What Makes a Great, Family-Friendly Film? A Catholic Perspective from Decent Films’ Steven Greydanus

People really want to see clean movies, right?  Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, says so.  His pro-family advocacy group Movieguide® has just released the 2015 Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry, and the results are seemingly indisputable:  Americans want clean movies!

And the difference in profit, when comparing clean, family-friendly films to R-rated and immoral films, is staggering.  According to Movieguide®, family-friendly movies brought in an average in excess of $56.69 million per movie in 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.  In contrast, movies with obscene, offensive, or anti-family, immoral content averaged only $18.68 million.  R-rated films fared only slightly better than those which Movieguide® rated as “immoral.”

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ALL OF THAT SOUNDS GREAT–BUT….  Is that the whole picture?

To put the question into perspective, I contacted Steven Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register whose movie reviews are featured on his website DecentFilms.com,

As I expected, Steven has offered a thoughtful analysis.   He cautions against over-simplification in declaring a movie worthwhile for family viewing–preferring to consider both the absence of profanity and the quality of the films when heading for the ticket box.  Steven writes:

I understand the appeal of the claim that conservative, family-friendly movies are more successful, but it’s a problematic claim in many respects.

It’s a reductive way of framing the issue, to begin with. Movieguide’s method rewards films for avoiding skin and swear words, regardless how poor the films are — or how subversive the underlying themes. Family-targeted films like DreamWorks’ The Croods, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa are all poor movies with morally problematic themes, but they’re also PG films that did well at the box office, so they’re all on MovieGuide top 10 lists.

MovieGuide consistently claims films in the biggest blockbuster genres, notably superhero films and Disney cartoons, as conservative and family-friendly, whether the shoe fits or not.

MovieGuide claims that R-rated films are less popular, whereas the reality is often the reverse: The MPAA accommodates major studios with mainstream-targeted films with a PG-13 rating, whereas a less mainstream but otherwise comparable film from an independent distributor gets an R rating. So the rating is tailored to the film’s audience reach, rather than the other way around. And of course raunchy comedies like the Hangover films don’t fit the narrative, so Movieguide downplays them.

If you are a grownup, you might be interested to know that at last year’s MovieGuide Awards the #1 film for “mature audiences” was Iron Man 3. The year before it was The Avengers. The year before that: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The year before that: Secretariat. For the record, I liked The Avengers and Secretariat, but is this really the pinnacle of cinematic achievement for mature audiences over the last few years?

 For the record:  Steven told me he will not be seeing or reviewing this weekend’s steamy and unseemly new release, 50 Shades of Grey.