Movie watching behavior

The BBQ Pit
1

The thread about ‘embarrassing or uncomfortable movie watching experiences’ in Cafe Society prompted me to type this out, but on second thought, it’s too vitrolic for CS and belongs here. So… here we go.

The most embarrassing/uncomfortable movie moment that comes to mind for me is watching the Robin Williams/Nathan Lane movie La Cage Aux Folles with my mother one afternoon as a teenager.

We were the only ones at home and we decided to go rent a movie to watch. My mother’s got limited movie tastes and doesn’t care for movie plots that require more than the attention span of a gnat (or comparable brainpower) to follow.

She likes Williams, though, and tries to follow almost every movie he does. And I thought it’d be a nice cheesy Robin Williams movie to burn a couple hours with. Fine, good. So we drop by the movie store, pick out the movie, get home, and pop the rental tape in.

That was when I found out that she was, and is, terrifyingly homophobic. :frowning:

But, for some godforsaken reason, she insisted on keeping the movie on, even though she kept making these completely disgusted faces every few minutes.

Ruined the whole works for me, I tell ya.

We got into a huge fight about it when she made one ‘eeeewstinkyicky!’ face too many, with me clutching the remote and yelling, “If you don’t like it, FINE! Why don’t you go away and I’ll finish watching it myself?”

Her response: “No no no, I want to spend time with you! Let’s finish watching this movie!” (even though I hate it SO much, I love you SO MUCH I’m willing to sit through it even though I won’t make any effort to hide my expression!)

Jesus CHRIST.

Even over a decade later, that kind of behavior still makes my blood boil. :mad: :frowning: I can’t even think of that movie without remembering the incident, either, which has nothing to do with how bad the movie was.

What kind of point does it prove to make like a martyr and sit through a movie that you can’t hide your extreme dislike of just to be physically in the same room with someone else? Even when you know that your dislike is RUINING THE FUCKING MOVIE FOR THEM?!

She never did see a thing wrong with it, god bless her heart.

(Note: this isn’t a pitting of her attitudes – this is a pitting of the deliberate ruination of the movie-watching experience)

There. eyetwitch I’ve said my piece.

2

I have a friend - okay, he’s a fundamentally nice guy but I go out of my way to avoid being with him - who just does not get the plots of movies. He simply is totally unable to follow the plot of any movie I have watched with him, and asks questions about what’s going on every three minutes. Questions about the most blindingly obvious things, like “so is that guy her brother?” when the answer is stated or obviously implied over and over again by the movie.

Then when he’s not asking insanely obvious questions about the movie’s plot, he’ll comment on things taking place in the movie as they relate to 1. Buddhism, 2. The economy or 3. the world’s impending destruction.

It is mind-blowingly irritating to watch a movie with this guy.

3

That also sounds like my mother - she’s terrible at following movies. My siblings and I go out of our way to pick Disney straight-to-video-level plots in hopes that she’ll be able to follow it.

How old is your friend, out of curiosity? I currently have the working hypothesis that my mother has a learning disability or something, because she’s managed to have a long career as a software engineer. :confused:

4

My girlfriend’s mother seems to be incapable of following anything more advanced than a Disney movie. She was confused after the first two minutes of The Departed, as soon as Damon and DiCaprio showed up she coudn’t differentiate between the two, nevermind the more intricate parts of that plot that she completely missed. I’m just glad that she left and 20 minutes and I was able to enjoy the movie in peace and quiet. Well, almost.

Because as she was leaving the room she said, “There’s so much violence in the world already, how can you like a movie that has more of it.” I bit my tongue long and hard to keep my mouth shut.

She drives me absolutely insane.

5

Hey, mom, you know, I can tell you don’t like this movie. Let’s just do something else together, and put it out of our lives.

Tris

6

I know someone whose behavior is a sort of variation on this.

She will ask a whole bunch of annoying questions about the plot, but the worst thing is, half the time i couldn’t answer her questions even if i wanted to (which i don’t), because the plot has not yet developed sufficiently.

It’s really just a lack of patience. Rather than wait for the story to unfold, she keeps wanting to have everything explained immediately. Very annoying.

7

Although I’m certainly not like that, I admit that I sometimes have problems following a movie’s plot, not because I am incapable of doing so, but frankly I watch a lot of movies, and a fair percentage of them are just boring. When I’m not interested in the characters, I don’t strain too hard to follow the plot, yet I keep watching anyway for the visual stimulation and interesting situations that don’t necessarily require me to have been following every detail up to that point (unless it’s really bad, then I just turn it off).

8

I was trying to show my parents how witty and entertaining MST3K could be. Twenty minutes into the movie (Manos I think), my mother exclaims “It is really annoying how they keep talking, I can’t follow the plot with the distraction! How long until they stop so I can watch the movie?”

It took a lot of willpower to not chuck the remote at her (figuratively of course).

9

My mother always asks “Have I seen this?” when a movie comes on.

10

I have a sister-in-law who’s like that when watching DVDs with her, whether I’ve seen the movie before or not. Right from the opening scene it’s “who’s that? what’s he doing?” She does talk about unrelated things during the movie too, but it’s not just lack of paying attention and wanting a recap since she does it from the start; she just seems incapable of watching quietly and letting the movie develop.

11

Could be a case of prosopagnosia.

When I watch movies with people I’m comfortable enough with to ask stupid questions, I’m probably just as annoying, for this reason.

12

My friend is like this. “What’s going to happen next?” “He’s gonna kill her, right?” “That new character is going to end up being the killer, right?” OMYGOD it makes me crazy! Just watch the movie yourself. I refuse to bite off each piece and par-digest it for you.

13

When I was a kid, one of my brother’s friends was kicked out of his parents’ house, and he came to live with us until he graduated high school.

Sandy had apparently seen every movie and TV show, ever. He was the world’s worst spoiler, always chiming in with comments like "Ooooh, watch this! This is when ____________ happens to ___________! "

14

My mom is kind of funny to watch movies with, as she has short term memory loss due to MS. She’s often convinced she’s seen movies that are impossible to have seen, ususally because when she claims it they are not even out in theatres yet.

But my favorite is when she and my father watched Memento. She could NOT follow the plot and when it was over she said it was like watching her own life, but more confusing. Needless to say she did not enjoy the experience.

But I have a friend who does the “so does that guy die at the end?” type comments. It’s like, look, I can give you a synopsis or we can actually WATCH the movie, but only one of those options.

My future parents-in-law are the simple types. They like cheesy action flicks and Ben Stiller fare. They tried to watch Unbreakable one day and midway through my fiance’s dad stopped and said “So…what…is this guy retarded or something?”

So that’s our catch phrase for Bruce Willis now. “Retarded-or-something.”

15

My husband does this all the time (and he doesn’t have a reasonable excuse such as your mom’s). I think he’ll see a trailer on TV and then think he saw the whole movie!

16

My lot seem to just comment on things that are happening on screen (“Hahaha! He fell in the water!”), or they repeat jokes or funny lines(“Hahaha! No Mr Bond, I expect you to die”). Yes. I know that just happened. I’m watching the same film as you, except for the bit I now missed because you were talking. Grrr.

17

My wife has a short attention span when it comes to movie plots. With rare exceptions, she doesn’t like to have to follow the same story for more than an hour or so. She loves DVD box sets, and can easily follow five or ten seasons’ worth of plot as long as she can process it in discrete hour-long chunks. But a two-hour movie is an ordeal. :frowning:

18

Someone posted to a thread in Cafe Society who had the same problem with The Departed :stuck_out_tongue:

19

If you ask me, that’s a completely intelligent and sane response to that movie.

20

My spouse just falls asleep & wakes up 90 minutes later asking me to recap the entire movie. One time I stopped the movie & started watching TV (SciFi channel). When she woke up, she stared at the TV for 5 minutes before asking me “When the Hell did all this happen…?”

Embarrasing theatre moments: being on a flight delay with my parents & deciding to see ‘Saturn 3’ at a local theatre. Yay! Farrah took her shirt off. Oh No…Farrah took her shirt off! It was an uncomfortable rest of the movie and an even more uncomfortable trip back to the airport with countless versions "Well, how was I supposed to know she’d do That…? " met with The Cold Disaproving Stare.