My review of Rocky Balboa is now up at CT Movies.
And since this is one of those rare cases of a PG-rated film that is not primarily aimed at families or children, now is as good a time as any to update the list of PG-rated releases begun here and continued here. Plus, since we know what the wide releases will be this week and next, this post will wrap up this topic for the year.
Quite a few PG-rated films have come out since my last post on the subject, but none of them have been #1, except for Happy Feet.
The bulk of the new films — Deck the Halls, The Nativity Story, Unaccompanied Minors, Night at the Museum — have been “family” movies, often with a seasonal or Christmas theme; the G-rated Charlotte’s Web belongs to this category, too.
The only other PG-rated films in this timeframe are the true-story sports movie We Are Marshall and Eragon, a fantasy movie based on a novel written by a 15-year-old with a storyline that many have noted seems to have been cribbed from Star Wars.
So, the G- and PG-rated films that cracked the weekly top ten lists this year break down into the following categories (with the ones that were #1 at the box office for at least one week in bold):
Family films (for children, tweens, or religious audiences):
- Hoodwinked
- Nanny McPhee
- Curious George (G)
- Eight Below
- Doogal (G)
- Aquamarine
- The Shaggy Dog
- Ice Age: The Meltdown
- The Wild (G)
- RV
- Akeelah and the Bee
- Hoot
- Over the Hedge
- Cars
- Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties
- Monster House
- The Ant Bully
- Zoom
- Barnyard: The Original Party Animals
- Material Girls
- Everyone’s Hero (G)
- Open Season
- One Night with the King
- Flicka
- The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (G)
- Flushed Away
- Happy Feet
- Deck the Halls
- The Nativity Story
- Unaccompanied Minors
- Charlotte’s Web (G)
- Night at the Museum
Fantasy film adapted from a 15-year-old’s novel:
- Eragon
Documentary with an educational angle:
- An Inconvenient Truth
Inspirational true-story sports movies set in the ’60s or ’70s:
- Glory Road
- Invincible
- We Are Marshall
Films for grown-ups that just happened to be rated PG:
- The Pink Panther
- The Lake House
- Nacho Libre
- Rocky Balboa
Doesn’t seem so odd that Facing the Giants — a religious, family-oriented sports movie — got a PG rating, now, does it? You really do have to wonder what they were complaining about.
Incidentally, all of the Rocky movies were rated PG except for Rocky V (1990), which was rated PG-13. (Of course, the first three films came out before the PG-13 rating had even been invented.)
DEC 25 UPDATE: I have bolded the above reference to Night at the Museum, to take into account its #1 status this weekend.
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