Is Hollywood cleaning up its act?

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 10, 2001

In the past 10 days, I've seen a horror flick without violence, a teen fantasy without sex or drugs and a gross-out comedy in which the worst excretion is a popped zit. And they were all enjoyable movies.

Perhaps it's coincidence that The Others, The Princess Diaries and Osmosis Jones are in megaplexes at the same time, displaying unusual restraint in three genres known for cheap shocks and irresponsible images.

Or maybe they represent a ripple of change after complaints from parents and politicians last year forced studios and theater owners to clean up their acts. It didn't take long for the industry to start enforcing age restrictions and curtailing the marketing of R-rated films to children.

However, it takes months, sometimes a year, for a movie to go from pre-production to final print. Filmmakers who took last year's outrage seriously enough to soften their creative choices are just starting to reach audiences.

We're not talking about directors who trim a few seconds of footage to dodge an R rating, but about those who don't intend to get close to one in the first place.

They are filmmakers such as Garry Marshall, who, to be honest, seemed pathetically out of step two weeks ago when The Princess Diaries opened. It's such a sweet movie, with G-rated teenagers who don't even eat junk food. It even has Julie Andrews adding her spoonful of sugar to an already saccharine project. Marshall must have been crazy to think audiences would buy this.

Like a fox. The Princess Diaries earned $23.2-million for an impressive third place in last week's box office race. Studios already knew that G-rated movies starring talking animals can make money. Flesh-and-blood teenagers are an entirely different species, in Hollywood's view. They're supposed to be losing their virginity and subverting authority in PG-13 or R-rated movies such as American Pie 2. That's the only way to sell tickets, right?

Maybe not. Another good showing for The Princess Diaries at theaters this weekend could urge producers to dust off those live-action, family-friendly scripts that seemed unbankable a year ago.

Studios will also want to monitor today's debut of Alejandro Amenabar's ghost story, The Others. The film has a popular star, Nicole Kidman, and a supernatural theme for opening day appeal. But will Amenabar's subtle creep show play well enough with shock-treated moviegoers to make them recommend the film to friends?

Not a drop of blood is shed in The Others. Violent death is part of the story, although it's not depicted on-screen until after the fact. Nobody curses the moody darkness or anything else. One bedroom embrace -- between a married couple, for goodness' sake -- is the only sensuality. Amenabar's film seems transported from the days of The Cat People and The Haunting -- the eerie originals, not their grotesque remakes.

The Others wouldn't have been produced if not for the success of M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and, to a lesser degree, Unbreakable. Someone besides Shyamalan must be able to raise goose bumps and gasps without metronome anxiety and gory images. Amenabar makes a strong case for himself with The Others, using old-fashioned lighting, sound effects and mystery to make us squirm.

Osmosis Jones is as loud and boisterous as Amenabar's film is quiet. Yet the movies have something in common: They choose not to push their content into R-rated material that proved successful in previous movies. Amenabar could chop off a head or two, but he doesn't. Osmosis Jones, a mostly animated trek into a slob's innards, could be thoroughly disgusting, but it isn't.

Oddly enough, the PG-rated movie's co-creators, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, are largely responsible for the crude-comedy trend in Hollywood. This time they leave out the poop jokes, pinched genitals and semen gags that made them rich in There's Something About Mary, Kingpin andDumb and Dumber. It dawned on the Farrellys that, with a little inspiration, pus and perspiration can elicit the same groaning laughter. Naughty but nicer.

A lot of filmmakers can find lessons in The Princess Diaries, The Others andOsmosis Jones, if enough tickets are sold to make them pay attention. Movie terror doesn't always have to be bloody. Lowbrow comedy doesn't need to be as nasty as biology allows. Catering to teenagers doesn't mean exploiting them. We can understand passions without gratuitous profanity and nudity.

Those tactics were sometimes considered pornographic in 1968, when the Motion Picture Association of America started rating films. Now they're just visceral shortcuts that aren't paying off since underage viewers aren't getting in the door. There will always be a place for artful films treating adult themes with the respect or satire they deserve. And perhaps a better future for clean movies than we thought.

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