At work a few days ago, I saw a commercial for the new Cat in the Hat movie and saw at the end that the movie was not rated G, but PG. And I said out loud: how the hell is this movie not rated G? The Cat in the Hat is one of the most iconic characters from Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, so a movie about him seems like it should be as kid-friendly as it gets. Yet I feel that over the past few decades, the meanings of American movie ratings have shifted to be increasingly illogical.

Here in America, we have five content ratings a movie can get: G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17. However, when I see movie trailers I seldom see a movie rated G these days, and NC-17 severely limits a movie’s marketability so typically movie directors fight for their movies to be rated a mere R instead. Back in the 1980’s, the PG rating meant a movie wasn’t entirely family-friendly and would be suitable for older kids instead of adults. But nowadays, G and PG both seem to only ever be used for kids’ movies and I far more often see kids’ movie trailers use PG. It makes me wonder, what the hell is the point of a G rating if Frozen and the Super Mario Bros. Movie are both rated PG? I think rating movies G is just too unmarketable these days, because adults and maybe teenagers are the ones who pay to watch movies, not children.

Likewise, I haven’t actually seen the Cat in the Hat movie, but I’m 99% sure that the only reason it was rated PG was to tell adults that the movie has some jokes that they will enjoy and it’s not just frilly childish nonsense. Either that, or we Americans are just too prudish and restrictive of the things that poor, innocent children should be allowed to watch.

As for PG-13 and R, I think they don’t do a great job of telling you how much adult content the movie really has. PG-13 is really just used for movies with lots of violence, and R is used for movies with even a smidgen of sexual content. Are the rest of the world’s movie ratings this dumb too, or is this only an American thing? I do know that a lot of countries in Europe are far more lenient on rating movies with sexual content than the US is.