For the fourth time in his career, Kevin Smith is struggling against the fun police of the MPAA. And this time, he’s fighting for young peoples’ right to appreciate a drawing of balls on a picture of Johnny Depp’s face. Smith posted a lengthy missive on Instagram, along with the offending image—a shot so troubling, the MPAA awarded the film an R rating. His beef seems wholly legit: If one picture of cartoon nuts on a chin is enough to garner an R rating, every episode of Family Guy should be given that same evaluation. Plus, the actual appearance of it, which the board found so offensive, looks like pretty thin gruel.
“This #YogaHosers R rating is riDONKulous,” Smith writes, in an excellent imitation of the juvenile jargon of the film’s young girls. “The core audience for the flick is tween girls (it’s Clueless meets Gremlins!), so I refrained from salty language to make a totally kid-friendly movie.” While that’s probably not what his core audience wants to hear—given that his rapid-fire potty-mouthed dialogue is historically the biggest selling point of a Kevin Smith film—it does make this appeals process seem pretty silly. Of course, The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd doesn’t think the rating should affect your decision to see Yoga Hosers—and the decision should be “no.”
