What movies have you found you loved, against all the odds of its genre? If you can’t stand action adventure films, was there nonetheless one that you you were forced into seeing and found you were really engaged? If chick flicks aren’t your thing, was there still one that made you root for the romance on screen, even though you’re loathe to admit it? Perhaps you think gore horror is idiotic in the extreme, but then found yourself actually enjoying watching some psychopathic killer chasing down college brats and hacking them apart?
I just watched Music and Lyrics, and I expected a typical insipid chick flick. But against my will, I found myself really drawn into the story. Dang it, I liked the movie, even though it would never have been on my Blockbuster list of my own violition…
I thought Mean Girls would be a stupid teenage high school movie, that I usually avoid at all cost. And it is, except it isn’t stupid, it is quite funny and I actually have watched it multiple times.
Employee of the Month – I really hate this genre of movie, but for some reason, really really like this. I don’t even like Dane Cook especially. And I HATE Andy Dick. Yet I laughed clear through this and it’s one of my favorite comedies of the last few years.
Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon was bad in so many ways. But it’s still one of my all-time favorites. And I can’t justify it.
It’s a pop culture movie that it seems everyone had seen but me. So I started watching it, fully expecting to get bored after 10 minutes and turn it off. I watched it all the way through, and now tell my friends that as much as I don’t like chick flicks, WHMS is one of my favorite movies.
I do not like the James Bond movies at all. When my uncle suggested we watch the new Bond in Casino Royale I was looking for the nearest exit. But I absolutely LOVED it.
Daniel Craig was awesomely sexy, and I even liked the girl who played the love interest…can’t think of her name right now.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and am even looking forward to the next one starring Craig.
Same with **Clueless **- it embodies everything I hate in a movie, in terms of coming across as a teenage-girl chick flick, but it is really a timeless, satiric comedy (that I know know is based on Jane Austen’s Emma) that stands up to repeated viewings to this day…
It’s really good as long as you turn it off right after Regina gets hit by the bus. Otherwise, it severely goes downhill after that.
I can’t stand Tim Allen or any of the other movies he’s in, nor do broad comedies typically appeal to me, but Galaxy Quest was a nearly perfect parody of space opera, Allen’s rendition of a William Shatner-esque bombastic actor is the best role he’ll ever have. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he had a superd supporting cast and the genre-skewering humor was dead on. (“HEY! Don’t open that! It’s an alien planet! Is there air? You don’t know!”) This is the film that The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy should have been.
I met my wife when I was 20 and she kept raving about Amadeus and how good it was. I, being 20 years-old and knowing everything was positive the movie absolutely sucked because it was full of boring music and people in wigs who did nothing but talk a lot. (Plus, this girls first choice of a movie to see together was the craptacular The Money Pit, which she loved - so it was obvious that she had no taste. )
But we finally rented it one Friday night. Two days later, I bought the soundtrack.
Speaking of Tim Allen, I really thought I would hate the Santa Clause 2 (hadn’t seen the first one, but after watching the previews and ads, what else is there to know?) I didn’t love it in its entirety, but I was laughing out loud at the
Evil clone Santa.parts.
If they made a sequel featuring that character as the main character, I’d go see it.
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I detest movies about young dumb guys and that was what I was expecting this to be, but I was wrong. It was funny, well acted and not at all what I thought it would be. I enjoyed it about 50 times more than I expected and even watched it again a couple of days later.
*"Hey Randy…
What?
Gambling!
Huh?
The Devil’s everywhere!
Hey Randy…
What?
Liquor!
Huh?
The Devil’s everywhere!
Hey Randy…
What?
Crystal meth…
Ooohh!
The Devil’s everywhere!"
*More of Freakshow’s singing while fixing Harold’s tire, found in the special features section.
Some channel, I think TBS, was running Robots non-stop on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t heard great things about it, and the lower-key (read: non-Pixar) CG-animated movies don’t catch my interest very much, but there was nothing else on and I was bored. Ended up watching it three times in a row. Weak plot, but the dialogue and visuals are a lot of fun.
WordMan got one of mine bang-on here. Another is The Wedding Singer - I mean c’mon it’s an Adam Sandler film - but I watched it because of Drew Barrymore and found it to be an utterly charming and sweet film. Sandler’s Cure-like song at the wedding reception had me rolling about laughing.
The Wedding Singer, Fifty First Dates, and Superbad. The first two because I just don’t like Adam Sandler that much (except when I do, apparently), and the last one because, besides Michael Cera, nothing about it seemed remotely appealing. Of course, I don’t think I stopped laughing once when we went and saw it. And “Funny thing is, my back is on my dick” has somehow become a regular part of my house’s vocabulary…we’re a classy group…
I second Employee of the Month. As a rule, if more than half of the main cast is over ten years younger than me I’m going to hate it (and that goes about triple for Jessica Simpson) but something about that movie just made me laugh all the way through it.
I hate, I hate, I fucking hate chick flicks, but I loved Under the Tuscan Sun enough to get the DVD. Something about the main character dumping everything and going off to live a new life on a whim after losing her love reminded me of my own life, except that instead of buying a villa in Tuscany, I joined the army.
Swing Time. Somehow I really like this old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers rom-com, and I’m not gay and I don’t even like musicals. As a story it’s moronic, but the soundtrack and the dance numbers are quite brilliant.
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