I’ve only ever walked out of two bigscreen movies in my life. The first was in 1968 when I was a young kid and my dad had taken me to see some feature I forget what it was. but it was followed by a “sneak preview”—The Detective with Frank Sinatra. Right about when the scene where the cops were interrogating the naked guy happened, my dad said “Let’s leave.”
I walked out of an African movie, Ceddo by Ousmane Sembene, at the point where the imam shot the priest and torched his church. Years later I caught it on TV and watched until the end. It was still obnoxious, but the shots of the barebreasted princess on the seashore, that I had missed by walking out, helped to make up for it.
I found the opening scene of Performance so obnoxious that I went and asked for my money back, but the theater guy refused to refund my money. He said he thought it was a great movie. So I went back & watched the whole thing.
I have never walked out of a movie, but my mom has often rented horrible movies. the worst ever was Mr Right or something like that. Ellen DeGenerous (I spell good huh?) was in it. It SUCKED. No movie could be that bad.
Mission impossible 2 was also horrible. It made the first one look like Casablanca or something. MI 2 had a horrible plot, horrible acting, horrible camera angles. Ugh, it was horrible.
I haven’t ever walked out of a movie, mostly due to sheer bloody-mindedness, but three movies which I ought to have walked out of are:
Cool World. Bakshi was a great innovator and animator in the 70s but whatever he took to stir his creative juices back then did not treat him well afterward.
Meet the Parents. Dragged like a dead possum through four feet of spring mud for the first hour and only barely made up for itself after that. Valkyrie agreed with me on that one.
American Pie, which we saw for the first time last night, having been invited to our friends’ house to watch it. Valkyrie decided a biography of Alan Turing was much more interesting and I just kinda laughed occasionally and drank beer.
The Pledge, or whatever the hell that damn Jack Nicholson detective flick was about the child murderer. Sean Penn tries to prove he’s an artsy-farsty European noir film director. “I can read novels too!” Fortunately, we had rented The Usual Suspects at the same time, which completely made up for the experience.
I straight walked out of Next Stop, Wonderland. That had to be the worst movie ever. I think it was filmed with a $50 camcorder from a hole in someone’s purse. Terrible…I swear the camera didn’t have steady shot either!
Excess Baggage. Sorry, even Alicia Silverstone couldn’t save that movie from crashing and burning…luckily I was working at the theatre at the time and I didn’t have to pay!
Meet the Parents was only watchable b/c we got bored and started making out …that can make almost any movie watchable!
I almost walked out of Pearl Harbor after the attack scene – it was a horrible movie, and I was motion-sick, and there was this irritating woman in front of us who applauded ostentatiously every time a Japanese plane was blown up and called the security guard because she thought my sister was kicking her seat. However, I figured that I’d endured two hours of movie anyway, so I might as well stay.
I wish I’d left, though. I was only there for the Lord of the Rings trailer anyway.
The only movie I’ve ever walked out on was “Natural Born Killers.” My friend and I both looked at each other with disbelief at how dreadfully bad it was, then decided that our time would be better spent at a bar.
I used to watch <b>South Park</b> every single week, but I could NOT make it through the movie. It was horrible. I fell asleep during <b>Traffic</b>. <b>American Virgin</b> was terribly stupid, and <b>Woman on Top</b> was drivel. Although technically I’ve never walked out on a movie, I just had to add my two cents worth.
My ex and I walked out of Witches of Eastwick. He was blind and I just hit the skids trying to describe what was happening… I spent a long time in the lobby on Murder by Decree
The worst part about thinking that movie is bad is having to endure the people who then say, “Oh, was it too intense for you?” No matter how many times you tell them, “No, it was just heavy-handed and stupid,” they’ll still insist you just couldn’t handle its reality. Argh.
Same with The Blair Withc Project. Criticizing that for, oh I dunno, NOT BEING REMOTELY SCARY, often results in someone saying, “Well I prefer subtle psychological horror to guys chasing women with chainsaws.” Me too, but three idiots lost in the woods for over an hour with nothing happening isn’t subtle psychological horror.
But anyway, movies you’ve walked out on. I remembered I actually did walk out of one movie. When I was 10 my friend’s mom thought a good movie to bring me and her son to was “Kingdom of the Spiders” a horror movie about tarantulas swarming over a town. I don’t remember much from the movie except discovering I was an arachnophobe.
I have to say I’ve never walked out of a movie. It’s mostly because I never go to the theater now unless it’s for something I’m positive I’ll love (or have fun hating), and partly because I have a very developed sense of detached masochism (“Wow, this is incredible, how much worse can it get?”)
Some movies I strongly considered walking out of:
Dancer in the Dark: I actually didn’t want to watch this in the first place, but I’d promised my gf we’d see it in return for her agreeing to see The Exorcist the night before. It could have been good except for three things: Bjork, Bjork, and Bjork. It didn’t help that my gf loved it and was singing the songs for the next month.
Blair Witch Project: Yeah, I like subtle, psychological horror. This wasn’t it. And the excuse “they weren’t being stupid, the magic of the Blair Witch made them not follow the river to safety” just doesn’t impress me. We’ve got a malevolent demon with an impressive body count and it turns out her main ability is to turn college students into foul-mouthed imbeciles? I had a free pass to this one and amused myself by seeing how many Japanese translations of “fuck” the subtitle-writer could come up with (Answer: “kuso”, “chikusho” and “faaaaaaku!”).
Dick Tracy: Giving every villain a major deformity (with corresponding nickname) might work in the comics, but on film it just seems creepy. Plus Warren Beaty and Madonna give the kind of performances that made Ishtar and Shanghai Surprise the legends that they are. This film was an epiphany for me in my youth. This was when I first realized that it wasn’t that I was too young to understand “grown up” films, this just sucked.
Whaaah?:eek: Wow. I couldn’t disagree with you more on that one. Sophmoric?
While there are others on here that I would disagree with, that one probably tops the list. To each their own, I guess.
While never having walked out of a movie, I can think of three that I could barely stand.
The Messenger- Free movie, yet I still felt cheated.
Natural Born Killers- More sometimes equals, much, much less.
Nixon- ZZZzzzzzzz.
I walked out of Me, Myself, and Irene, Too. Oh, I hated it. I tried to tough it out, but it just got worse and worse. Even worse, I was with my dad. Finally I said “Okay, let’s go.”
I left 13th Warrior, because I couldn’t handle it on the big screen. I think I’d be fine with the video. I’m a wuss.
I walked all the way home, about a mile, and left my then husband still watching it in the theater. I can’t remember much about it, except that I believe that they were torturing children or putting them in cages, and it really disturbed me.
I didn’t wait to see the end of ‘Papillon’. I built a raft and headed out to sea, risking the presence of sharks etc, but it was worth it to escape from the movie.