamentally reasonable take to have on this article, so I’m not going to bother parsing the motivations of people reaching that obvious conclusion.
Okay, so you’re declining to answer a question about actual words that you actually said in actual writing. Cool bruv.
‘It’s about ethics in journalism!’ or whatever.
My faves are ignorant dudes who admit ignorance yet expect everyone else to accept their feelings as facts. Then get all flouncy if anyone questions them:him: ‘I haven’t looked into it but I feel like some 70% of the male-led comedies that come out are rated R.’someone: ‘I don’t think so?’him: ‘This is so stupid. I’m not going to bother parsing obvious conclusions with you!’ Get a grip, dudes. It’s not like we all can’t see right through you.
I was kind of gonna let the butt-holes keep talking for a while before
pointing this out, but the version of the story as reported by Yahoo and
referenced in this article is not a scoop. Rebel Wilson has repeated this story elsewhere with more detail.
The
fact of the matter is that the MPAA agreed with her that the film was
harshly rated, and adjusted the rating accordingly. She successfully
appealed the rating with specific citations (you can see her read part
of her submission on a Graham Norton interview, for instance). So the
ratings disconnect between male- and female- led films can’t honestly be
said to only exist in Rebel Wilson’s head, unless the MPAA is made up
entirely of Rebel Wilson clones.
And the other fact of the matter
is that the MPAA has weathered accusations of various biases for years
and years – at least a few of which have been born out by content
analyses of the films and their ratings. The accusations which Rebel
Wilson is making are therefore not new or, sadly, all that unique. And
when others have made and investigated those same allegations, they’ve
found them not to be entirely false.
Both of these facts are, of course, anecdotal at best.
So
I don’t disagree with you at all but I’d also add to your observation
that this tedious affectation of ‘it’s so self-evidently true based on
my anecdotal evidence that I don’t need to engage further’ deliberately
disregards a significantly larger body of arguably more relevant
anecdotal evidence.
It gets extra funny when these clowns
typically couch their trolling in the language of this like,
faux-rationalist discourse. They say things like “she’s spouting
nonsense” as to imply that she’s saying something non-sequitorial, all
in a fey effort to align themselves with rational thought without
actually, y’know, doing any.
I love that the guys who staunchly say this couldn’t possibly be a case of the film being rated too harshly haven’t seen the film. Without seeing the film, you can’t say what rating it warranted or judge it in comparison to what rating similar films got. I haven’t seen and probably will never see it, so I wouldn’t definitively make a judgment one way or the other. But from what I’ve seen of the MPAA’s inconsistency and their conservative leanings (they do seem to judge language and LGTBQ sexuality much harsher than violence and hetero sexuality), I find Rebel’s argument completely plausible. Hell, Austin Powers literally drank shit in one of his movies and that only got a PG-13, so clearly they don’t rate all raunch the same way.
I guess they really want to court that crucial “teens on dates who just want somewhere to be that isn’t at home” demographic, but really, isn’t an “R” rating much more attractive if they’re selling it as an “outrageous” comedy for adults?
It’s extremely unfair that a comic book move got an R rating just because it has sexy Ryan Renyolds in it.
I saw the movie today and caught a couple obviously ADR’d F-bombs. Sexism in the movie industry is obviously real. Don’t use it to drum up press for your terrible movie.
What does ADR mean? There are 135 different possibilities: https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ADR
I forget which but it’s either After Dialog Recording or Additional Dialog Recording.Basically, anytime a line is rerecorded in a booth and inserted into the movie after that scene was shot. If you’ve ever watched a movie and felt like an actor’s line didn’t feel organic to the scene, it was most likely ADR’d.
My bad, I wasn’t very clear. I don’t even think I was using the term correctly. “Dubbed over” or simply “edited out.” would have been a better thing to say. The scene was shot with F-bombs, but they went back in post to change them.Specifically, there’s a scene where Hathaway is blowing an air horn at Wilson while Wilson curses at her. You can still hear what Wilson’s saying, but every time she drops an F-bomb, her dialogue cuts out. It’s ridiculous and really obvious.
Now this is how you write a brutal review – https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3009494/hustle-film-review-anne-hathaway-rebel-wilson-play-con
This excuse doesn’t hold water, its honestly anecdotal at best and there is just as many examples of R-rated male comedies. This comes across as an attempt to court controversy to raise the profile of a lackluster remake of a much better movie. Its very similar to the Ghostbusters 2016 issue. Except at least with Ghostbusters there were a vocal minority of sexist assholes that complained but it was taken too far by the cast and crew, essentially in a “if you don’t like our movie you are part of the problem” defense. Which its unfortunate that GB16 was also just terrible. Anyway if Hathaway and Wilson want to court controversy they would have a much better job if they pointed the finger directly at the shadowy rating process of the MPAA and ask how they make their determinations for movies. The documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated showed the MPAA sucks.
They’re not wrong.
It’s worth noting that Scoundrels was only rated PG, though some standards may have slightly shifted since its 1988 release.I’m not sure why that’s worth noting, since they’re different movies. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is juvenile and occasionally vulgar, but there’s nothing in there to warrant an R (or even PG-13) rating. No nudity, no F-words. Unless you are deeply troubled by the term “genital cuff”, I think you’re in the clear.
“I thought it was quite sexist that male-driven comedies were much more likely to get PG ratings” The Hangover- Rated RSuperbad- Rated R40 Year Old Vrigin- Rated RTed- Rated R21/22 Jumpstreet- Rated RWedding Crashers- Rated RThese are some of the most popular “male-driven” comedies I can think of, at the moment. I mean, that’s just the market right now. R is in. Even including comedies with top-billed female co-stars like Neighbors, Horrible Bosses, Knocked Up and There’s Something About Mary- they are all also Rated R.
Are female-driven comedies really less likely to be given R-Ratings? Maybe the rom-coms, or the ones aimed at school/teenagers. But The Hustle is a buddy flick, and female buddy flicks like The Heat, Girls Trip, Bad Moms, and of course, Bridesmaids were all Rated R. A little help, anybody? I’m trying to be fair, and understand her side of the story.
https://www.ranker.com/list/best-pg-13-comedy-movies/reference?page=1
Wilson > MartinHathaway > CaineMaybe try and make it with someone funny like Poehler or Rudolph and someone funny and debonair like Tessa Thompson or Karen Gillan
You know you’re saying that Wilson and Hathaway are greater than Martin and Caine with that, right?