One of the questions I am most often asked is how selective I am about movies I allow my children to see.
Very.That does not mean, however, that I rely on the rating system. My children have seen certain R-rated films where the offensive material is, in my opinion, outweighed by something positive. And there are plenty of PG-rated films they are not allowed to see.
On the other end of the scale, a friend of mine, who occasionally takes his mother to the movies, knows she is offended by the sex, nudity, graphic violence and excessive profanity so prevalent in today's films. So, even though he reads the reviews, he sometimes double-checks on the content.
"Is this one Mommy-rated?" he'll ask.
In other words, will Mom feel the need to cringe, shudder or possibly hit him over the head with her box of popcorn? If not, it's Mommy-rated.
Unfortunately, as you have no doubt observed, Mommy-rated films are few and far between. But there have been a few that my friend has been able to take his mother to without worry - "Driving Miss Daisy" being this year's best and most prominent example.
But there sure aren't many for my kids.
All of this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I can remember a time when that wasn't a problem.
Growing up in the Long Beach, Calif., area, I remember being free to see whatever movies came to our local theaters, and my parents never worried that I'd be exposed to something that might be harmful to my young psyche.
Then, when I became a teenager, I'd often go into Los Angeles to seek out off-the-mainstream, foreign or underground pictures. And even then my parents never worried much about it - and often they were sitting next to me in the theater. (Though, admittedly, my appetite for such fare was more voracious and less selective than theirs.)
Even though movies were getting bolder in the mid-'60s, before I was 18 even the foreign films I'd see tended to lean toward "Man in a Cocked Hat" and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" - squeaky-clean stuff.
It wasn't until I was out of high school, a so-called "adult teen," that I began to be exposed to films like "Blowup" and "Marat/Sade" - films that were provocative, shocking and thought-provoking.
It was after the rating system was established - I was 20 by then - that movies stopped censoring themselves and became more and more gratuitously offensive.
Today, we take for granted that movies will often contain sex, nudity, profanity and gory, bloody violence. And not just R-rated movies, but films rated PG and PG-13 as well.
Meanwhile, violence in R-rated films has reached such a zenith that only the most jaded moviegoers can ignore the way it is presented.
And only the most jaded parents remain completely unconcerned about their children's movie-going - or video-viewing - habits.
When, for example, did flatulence, urinating and mooning - not to mention adultery - become acceptable comedy material in young children's movies? Yet they all provide jokes for the recent PG-rated "Problem Child."
Another summer children's picture, "Ghost Dad," also rated PG, has jokes about urinating and sex outside of marriage. Such things may reflect reality to a degree, but are they really appropriate for grade-school kids?
If PG-13 really means a film contains nothing inappropriate for young teens 13 and older, how do we explain away some of the graphic material in "Ghost" (bloody violence, sex and partial nudity, considerable profanity) or "Young Guns II" (bloody violence, sex, nudity, profanity) or "Days of Thunder" (more sex and nudity, profanity)?
Interestingly, also rated PG-13 are "Arachnophobia," apparently because it's frightening, and "My Blue Heaven" because a particular profanity - the Eddie Murphy Word - is used once. That these movies are even in the same category as the likes of "Ghost" or "Young Guns II" is preposterous.
And, as mentioned in a column a couple of months ago, how can movies like these carry PG-13 ratings while such innocuous, inoffensive fare as "Quick Change" and "Betsy's Wedding" are rated R? Not to mention that giving these two films the same rating as "Total Recall" and "Die Hard 2" is outlandish.
There's no easy solution to the problem of determining what movies you should let your children see. Especially since all of us have individual sets of standards and don't always see eye to eye on what is considered offensive.
And as I write this, by the way, it's not lost on me that I have a distinct advantage over other parents since, as part of my job, I see everything. That makes it fairly simple for me to decide what my children should and should not be exposed to.
You can't - and probably don't want to - see everything your kids nag you about, and it's not very practical to think you can hide the negative influences from them completely.
So perhaps the most important thing is to be sure you have a running dialogue going with your kids. Let them know you're interested in what they are interested in. Be aware of and discuss their entertainment habits with them.
Whatever approach you take to keep up with what your children are entertained by, one thing's for sure - the rating system alone will not do the job very satisfactorily for you.
If there isn't much out there that's Mommy-rated, you can be sure there isn't much that's kid-rated either.