Maybe it’s competitiveness. They ID with the protagonist, who doesn’t just get the guy. She gets the guy and is so much hotter or sexier or has a personality that the guy drops his current thing and makes her feel miserable because she triumphed. Or something.
I can’t stand “Who is going to die next movies”, be it horror or some other disaster movie. Come to think of it, I hate disaster movies. They always follow the formula of
- Happy family going about their business…
- An unhappy family avoiding each other
- An untrusted scientist who has a crackpot theory and is avoided by everyone (usually students gaped in disbelief at his classes) and he found out about an Earth-threatening disaster
- The people in charge refused to believe said scientist (or amateur photographer, or what-not) until it is too late
- Mass evacuation, with lots of heart breaking incidents (bonus points if a cute kid got separated from the dad)
- Happy family is split up
- Unhappy family is reunited.
- Rock falls, a lot of people die
- But there is always hope!.
I also hate “guess who is the bad guy” movies. Or any movies where the good guys are dumb and always wringing their hands and are saved by a deus ex-machina. (Actually, this is more true for soap operas)
Pretty much any biopic. Biographies work as books, but not as 2 hour movies. If the character dies it’s pointless and unhappy, and if the character doesn’t die the bio seems arbitrarily cut short.
I concur about movies “Based on a True
Story.” That claim just makes the exaggerations and Hollywood plot devices more painful.
(Still I liked Braveheart. The death ending was somewhat meaningful, and the history was adequately obscure and ancient that the movie’s inaccuracies didn’t bother me.)
Sports movies are rarely worth the effort. The underdog team wins the big event… or falls just short in an inspiring manner. Who could have seen that coming?
(But I’m very fond of Breaking Away, which is not only a sports movie with winning underdogs, but also has the protagonist trying to impress the girl by pretending to be something he isn’t!)
Oh yeah, throw in anything there where rich-guy marries lower-class-than-him-woman-who-works-for-him. Wasn’t there some J-Lo movie where she was a maid who had one of the guys she works for fall in love with her and marry her? Sorry, toots, that’s not how it happens. More likely, you end up with something like Thirteen Conversations about One Thing.
Housekeeper dreams of the architect whose house she cleans falling in love with her. Housekeeper is injured in an accident. When she returns to work, she finds that Mr. Handsome Architect thought she stole his watch, 'cause he couldn’t find it after she was gone for a while. (She’d put it in a drawer when she was cleaning.)
Hah, whereas my Scottish friend hated it.
A girl I knew asked to come over to watch a video (VCRs were still a bit expensive then), and she chose Steel Magnolias. I gathered afterward that she had deliberately chosen something to make her cry, a concept I was not familiar with.
My roommate who was working his way into the tv business watches a bit and says, “Someone has to die.” So when it happened, I was laughing, because he’d called it way before there were hints given. So I ruined her cry moment. Oops.
This has always been one of my peeves. If she (or he) is in a relationship with an asshole, what does that say about her (or his) values? My most :rolleyes: case in point is a movie with John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones–don’t recall the title, but John and Catherine are actors and married (?) to each other. She’s an over-the-top bitch, but her sister (Julia Roberts) and John C. spend most of the movie kissing her ass. When John and Julia find TWUE WOVE with each other, we are supposed to care, in spite of the evidence that they are both mealy-mouthed, shallow morons who tolerate and cultivate a horrible person until they see the light.
America’s Sweethearts, if I’m not mistaken. And I wouldn’t mind kissing CZJ’s ass for two hours:p
ETA: Perhaps I should have posted that here.
Don’t forget the corrupt corporate exec or shill for same-thankfully he usually dies pretty early on…
Those I don’t mind-I DO mind the ones where everyone is a bad guy tho. Yes I did like Snake Plissken (1st film at least), a fallen hero of sorts…
? Really ? You never choose a movie for its capacity as tear-jerker, and not just because you find them maudlin and corny and ineffective at jerking your tears?
Hmm. OK. I, on the other hand, don’t understand the attraction of gory slasher flicks. Horror, yes — I do pick films to scare me — but I would never pick a movie deliberately chosen to make me throw up.
I don’t like tear-jerkers OR gore fests. I will sometimes watch things despite these attributes, but not often.
Must say, often I have hard time understanding the attraction of some for tearjerkers “for tearjerkers’ sake”. I can get that we may have a deeply moving drama, an intense emotional catharsis in the best Aristotelian sense. But that ought to be something that grows organically out of the plot and imagery – if someone trying to speak favorably of the film begins telling me about number of hankies, I’ll wonder if I should keep asking for this person’s opinion…
Nope, I will pick movies IN SPITE of them being tearjerkers, but never because I want to cry my heart out.
This is a broad brush, but I’m generally turned off by movies based on comic books… Batman, Superman, Ironman, whatever. I’m not a comic book fan and I think a movies based on already established characters is a lazy Hollywood tactic to rake in a million bucks. Which is a shame, because I have heard some are pretty good (like the latest Batman) but I just don’t want to see comic book characters in a movie.
I don’t know what category Weekend at Bernie’s fits under, or what specifically irks me about it, but I absolutely hate that movie. Everyone in it is an idiot who can’t tell that the two losers are walking around with a stiff.
OK, I don’t read superhero comic books any more, but I DO like the superhero movies that have come out lately, as a general rule. I think that they’re pretty good, as long as you don’t demand too much of them.
As for Weekend at Bernie’s, I tend to file those under “idiot plot”. Everyone in the movie is an idiot. Any non-idiot would be able to tell, instantly, that there’s Something Wrong with that stiff, although he might just be passed out, he probably needs some medical attention. Of course, Bernie himself is too far gone, but most people who are that immobile do need to be seen by some sort of medico.
It’s called catharsis, and the idea is probably older than Aristotle.
One I just thought of – anything with a straw atheist/skeptic who is forced to confront the reality of God/ghosts/miracles. The skeptics are usually variations on the Jack Chick evolution professor.
Straw anything. One of the reasons I gave up on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was because of that Stupid Blonde Christian Strawman chick (and I’m an atheist).
I think I agree, and the point that I wasn’t connecting with was that this was a fairly girly-girl who had picked this movie to make her cry just for the release of it. I assume there were other issues going on that made her think of this, and this was going to be a substitute issue.
Movies where the main character is paralysed. How many do we really need of those?
A chick flick where a total bitch (male or female) has designs on a decent guy/girl and at the end of the movie, it’s the other person that caves in and the bitch remains a bitch. (Sweet Home Alabama, How to Lose a Guy in 10 days.)
Compare this to films where the bitch learns about themselves, changes their ways, becomes a better person, and then gets the guy/girl are far superior (Legally Blonde, Must Love Dogs, As Good as it Gets, etc.)