Any time a movie heavy on action and special effects but a terrible plot pops up on the Straight Dope sooner or later someone comes into the thread defending as “Hey it’s a good popcorn flick! I enjoyed it” I’ve seen this defense for movies such as VanHelsing
Underworld
and currently War of the Worlds (which in all honesty I haven’t seen but the consensus seems to be that it sucks)
Now I never considered ‘Chick Flick’ to be a valid defense of movies that feature bad acting and a clichéd plot just to invoke tears at the end. However, it could be argued that a movie that does achieve a reaction from its intended audience is successful. What do you guys think?
Also I’m interested in lists of movies where you hear ‘popcorn flick’ invoked for what you thought was a great/terrible movie.
I’ve seen dozens of movies in theatres this year. Some great, most good, some not so great. Regardless of whether it’s a moving story, a thought-provoking documentary, a corny romance, or a flashy action flick, going to the movies is fun. Even if the movie is bad, I can eat some popcorn, watch some pretty pictures, and leave the theatre not wanting my time or money back. I’d certainly rather go see a film like Live and Become than a flick like Van Helsing, but I imagine the latter is still a worthy diversion. A lot of movies are little more than ninety minutes of pretty pictures, and sometimes that’s good enough. YMMV.
I’ve never felt that there has to be more to any story, be it fiction or a movie, than that it was enjoyable at the time.
I use the expression “mental popcorn” or “popcorn fiction” all the time. It sounds a bit better than “guilty pleasure” and explains to most why I read them.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate literature. I just enjoy some less filling tastes as well.
For the record, even popcorn couldn’t make me sit all the way through VanHelsing. That movie was the suck.
Anyway, I suppose it depends on how you see movies. If you’re the type to hold everything up to the same gold standard, then, yeah, it’s not a good defense. Me, I’m a right tool for the right job sort of guy. If I bought a candy bar, I wouldn’t complain that it wasn’t steak, you know?
To add to slortar’s analogy, if you buy a Hershey bar, you don’t complain that it’s not a Godiva chocolate.
I think “popcorn flick” is a perfectly legitimate defense for some movies. I’d rather most of them were a little heavier on plot and characterization, but I can certainly enjoy them even when they’re not. I don’t dislike **Van Helsing, **and I actually like Underworld and The Day After Tomorrow. I plan to buy **War of the Worlds, **even though I haven’t seen it.
I don’t watch a lot of foreign films or deeper dramas or independent films, but I’ve also enjoyed movies like Lost in Translation and **Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. **(I initially typed “Spotted,” which made me laugh). Strangely, with both of those films, I wasn’t sure how I felt about them the first time I watched them. Then, I realized I was spending time over the next few days thinking about them and wanting to watch them again. I don’t usually do that with many popcorn flicks.
Good thing about popcorn flicks: they’re easy to rewatch, because you don’t have a lot of investment in them.
Best popcorn flicks in recent memory:
The Day After Tomorrow
Underworld
National Treasure
Sahara
Dodgeball
Pirates of the Caribbean (would this qualify?)
I think the best ‘popcorn flicks’ know that’s what they’re setting out to be and don’t attempt to be taken that seriously. By being purposefully ‘over the top’ I will buy in to the movie and enjoy it. Movies like ConAir, Armageddon, The Rock are just so far beyond belief that I can just go along for the ride.
Other movies just take themselves too seriously, try to be intelligent and dramatic, and just fail in the process.
I really don’t care if a movie bills itself as ‘popcorn’ or not. For any movie to be entertaining, it needs to maintain some sort of internal consistency, and where applicable, decent, human, dialog. I’ve seen too many defenses of horrible, horrible movies (Van Helsing, I’m looking at you!) centered around it being a ‘popcorn flick.’ Even popcorn flicks need to make me believe in them to be entertaining. No amount of CGI, explosions, or t&a will make up for it.
The thing is, it is perfectly possible to make a big-budget “popcorn flick” that is also a damn good movie. Witness Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rear Window, Goodfellas,Shakespeare In Love, Die Hard, The Incredibles, or True Lies. It is, the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, entirely possible to make an enjoyable, entertaining, and even enduring film that doesn’t require (but does permit) a lot of philosophizing or soul-searching or puzzle-solving or an extensive knowledge of literature and film history. But most big-budget film makers are, if not lazy, derivative and formulistic, and most studios and investors are risk-adverse and drawn to overworked but highly successful plots. Take a film like Independence Day; there’s scarcely a single original scene in the entire film–indeed, the only way I can stand to watch it is to idenify which source it is stealing from at any given moment–but you combine iconic images, some big names, some slimy Geiger-inspired aliens, and Will Smith cracking wise, and you’ve got a hit on your hands. And it’s not just the hacks that this happens to; Terry Gilliam’s recent box-office disaster is just as bad as Michael Bay’s last steaming pile of wasted celluloid. The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker it seems is give him a blank check.
Making a “popcorn flick” that doesn’t intend to be The Godfather or Taxi Driver is fine. Using “popcorn flick” to explain away gaping plotholes, bad acting, inconsistent direction, derivative storytelling, and otherwise bad cinema is just bullshit.
On the other hand, if they make money…that’s the business. I can’t see why the viewing public is so forgiving of tiresome, cliched movies, but then, I don’t understand why nobody I recommend it to doesn’t like Being John Malkovich, either.
I don’t buy the “popcorn flick” excuse. A movie is either good or it isn’t.
What is a “popcorn flick”? An action-adventure movie? There are good ones and bad ones.
Is it a “movie that doesn’t take itself seriously”? There are good ones and bad ones.
Is it a “light-hearted action-adventure that doesn’t take itself seriously”? There are good ones and bad ones.
Some of the good ones include:
Star Wars (I am not going to call it Part IV or ANH or any such retrofitted bastardisation.)
Raiders of the Lost Arc
The Man Who Would Be King
The recent Antonio Banderas Zorro movies
There are many more bad ones.
“Popcorn flick” is nothing but a label or a genre. It doesn’t tell you whether a movie was good and it doesn’t allow you to lower the bar in judging a movie.
I liked Raiders, Star Wars and Jaws and used to refer to them as popcorn flicks until “popcorn flick” became something else.
To me, today, the use of “popcorn flick” is the marketing term to cover what the film actually is: A committe driven, poorly thought out rehash of better films done quickly and cheaply to cash in on another film’s success. It panders and thinks that if it is loud enough and blows up enough that will cover the shit writing and acting.
I don’t agree. I’ll forgive a bit in a ‘popcorn’ viewing that I wouldn’t in something I’d consider an attempt at a deep, meaningful movie.
As an example, I enjoy bashing Die Hard 2. Much of the action and premises of the film are so contrary-to-fact that one has to be distracted from thinking about what’s going on in the film. Having said that, it was an enjoyable bit of fluff, no matter how flawed I think it is.
If it were something I’d consider an attempt at a serious movie I’d never accept that.
Also, while some of the best popcorn films are what could be called ‘cheesy action flicks,’ that’s not the definition of the genre. (And I agree it is a genre.) I tend to view things like John Cusack’s early teen comedies as popcorn flicks, for example. Or the old teen flick, Can’t Buy Me Love. What I’m trying to say is that popcorn films is not an exclusive genre, rather a further way of defining a film: So, a film could be both a ‘chick flick’ and a ‘popcorn flick.’ Or any other combination with popcorn.
Having said all that, one can aim for the ‘popcorn flick’ category, and miss. And miss badly. And then you’ve just got a mess on your hands. (And, I for one, hope a box-office bomb, too.)
On preview, kingpengvin, I wasn’t aware the term had been co-opted by the marketing people. I’m not asking for a cite, just saying I guess I need to come out of my cave more often.
Popcorn flick only works as a valid defense if the movie is fun and not too stupid. If the movie isn’t fun to watch, even the fact it doesn’t try to be good doesn’t help the fact that it’s painful to watch.
For example, I liked:
The Mummy. Had a lot of errors, but somehow I can watch it every time TNT shows it and still not care because it’s fun to watch. The sequels were bleh though.
National Treasure
Pirates of the Carribean
War of the Worlds.(though this would be more of a scary-ish popcorn flick, bordering on disaster movie).
The Rock
Con Air
Sky Captain
Alien vs. Predator was decent, and even though it wasn’t anything special, it was short and fast-paced.
Sahara was actually pretty bad, but that actually became and assest when it became so much fun to make fun of the film.(“Please don’t tell me he’s going to shoot down the helicopter with the 150 year old cannon buried in the sand”)
I hated Armagedon until halfway through the film were I started thinking of it as a comedy and an overbudget B-movie, and then I enjoyed it.
However, I didn’t like:
Van Helsing. Too fricken unbelievable, and no fun to boot. THe beginning was good though.
Pearl Harbor was horrible, Except for the bombing sequnce in the middle, but that’s not nearly enough to save the movie. “I miss you like Micheal Bay missed the point.” What happned to the guy who could make exciting movies like “The Rock?”(“Dumb but fun” rather then “long, mostly boring and stupid”)
Underworld I really wanted to like, but the vampires were too annoying and angsty(The moment they showed the inside of the vampire mansion I wanted them all to die horribly) and the werewolves were too stupid(No running on the ceilings! Bad wolf!). It seemed like they were delibertly trying to rip off the matrix, without actually being IN the matrix. And the film was internally inconsistant(Bitten by a wolf = werewolf. Bitten by a bat = vampire? WTF? Why not werebat?). And the whole “lycan” thing(WEREWOLF HAS THE SAME NUMBER OF SYLBLES AND DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A PLANT, MORON!). But I digress…
I, too, have always looked at ‘popcorn flick’ as an action film you didn’t need to think too much about. In fact, I got into something of a spot of trouble over this while I was in film school. The school I went to bred a certain ‘eliteism’ about one’s work. Students felt they had to make something with ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ or (lord help us) ‘art’ (which usually just meant bad visual effects. C’mon, we were first year film students!). At one point I said to my classmates that I really just wanted to make something fun to watch that you could munch popcorn to. Maybe something with a chase scene. I swear, after that day I was a total pariah. Ah well, I’ll grab me some popcorn and go watch Raiders or Zorro or the like.
I think even Roger Ebert has seen the light, by pulling his oversized head from betwixt his buttocks in this regard - I recall a quote from a recent review where he was giving a thumbs-up to some action-drivel and said, paraphrasing, that you have to evaluate the movie for what it’s trying to be.
I don’t judge John Woo by Ingmar Bergman’s standards.
Personally, I most enjoy popcorn flicks because they’re not prone to over-the-top melodrama, or nigh-incomprehensible self-indulgent navel-gazing.
‘Popcorn Flick’ is a legit defense against charges of shallowness, be it in plot, characterization, or whatever. It wouldn’t be a defense against charges of tedium or poor effects. A ‘popcorn flick’ might get a little more leeway about plotholes than an artsy film, but still needs to be internally consistent.
That said, I have deeply mixed feelings about Van Helsing - it felt very sloppily assembled and some of the plot elements were quite odd. I did enjoy the representation of the Frankenstein monster, though.
As a piece of so-called high art, it sucks eggs. As a popcorn flick, it’s mediocre.
Well, geez, one of the ost popular movies of all time and certainly a SDMB fave is a popcorn flick…Star Wars. And don’t try and tell me that the acting is great or the dialogue is top notch. The story and character development is pretty strong, but really it’s about the light sabers and the cantina and the Milennium Falcon and the tie fighters and the Death Star blowing up.
I think that this kind of casual insult is uncalled for. Why insult his physical attributes? And why use such a crude metaphor when basically all you want to say is that you have disagreed with him in the past?
I’ve been reading Ebert for years, and he has never struck me as an elitist when it comes to enjoying un-serious movies.
At the risk of sending this thread even further off topic, I’ve gotta ask something.
Years ago (around the time that Empire was being hyped), some movie magazine claimed that Star Wars was “the popcorn picture of all time”, only they meant it literally. The claim was that people got “so excited” watching the movie that they plowed through their popcorn in record time, then got up to get more, and more and more.
Which does not make sense to me. Who was getting up, during the movie, when SW had its original run in theaters? I sure wasn’t, and I’m not aware of anyone else who did. If anything, SW was noteworthy for being the first film since the peak moviegoing post-WWII era in which people did not budge from their seats for any reason less dire than passing a kidney stone. If concession stands had record sales, it must have been because people were stockpiling before the show started, not making multiple visits throughout.
I guess I sort of consider “popcorn flick” to be a genre more than anything. It extends beyond just action/adventure and just means to me “something that you don’t need to take seriously”.
It could be a romcom or an action movie or a cop thriller.
I WOULDN’T put Goodfellas or Shakespeare in Love into that category, because they both have serious themes and/or non-gratuitous violence.
So, within that genre of popcorn flick, I think there’s good and bad. . .Spiderman good; Godzilla bad.
In that framework, “popcorn flick” is not a DEFENSE of a movie. As Candid was saying. . .you can’t tolerate bad acting, plot holes, terrible editing, etc. just because the movie isn’t supposed to be Citizen Kane. There are still degrees of quality within the genre.
