Movie Ratings

The more specific the MPAA gets about why a movie has received a certain rating, the more hilarious it gets.

I was looking on Fandango to try to figure out what movie I might like to see tomorrow (any suggestions?)

OK, they're not always specific--Confessions of a Shopaholic is rated PG because of "some mild language and thematic elements"
Thematic . . . elements? Are they warning us that there might be an 8th grade English quiz at the end? For which we need to identify the protagonist, an example of foreshadowing, and some elements of theme?
(Also, wouldn't it be great if the raters got to put statements of value in there too? Like, "Mild language, thematic elements, and also this movie is clearly terrible.")

Frost/Nixon gets an R just for "some language." The real reason is probably more like "the producers wanted an R rating because those are the only films that get taken seriously. Also, kids don't want to watch this. C'mon."

But most films seem to get a whole laundry list of naughtiness. Take Taken (R): "intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug reference"

Push's PG-13 (oh, and I totally forgot that this movie existed) is for "intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, smoking and a scene of teen drinking"
But . . . is the teen also smoking? And, see? That's a lot more stuff than Frost/Nixon.

But the reason I wrote this post at all is that the description for Fired Up cracked me up entirely: "crude and sexual content throughout, partial nudity, language and some teen partying"
I think it's the idea of some stuffy movie rater primly declaring that we need to be warned about "some teen partying" that gets me.