HOLLYWOOD -- When New Line had its first research screening of "Wedding Crashers" in nearby Pasadena last fall, the studio knew it had a potential hit on its hands. The madcap romantic comedy, which stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as a pair of lovable rogues who get their kicks from partying at strangers' weddings, got a resoundingly enthusiastic reception from a theater full of young moviegoers.

One of the studio's only concerns about the film, which arrives Friday, was its rating. The film's director, David Dobkin, was contractually obligated to deliver a PG-13 movie, largely because R-rated comedies today rarely perform as well as PG-13 films. But when the audience filled out a survey after the screening, most of the scenes they checked off as favorites -- including one featuring a furtive sexual act performed under a table -- clearly put the movie into R-rated territory.

According to Dobkin, when members of an audience focus group were asked what rating they thought the movie should have, it was not a hung jury. "Twenty out of 20 people said they wanted the film to be rated R," Dobkin recalls. "After that, New Line never raised the issue again. The scenes people liked the best were the R-rated ones."

New Line's decision to release a potential summer comedy blockbuster with an R rating has raised eyebrows at rival studios -- and with good reason. In recent years, thanks to political and demographic pressures, the R rating has been in a precipitous decline. Since 1999, when R-rated movies made up 41 percent of all box office, the R-rated business has dropped 30 percent, while PG and PG-13 films have risen considerably. The drop in R-rated movies has been especially dramatic since Hollywood chieftains were hauled before Congress in September 2000 following the release of a scathing Federal Trade Commission report accusing entertainment companies of cynically marketing R-rated movies to children.

This being Hollywood, the decision to pull back is rooted more in marketing concerns than in moral ones. Even though Congress has moved on to more pressing issues, many of the studios' self-imposed marketing restrictions remain, notably that R-rated movies can't be advertised on TV before 9 p.m. "Wedding Crashers," for example, was able to advertise on "The MTV Movie Awards" only in a segment of the show that aired after 9.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to data compiled by Exhibitor Relations Co., since the 2000 congressional hearings, 15 comedies have made more than $115 million at the box office. Only one, "American Pie 2," had an R rating. 2004 was an especially miserable year for R-rated comedies. "Eurotrip," "The Girl Next Door," "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" and "Team America: World Police" were all box-office disappointments, with only "Team America" making more than $20 million in its theatrical release.

Studio marketers say the R rating puts them at a clear disadvantage. Many exhibitors are reluctant to play trailers for an R-rated movie in front of a PG-13 film. And it's verboten to show a film's raunchiest scenes on TV ads. Despite these restrictions, the R-rated comedy is beginning to make a comeback. "Wedding Crashers" will be followed in August by "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," with Rob Schneider, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," starring Steve Carell. More R-rated comedies are due early next year.

The reasons for this mini-comeback are simple. In recent years, the real action in the movie business has shifted from theatrical box-office to DVD sales, which now make up more than 60 percent of studio revenues. One of the hottest profit centers is a new genre devoted to raunchy "unrated" DVD versions of R-rated films.

This trend speaks volumes about the tendency in America to say one thing but do another. People claim they want wholesome family entertainment, but the big money on the Internet and in pay TV comes from pornography. In the rare instances when a studio puts out a feel-good valentine, like "Because of Winn-Dixie" or "My Dog Skip," the movie dies on the vine. For all the talk of moral values, nothing succeeds with the American people like the promise of a little extra nudity or hanky-panky in their DVD packages.

This unlikely boom in raunchy videos has been made possible by the fact that the Motion Picture Association of America, which rigorously regulates the ratings of theatrical films (and, just as important, their trailers and TV spots), has taken a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to the video marketplace. Former MPAA chief Jack Valenti, who still oversees the ratings board, has said that as long as the packaging is honest, he has no problem with unrated movies. Apparently the same goes with Wal-Mart, which has long refused to carry hip-hop CDs with parental advisory warnings but now happily stocks unrated DVDs -- at least as long as they are assured by studios that the videos would be rated R if they had received a rating.

It's quite a flimflam. The retailers display unrated videos, saying that they've been told they would be rated R if they'd actually gone through a ratings process. But the video packages project an entirely different message. "The Girl Next Door," for example, is adorned with the come-on: "What they couldn't show in the theaters!"

As you might suspect, this boom in unrated videos is playing a role in the renewed interest in R-rated comedies. Whatever a studio loses in theatrical business could easily be made up for on the home-video end.

In fact, all of those R-rated comedies that underperformed at the box-office last year were big hits in their DVD release. Kornblau says the "American Pie" DVDs, largely on the strength of sales from unrated videos, are the biggest-selling home-video franchise in the studio's history.

It's always possible that there will be an outcry someday to try to put the kibosh on this pot of gold. But the studios now have a great card to play. In order to get Congress to stiffen penalties against piracy, they agreed to legislation that allows businesses to market family-friendly censorship devices like ClearPlay, which allow skittish parents to edit sex, violence or bad language out of their DVDs. Having embraced ClearPlay, studios can spiritedly defend this new generation of unrated videos.

In the long run, thanks to the arrival of an assortment of new technology, most of these ratings issues will probably lose most of their relevance. The studios already have quietly found ways to disseminate R-rated marketing material across the Internet. Soon kids will be watching hi-def movie trailers on their 3G cell phones. It won't be long before they'll be seeing the movies themselves on some kind of hand-held video device. Unless the studios feel heat from Washington, most of these areas will remain outside the enforcement capabilities of the MPAA's ratings board.

Despite New Line's jitters about marketing "Wedding Crashers," you can bet the studio will make its money back selling an unrated DVD of the movie. In America, if something is forbidden fruit, you'll always find plenty of people eager to take a bite out of the apple.