I may be the only person who has seen Jaws I through IV. I’m not sure how many of the Halloweens I’ve seen, but…a lot. I’ve seen plenty of bad movies in my time. Part of it is a volume thing. When you see as many movies as I do, you’re going to see some bad ones. But even then, I could walk out, right?
I’ve only walked out of one movie in my life—“Mommie Dearest.” It was terrible ("No more wire hangers!").But the real reason I left was because I’d told my parents (I was in high school) that I was somewhere else, and that movie was freaking LONG. I had to leave in order to get home in time. (I have no recollection why I chose to lie to go to this movie. In retrospect it seems odd.)
But the thing is, even when a movie is terrible, I rarely hate it. Sometimes they’re good bad, i.e so ridiculous that they’re fun. Paul and I have no end of fun with “Tremors,” for instance. We figure Kevin Bacon needed to do some renovations on his mansion, or something. That’s the only explanation for that one. And Michael Caine (nee Maurice Mickelwhite...can you believe it?) is so preposterous romancing the widow in Jaws IV that I can’t look away. Call it train wreck bad.
And then there’s bad like W., which I just saw last week. I find that variety of bad—which is to say, not entertainingly bad—interesting, because it points out where the misses were, and raises the question, what would you have needed to do to tell this story well? And that’s where you can have some fun.
Paul and I must have talked about what worked and what didn’t re: W. for two hours after we saw it. The movie was forgettable, but the challenge of how you tell a story like that—that was interesting, and something we really enjoyed thinking about.
Maybe it’s just that I’m a writer, i.e. interested in the idea of how to tell stories well, that this aspect of badness interests me. (I have friends who have left bad movies livid about their lost time and the price of their ticket.) But I like it. For one, it means I rarely feel like I’ve wasted the price of a ticket.
What about you, any favorite so-bad-they're good movies? Any movies that left you mourning the price of your ticket?
I’ve only walked out of one movie in my life—“Mommie Dearest.” It was terrible ("No more wire hangers!").But the real reason I left was because I’d told my parents (I was in high school) that I was somewhere else, and that movie was freaking LONG. I had to leave in order to get home in time. (I have no recollection why I chose to lie to go to this movie. In retrospect it seems odd.)
But the thing is, even when a movie is terrible, I rarely hate it. Sometimes they’re good bad, i.e so ridiculous that they’re fun. Paul and I have no end of fun with “Tremors,” for instance. We figure Kevin Bacon needed to do some renovations on his mansion, or something. That’s the only explanation for that one. And Michael Caine (nee Maurice Mickelwhite...can you believe it?) is so preposterous romancing the widow in Jaws IV that I can’t look away. Call it train wreck bad.
And then there’s bad like W., which I just saw last week. I find that variety of bad—which is to say, not entertainingly bad—interesting, because it points out where the misses were, and raises the question, what would you have needed to do to tell this story well? And that’s where you can have some fun.
Paul and I must have talked about what worked and what didn’t re: W. for two hours after we saw it. The movie was forgettable, but the challenge of how you tell a story like that—that was interesting, and something we really enjoyed thinking about.
Maybe it’s just that I’m a writer, i.e. interested in the idea of how to tell stories well, that this aspect of badness interests me. (I have friends who have left bad movies livid about their lost time and the price of their ticket.) But I like it. For one, it means I rarely feel like I’ve wasted the price of a ticket.
What about you, any favorite so-bad-they're good movies? Any movies that left you mourning the price of your ticket?
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1 comment:
So bad they're good isn't quite the same as so bad that you can have fun figuring out why and how they might have been better. That's where I'd put W--so bad that we had fun trying to sort out why it didn't work.
Under the other category--so bad it's good--Showgirls has to be a leading contender. "She's got it!"
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