Is "Young People F——" Going Too Far?

Mike and I debated whether we wanted to even bother posting the trailer for the new film Young People F—— (the bleep out is ours). On one hand we like to tell you guys about everything that’s out there, but on the other hand we’ve made no secret about how we feel about a lot of the Pop Culture of today. Although I am, generally speaking, more of the doomsday prophet than Mike, we both agreed this film could be pushing the boundaries of the sorts of things we talk about here.

However, we both watched the preview for the film and things were further complicated by the fact that the movie actually looks pretty funny. Mike pointed out that we post Red Band trailers which we do, and we seldom bother to mention the rating of a film or anything like that. We figure the people reading this site are adult enough to decide if they want to watch a Red Band trailer or not.

So, we decided that we would post the trailer and let you guys take a look at it and tell us what you think. The trailer itself isn’t Red Band and isn’t really that bad so you can watch it without turning off the lights and shutting the blinds.

Young People F___ing Movie Trailer

The plot breakdown for the film goes something like this:

The Couple, Abby (KRISTIN BOOTH) and Andrew (JOSH DEAN), try to spice up their stale love life, only to discover that things are worse than they thought.

Matt (AARON ABRAMS) and Kris (CARLY POPE) are The Friends, lifelong buddies, one lovesick and the other sick of love. Their plan to sleep together goes off the rails when romance rears its ugly head.

The Exes, Mia (SONJA BENNETT) and Eric (JOSH COOKE), hook up again for old time’s sake, while trying to hide the feelings they still have for one another.

In The First Date, world-class playboy Ken (CALLUM BLUE) comes clean about his history to his naive young date Jamie (DIORA BAIRD), learning some of her secrets in the process.

The Roommates, Dave (PETER OLDRING) and Gord (ENNIS ESMER) are normally at each other’s throats, but set aside their differences for a threesome with Gord’s girlfriend Inez (NATALIE LISINSKA).

In each case, the couples (and trio) discovers that sex isn’t always simple.

An even better description comes from mad. who saw the movie way back last year:

The story begins with the setup of five couples in different relationships about to attempt to persuade their “partner� into having sex. Sounds simple enough. It then unfolds with a series of chapters defined by the five states of fornication. 1. Prelude, 2. Floor Play, 3. Sex, 4. Orgasm, 5. After Glow. As the title suggests, there is a lot of discussion around sex. The writers, Aaron Abrams (also stars as Matt) and Martin Gero (also the Director) uses great dialog between the couples to breakdown sexual boundaries and opens our minds to how sex is perceived and performed by individuals.

The movie was made in Canada and premiered at The Toronto International Film Festival to sold out houses and national praise. Since then, it has played the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinema and was honored as one of Canada’s Top Ten, a festival for the ten best Canadian films of the year.

The filmmakers have had trouble getting it distributed in the US because the MPAA gave it an NC-17 rating which pretty much means that it’s not going to be in many theaters. Most theaters won’t show a film with an NC-17 rating, which means no admission to anyone 17 or younger, and many newspapers won’t carry ads for it. They did recently pick up a US distributer, but it’s not clear if it’s still going to be distributed as an NC-17 film or if they are going to add the black bars and beeps the MPAA asked for in order to get the more commercial R rating.

The DVD release is already planned for late July so I’m doubtful that they have plans to play the movie in many theaters. Two versions of the film, one rated NC-17 and the other R, will be released on DVD. The home video release will also go under the acronym YPF, rather than the full title. This change was necessary in order to get in stores like Wal-Mart.

Now, if you have to change the name of your movie in order to get department stores to display it, don’t you think there’s something inherently wrong with the name of your movie? One of my biggest complaints/problems with this film is the title itself. It seems to me that naming this movie something like this is just a cheap way to get attention. It’s like the kid in the back of the class who yells out inappropriate words in class. It seems to me that it just cheapens the movie. If you have a film that’s worth seeing, why do you need all the extra drama of such a controversial title?

What I think is even worse is the fact that the title of the movie really isn’t stirring up that much controversy at all. That just saddens me. We’ve become a culture that has no problem with our children (ourselves even) being exposed to something called Young People F—— without it even really getting our attention. I’m not saying we should go back to a society that refuses to say the word “pregnant” on television, but a little decorum in society couldn’t hurt anyone. This movie will stay pretty much the same (albeit with a shortened title) and will appear on Blockbuster and Wal-Mart shelves all across America, ready for pretty much anyone to watch.

Maybe the situations that occur in this film are situations that really do occur behind closed doors and maybe many of us could relate and will find it funny. I have no idea. But do we, as a society, really need that sort of thing portrayed on film and then put out there for everyone to see? Does this sort of thing desensitize us to seeing sex and desensitize our children to the consequences of the sort of behavior that might be portrayed in the film? Is there even anything in this film that we haven’t already seen before or does the title mislead us for commercial purposes?

What do you think? Are the filmmakers just trying to get some free media by naming this movie something controversial or are they simply expressing their artistic license with a title that suits the film it belongs to?