Mostly because my kids just loved it soooo much. We’d checked it out of the library (on VHS!) on a Friday night, and they wanted to watch it a second time, then a third… but by then it was bedtime, so they had to wait til morning… so of course they silently got up at dawn while the parents slept through the third showing.
Part of that “joy” was a couple of tasteless lines that they just knew Mom wouldn’t approve of… But Dad loved 'em.
But the OP is asking for purely entertaining movies, which aren’t necessarily great movies.
I was 10 when it was released and I remember begging my older brother (16) for weeks to take me.
He finally relented. At the opening scene I was floored when the two ships pass overhead shooting at each other. I was hooked.
The only other movie experience that came close to that was “The Matrix”. When Trinity jumps up, time slows and the camera spun around her I was as floored as 10-year-old me was in Star Wars.
For those interested you can watch it for free (with ads but those are really infrequent and skippable) on YouTube. This is legit. Really YouTube. No tricks. The whole movie (YouTube actually has a lot of free movies available).
I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in a special pre-screening. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t have any knowledge that the movie was even in production, so it was a total surprise. An experience that may never be repeated.
I also rank Animal House right up there - I saw it just before I went off to college, and the theater was filled with rowdy teenagers, who were laughing so hard that you couldn’t hear the dialog. Another once-in-a-lifetime experience.
I saw the re-release (with 20 minutes of extra footage) of Lawrence of Arabia on the huge Cinerama screen at the Ciné Capri. Even at 4+ hours long, I didn’t want it to end - it was that good.
“The Conqueror” with John Wayne starring as Genghis Khan. I was 8? 9? 10? sleeping out on the back deck for the first time ever unsupervised. I snuck inside and pilfered the old, small black and white tv from the kitchen to watch late night movies and that was what was playing. I loved that movie, in that context and time, it was a bit of “illicit magic” for a young kid.
Animal House was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. It was a double-feature with Caddyshack (I know they came out a couple years apart). My sister and cousin took me.
In the past, a lot of people here have thought of me as a movie snob. (Which of course I am; I will never be embarrassed about having very high standards regarding art and artists.)
But to me the most entertaining movie ever made is also among the worst movies ever made: Bad Boys II.
I’m embarrassed to say this, though I feel sometimes that I represent the simple and the lowbrow amongst us…but there was a movie I wanted to see, and it was gorgeous, and it was witty, and it lived up to my expectations: Disney’s Aladdin.
I had to force myself to keep coming back to this line. Because a lot of the movies in the thread are ones I’ve watched countless times (Galaxy Quest, Princess Bride, and a few others) and never get tired of. But again, it had to be something that I was utter absorbed in enjoying the first time.
And so, perhaps a strange choice, but I’m going to go with Sin City - not because it’s my best, or favorite, or most re-watched, but because I had read most of the graphic novels well before I saw the movie and the movie was arguable a perfect realization of the graphic novel. I was blown away from minute one, image one and carried through to the end without making me feel I wasn’t watching a novel literally come to life.
I have similar feelings about both the LotR movies (which were the first I ever paid to see back to back twice in a row to the pain of my poor bladder) and to a lesser extent The 300, but in each case there was just enough changes to drag me out of that perfect moment of immersion.
I was a teenager in the late 90s early 2000s. Looking through rotten tomatoes: Happy Gilmore, There’s Something about Mary, Ace Venture, and Dumb and Dumber were all things I found really funny when I saw them.
