It’s not what I do at bad movies, it’s what I do to them that is really sick…
During that “Crounching Tiger Creeping Whatever” fiasco, I sent and received a bunch of emails. I would’ve made a few calls too, but my wife put her foot down.
I bring a book, and if the movie’s bad, I go sit in the lobby and read. I realize this doesn’t really impress a date, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Depending on the theater, sometimes you can pick a seat close to an exit area, and read by the illumination from the exit lights. I’ve been thinking of learning Braille for the sole purpose of reading in the dark.
Like Balance, I try to rewrite the movie. Not in any sweeping way, more in an annoyed, nitpicky fashion, trying to come up with ways that a different line delivery or reaction shot or different edit would save a joke that fell flat, for example.
I also spend a lot of time wondering how bad movies get made, why no one insists on changes, or is it just me, is there actually a market for this, or did the director and producers actually convince themselves it was a good movie, blah blah blah. I also ponder whether I’d like the movie more if I were in a different mood, or if I had a livelier crowd in the theatre with me. That makes a surprising difference, I’ve found.
I sit and suffer through them usually. I’ve only walked out of two movies. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the first, and Inspector Gadget was the second.
Ah, I’m glad to hear mostly sane responses in this thread. My experience is that most people, when not enthralled by the movie try to ruin it for anybody else (sometimes this is ok, but very rarely).
I don’t care what you do, just keep it quiet and don’t get any on me.
The only movie I’ve ever walked out on was Unnecessary Roughness and I would have stayed for that but my girlfriend refused.
When I am in a horrible movie (most recently, Sexy Beast; I’m sorry, Ben Kinglsey was great but it wasn’t a good movie) I just fall into a trance and think about the time where they’ve finished shooting, are looking at their film and, rather than embezzling the remaining production budget and hiding from the distributor on some small Micronesian island, they decide to go ahead with the project and steal thousands of man-hours from the viewers lives. I let that rage fester until I can barely contain it, scar the finish on the armrests with my fingernails and, upon completion of the movie, go shoot a random stranger in the lobby.
That always makes me feel better.
I forgot one. I compose scathing reviews in my head. I start with a sarcastic plot summary, move on to comparisons, and finish up with commentary. If the movie’s really bad, I can spend a lot of time on commentary, searching for just the perfect phrase - the one that would, if published, reduce everyone involved in the movie, right down to the account, to tears. Of course, I usually don’t find it, but I have a lot of fun trying.
And it’s so cleansing somehow.
I’ve never walked out on a movie either, although God knows I’ve been tempted to (Godzilla leaps to mind all to easily here), but I haven’t because I want to save that for a really despicable movie. Not a movie that’s merely bad, but a movie that is poorly made, poorly acted, poorly written, and has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. Although I haven’t seen it, I strongly suspect I would have walked out of Freddy Got Fingered, based upon what I’ve heard.
I have stopped watching a movie on video, though. I remember simply leaving the room in disgust when we were watching a rental of Weekend at Bernie’s II. Absolutely useless movie, and I could only tolerate the first fifteen mintues.
I will walk out on a movie, given the right combination of putresences. Doesn’t matter if I paid for it, doesn’t matter if I’m not getting my money back. Life is short, and I’m not going to have my time wasted by a reprehensible piece of crap.
So why did I sit through stuff like Godzilla and Armageddon once? Mainly because of the “automobile wreck” theory…you’ll slow down to gawk at a car wreck by the side of the highway, won’t ya? C’mon, I know you will! Somebody’s starting the traffic jam, for crying out loud!
What I do when I know I’m watching a bad movie at the theater or on video instead is to simply mentally catalogue all the ways that it is bad. That way if I ever hear a person praise said film within earshot, I can explain to them the errors of their ways with evidence. I have done this to people for Armageddon, Godzilla, The English Patient, and Stargate.
What I don’t do is make a lot of racket while watching a bad movie. No loud groans, snickers, or guffaws at the stupidities of it all. I’m ready to consider the possiblity that somebody else near me may actually be enjoying the blasted thing, and since I always resent it when someone near me is too noisy, I can’t imagine aggravating another moviegoer in the same way.
I find that bad movies are a great experience. First off, once I’ve gotten over that sinking “Oh, god, it’s gonna be another one of those” feeling, I start analyzing it. Why is it bad? What aspects of the film are actually redeemable? Lighting? Cinematography? Makeup? What parts of it suck?
The worst movies are my best encouragement to finish the damned screenplay, already.
Normally, I walk out. But if I’m with a date, I either suffer through it, glad to be with her, or I make passionate love to her hands. Palms and inner wrists especially. This tends to convince her to walk out herself, and go do something m:Dre fun.
This is why I prefer to go to movies with a group of friends. Usually if the movie is a lost cause or just in a slow period (especially during any musical type numbers) you can have people to talk to. And if the theater is relatively empty its perfectly acceptable to pull out full MST3K material. When I went and saw Godzilla 2000 we had far more fun ripping it apart than we could have if we had seen something better. Popcorn fights were fun until I had friends that worked as ushers, so that’s another classic tactic down the drain…sigh…
Depends on the movie and who I’m watching it with. If it’s a cheesy movie, then it can be fun to watch it (Am I the only one here who does Bad Movie Night with his friends?). If it sucks ass, I’ll either sturbornly sit there hoping it gets better, or walk. In the case of Van Damme’s movie Knockoff, I watched about 15 minutes of it, then went to another movie (Ronin, I believe).
For the most part, though, ripping apart a bad movie later with friends is actually a lot of fun for me.
When I’m caught in the theater watching a terrible movie, I can never quite manage to leave. I just sit there and hate it, remembering particularly dreadful things about this and that so they can be discussed in depth aftewards.
Batman and Robin springs to mind. As does Til There was You.
Why don’t I walk out? Well, because I’m a hard-core movie geek (if you haven’t visited the site in my sig, you might find it illuminating), and I find that it’s the rare bad movie indeed that has nothing to teach me. Good movies are enjoyable, but they aren’t particularly instructive. You watch them, you like them, and because they work, you don’t think about how or why. Then you see a bad movie, and you realize, “Aaaahhhhh, so that’s why that other one worked, they (1) avoided this-and-such, or they succeeded at (2) that-and-so.” I like good movies more than I like bad movies, but I learn more from bad movies than I do from good ones. Weird, huh?
I saw some very good ideas and I was very tempted to go play video games in the lobby but I was broke. Luckily my girlfriend paid for me (a once in a lifetime event).
To tell you the truth though, the movie wasn’t that bad and I actually wanted to see the end!
I drank an entire bottle of red wine when my wife dragged me to see “Titanic”. Now I bring wine all the time. It makes lousy movies tolerable but it makes funny movies effin hilarious. I saw “Birdcage” a few years back and almost peed myself.
When applicable, my date.
I just got back from one. I am sorry if I offend anyone here, but the bad movie was Final Fantasy. I went with a group of friends. Two who really wanted to see it and the rest who went just because. I laughed from the beginning because Mike asked me if I knew what the movie was about. I said “No”. Then, I thought back to someone saying(when the previews first came out for this movie) that everything looked so real. It didn’t. It looked like what it was - animation. About half an hour into the movie my legs started to hurt. For the rest of the movie I was uncomfortable. Everything hurt. I was constantly making faces at Mike. I started to think about what would happen next and saw if I was right(I was). I started to think about this board. Then I started to think about how my hair clip was hurting my head. You don’t know how many times I wanted to go to sleep, but know I didn’t dare. I wanted to walk out of the theater and see where I could go(I knew nowhere). I drank my water, ate my popcorn(located in the bag, on the floor), asked Mike for Red Vines(even though they were hard as rocks), rolled my eyes at Mike, and Mike and I were whispering at eachother. Hell, everything was directed at Mike. When I finally got out of my two-hour hell, I was laughing so hard at how incredibly long that was. I could not think about others anymore; I was going insane! Sidenote: There were maybe ten people in the theater. No one to really bother. In fact most of them were talking anyway and didn’t seem to care what went on.
To answer the question, anything possible to amuse me. Of course, I don’t want to be thrown out.
Final Fantasy wasn’t a bad movie. A bit odd at times but it simply doesn’t rate on the “bad” list. Dlgirl stay away from Battlefield Earth, if you couldn’t tolerate Final Fantasy, you’d chew your legs off watching BE.
My worst experience was the The Thin Red Line. It sucked away my ability to move or speak. I was simply stuned motionless at it awfulness and reduced to trying to rationalize the dreadfulness on the screen.
“Oh look, it’s a long sweeping shot of blowing plants ending in a shot of the sky shot.”
“And another shot of blowing leaves with a sky shot.”
“This is the most boring war film of all time!”
“And it’s another shot of the beautiful sky.”
“Now it’s a flashback to wondeful wife swinging on a swing.”
“Another sky “gimme an oscar cause i’m so artsy” shot.”
“Oh no Woody Harrelson got his ass blown off! How will he think now?”
“Skyshot”
“Wonderful wife in slow motion shot”
“Hero gets killed followed by skyshot.”
“Wonderful wife writes “Dear John” letter. Husband laughs inexplicably and walks off.”
“I wonder if I can sue and get these three hours of my life back?”
If the reviews for “Baby Boy” are even close to correct (and I’ll admit this is not always the case) it sounds like an entire movie based on the “I’m irresponsible but its not my fault” premise. Good luck to the OP getting through it.
I kinda liked Final Fantasy. You could do much worse for a summer scifi movie.
BE was the bottom of the barrel though. It was so bad, I actually stopped feeling bored, lost any urge to leave the theater and just felt terribly, terribly embarassed: for myself, for the friend who came with me (and urged me to see the film), for the people who acted in, starred in and wrote the script for this film. Two solid hours of deep, almost biblical shame.
Well, as someone who’s seen Wing Commander, Battlefield Earth, Gladiator, Tomb Raider and A.I., I have a few strategies.
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Sleep. I slept through all of Gladiator save the first ten minutes. I realised that (for me) it wasn’t going to get any better, so I just had a nap. Walking out wasn’t an option, and I’d had a honkin’ big margarita before going. Luckily, I don’t snore.
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MST3K-like I did @ Tomb Raider. Saw it at a matinee, sat in the back, almost empty theater. Bad movies are actually fun when you can do this to them.
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Alter your, erm, perspective. I’ll second (or third) the posters above who advocated drinking away the crap direction. Battlefield Earth and Wing Commander actually managed to be entertaining (and the popcorn yummier) after a visit from my friends Mary and Jack.
And if all else fails, leave the frickin’ theatre. Go sit in the lobby, play Fashion Police, switch theatres, get your money back, whatever. Life’s short and I, for one, after being poisoned by this summer’s offerings, refuse to waste any more or my life on crap movies. I walked out of Sphere and wish I’d walked out of A.I. after the Ferris wheel trapped him.