This week, after yet another ratings battle with the Motion Picture Association of America, Harvey Weinstein finally had enough. In 2010 Weinstein was able to convince the MPAA to overturn its NC-17 rating for the Ryan Gosling/Michelle Williams relationship drama “Blue Valentine” when the ratings board got up in arms over a scene of Gosling performing oral sex. This year the board would not budge on its decision to brand the documentary “Bully” with a cursed “R” rating for “some language,” deflating the hopes of many that the documentary could be a rallying point for raising awareness of the horrors of relentless adolescent harassment among kids themselves. One teenage bullying victim even started a petition for a PG-13 rating on Change.org which has already racked up almost half a million signatures.
In retaliation, Weinstein has announced he will be releasing the film for an “unrated” theatrical run without any attached rating from the MPAA. While technically legal, it would be an unprecedented move and how theater owners would treat such a release has yet to be seen. But one man is already behind Weinstein’s plan one-hundred-and-ten percent: Nicolas Cage.
The man of a million movies has had more than a few of his own frustrating fracases with the MPAA over the years, and he’s finally ready to “Kick-Ass” and take names. Harvey’s “for the children” plea has resonated with Cage to such an extent that he has decided to execute “unrated” theatrical releases of two of his own family movies that have been toiling on the shelf after being slapped with ratings that Cage maintains are outright ludicrous.
“The Easter Bunny”
In the wake of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s boxoffice bonanza with “The Tooth Fairy,” Cage aggressively pursued the prospect of a sequel to the timeless chronicle of a professional hockey player who becomes a tooth fairy after being mean to some children. But as Cage discovered, the tooth does indeed hurt. He was passed over for the role in favor of the chameleonic Larry the Cable Guy, who was glowing with critical praise for his role in “Cars 2” that has been widely regarded as the seminal voice acting performance to be found in Pixar’s catalogue. Never one to give up the fight, Cage produced his own family film in a similar vein—“The Easter Bunny”.
Cage plays the grumpy owner of a pet store specializing in rabbits who, after yelling at a group of children in the store for trying to play with some of the animals on Easter Eve, finds himself sprouting whiskers, growing white fur and defecating colored Easter eggs uncontrollably as he is tasked with teaching the children in his neighborhood the true meaning of Easter. Originally the MPAA refused to award “The Easter Bunny” a desirable rating because it featured “vague sexual references, brief scenes of holiday-related violence, ambiguous racist language and gratuitous human egg laying throughout.” However, Cage now plans to release the film in theaters unrated on Easter weekend, explaining that he feels children everywhere could benefit from the film’s message of belief in the mystical in our modern day techno-dystopia.
“Alvin and the Chipmunks: Take Me Down to Munky Town”
Before “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” offered audiences a nautical conclusion to the beloved trilogy of anthropomorphized-rodent adventures, a different final installment was produced with Nicolas Cage in the lead. While the movie was originally intended to film in Nashville, Cage insisted the production be moved to New Orleans in order to accommodate his quest to procure new additions to his collection of antique human skulls.
Unfamiliar with the concept of renting property, Cage purchased the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, regarded by locals as the most haunted residence in New Orleans. That’s when things took a turn for the worse.
In an interview with Variety, the film’s director bemoaned that Cage spent the majority of waking hours during production “holed up in a hidden security room in his new home watching as he tortured the staff into believing the house was haunted with a myriad of technical tricks.” He concluded, “Is Nicolas Cage a maniacal Jigsaw-esque sociopathic sadist? That’s not my business. What is my business is securing the best possible performance from my actors and I feel like Mr. Cage’s extracurricular actives may have been interfering with his work in this case.”
Whoever was ultimately to blame for the lackluster results, 20th Century Fox ultimately decided to take the series in a different direction after the final cut failed to secure an acceptable rating from the MPAA for featuring “Possible innuendos, pervasive anti-Arizonan sentiments, mature sexual situations involving shadow puppets and constant scenes of irresponsible chipmunkery and intoxicated revelry.” However, Cage recently reacquired the rights to the film from Fox using funds from the sale of his backup Scottish castle and plans to release the film for an unrated theatrical run this summer, telling The Hollywood Reporter that “Summers need blockbusters, that’s just how it is. And it was tragic that those fascist rodentophobes didn’t want children to learn from this tale of regret, redemption and why you should never mix an ‘82 Mouton Rothschild, Fleischmann’s Gin and a Styrofoam cup of jumbo shrimp gumbo.” How family audiences will receive this debaucherous romp through the French Quarter with Cage, Alvin, and the gang remains to be seen.
