What happened to PG?

After seeing "Marley & Me," with its skinny-dipping, canoodling, postpartum depression, stabbing of a young neighbor (serious but not fatal) and tear-soaked ending, Jim Judy was taken aback by the PG rating.

"I was shocked it wasn't PG-13, which, I've heard, is the same reaction from many parents who took their kids," said Judy, who runs the Screen It! website for parents looking for details about movie content.

"I think the biggest issue is that it was marketed as a family-friendly holiday film about a mischievous dog and turned out to be something a lot more complex than that," he said.

That might be why it has grossed more than $140 million. But it's also a sign that more movies are arriving in theaters with a PG rating and that the classification might be undergoing some ratings creep.

In 2004, the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that found more violence than a decade earlier in PG and PG-13 movies, more sexual content in PG, PG-13 and R films, and more profanity in PG-13 and R releases.

Now, PG seems to have become an even bigger and more desirable umbrella, given recent movies such as "New in Town," "Inkheart," "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," "Bride Wars," "Marley & Me," "Coraline" and "The Pink Panther 2."

Judy, for instance, was surprised by the violence in the Kevin James mall-cop comedy.

The Motion Picture Association of America, however, insists there has been no loosening of standards.

"The PG rating hasn't changed; it's the same criteria as it's been for some time now," spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman said.

In 2007, there were 105 movies rated PG and in 2008 there were 107.

"The key to the PG is that parents need to use guidance, that we need them to use the descriptors, read the descriptors. The descriptors provide reasons why it was given the rating it was, what they should be looking out for, what they're cautioned about," Kaltman said.

The descriptor for "Marley & Me" is PG for "thematic material, some suggestive content and language."

Neil Gaiman recently has been answering questions about the animated movie "Coraline," based on his novel about an 11-year-old girl who discovers a secret passageway in her house to a near-identical world with her "other" mother and father. Its PG rating is for "thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor."

That last one must be for the buxom, aging actress who wears sparkly pasties and a bikini bottom -- before she unzips her lumpy body to reveal a younger, prettier, thinner version of herself.

Gaiman said he has been asked if the movie is too creepy.

"If you have a kid who can cope with Disney's 'Snow White,' they will have no problems with 'Coraline.' It's just the same amount of scary, possibly less brutal than that," he said.

The 1938 animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" featured a wicked queen who sends for a huntsman, orders him to take Snow White into the forest and kill her.

He credits the 2001 blockbuster "Shrek" with removing the stigma.