That is, movies you’ve seen as an adult that you consider guilty pleasures? Thinking over mine, they’re generally movies I first saw as a kid or teen and still love (the Home Alone movies, Jurassic Park sequels, the Addams Family movies). Generally when I’ve watched fun/terrible movies as an adult, though, I never want to see them again. There’s also something fun about enjoying a movie and then realizing how terrible elements were that you just never noticed.
Just me? Or is there an element of nostalgia in most guilty pleasures?
There definitely movies that make me cringe but which I cannot look away from. The American President is number one on the list. It’s not a pleasure exactly but it makes me feel such revulsion that it’s fascinating and I can’t help watching.
I think you’re right though – I don’t seek out guilty pleasures as much as I watch them when they pass by on TV (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I’m looking at you).
I suppose it’s not such a guilty pleasure, but I still enjoy Disney movies. I wish more were shown on cable TV on Saturday afternoons.
Mr. Salinqmind has such fond memories of Saturday afternoon Creature Features, he bought many DVDs of things like “Mission to Mars”, “The Crawling Eye”, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” and implores me to watch them again with him. (They don’t hold up, IMO. You sometimes just can’t go home again…)
Me too, re: Disney. I hesitated to lump them in as guilty pleasures, as most of them are quite good. I recently watched Mulan for the first time ever and enjoyed it. Not in an ironic or snarky way, just a “nice!” way.
That’s one I should watch. I enjoyed the book, and I found the Nostalgia Critic’s review of the episode hilarious.
Contact*
Scarface"
Army of Darkness
Evil Dead II
Screamers (With Peter Weller)
Anything Star Trek or Star wars related.
And my biggest shame of all is I’ve been know to sit around in my PJs in the middle of the afternoon, getting hammered on beer while watching marathon runs of ST: DS9… …alone!
*Good movies, it just the fact that I’ve watched them so many times makes them a guilty pleasure.
I confess to having a completely unironic love for the original Adventures of Superman, particularly the first season, when it didn’t know it was supposed to be a kids’ show.
She doesn’t seek it out now, but for years my wife thought Porky’s was the funniest movie ever made. My only interest in it was 1982-era Kim Cattrall.
All of mine have a big nostalgia factor. Otherwise, how could an adult seriously sit down and watch Beastmaster? But it really does remind me of being a kid and how much my brother and I loved that movie.
There are definitely things that I saw/read as an adult, and I enjoyed, that are generally not well-regarded, but I always have some actual reason that I liked them, and don’t think of them as guilty pleasures.
I don’t have guilty pleasures any more, only pleasures.
When I was a teenager and trying (very unsuccessfully) to look cool, I did feel “guilty” if and when I liked a disco song or a mellow pop tune. Today, I just like what I like, and don’t worry about whether it’s cool to like those songs or not.
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
All of the teen dancing/cheering/band movies. Over Veterans Day weekend I went on a bit of a bender: Center Stage led to Bring It On which led to Save the Last Dance which led to Drumline which led to Stomp The Yard which led to Step Up.
I don’t have guilty pleasures. When I like something, I’m happy to say so. I’m a fan of Ishtar and The Day After Tomorrow, for instance and will gladly explain why.
Still, he might feel different if he had lived to see Jurassic Park III.
