Princess Bride. My wife and I watched it (VHS tape), then looked at each other and one of us said, “Let’s watch it again…”. Which is the only time that has happened. However, that was partly due to Andre the Giant’s thick accent — it was a certainty that there were great lines we hadn’t caught the first time through.
Second place is Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was nothing like any film I’d seen before. 4th-wall breaking, joyfully polyamorous, kitchen sink kitsch, and full of instantly catchy songs.
The most fun I ever had in a theater was The Gods Must Be Crazy. It was a long-run at a local art theater, and it was a bunch of people just enjoying the heck out of something all at the same time.
The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorites but it didn’t awe me at first. It wasn’t until later when thinking about all the great lines that I realized it was genius.
Two movies come to mind in terms of just the moviegoing experience being incredibly memorable.
Wayne’s World was released right before reading week (Canadian university winter break) and I went with a bunch of friends on one of the first nights. Absolutely packed house, I’d guess everyone was between 16 and 20 years old. During the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene, when all the guys in the car started banging their heads in unison, the crowd reaction was so exuberant that I thought we’d blow the roof off the theatre. One of my best moviegoing moments ever.
Then a few years later, seeing the South Park movie…it’s only about 80 minutes long but I swear for the last 70 minutes tears were running down my face I was laughing so hard. It’s not the funniest movie ever, but the audacity of the humour just kept punching me over and over again.
We all claim we’re going to be screening Harvey at it (oh, and saving an aisle seat in the front pew for Harvey himself… who claims we’re all going down to Charlie’s for ‘a few cocktails’ afterwards, but he may not have his wallet with him, so if we wouldn’t mind standing him to a few drinks…)
My wife and I both quit smoking weed while she was pregnant and for the first few months she was nursing. The first time we smoked again we watched this, and our experience was similar to yours. (And the kid, bless him, slept through the whole thing.)
Ah, yes, the “Butt Buster” double features at the Majestic. They were cheap, they changed every day… and they were indeed classics.
The real Butt Buster was the Saturday they showed Lawrence of Arabia followed by Doctor Zhivago. More than seven hours, in old bare-bones wooden theater seats.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Quest for Fire
and about 17 other movies in including several Star Wars and Star Trek flicks are all in the running for me, but one movie I just can’t get over how perfect it is is
There have been only two movies that I saw in the theater more than once: Jurassic Park and There’s Something About Mary. So both of those movies make the short list.
There are really only two movies that I make a point of watching on more-or-less regular intervals: Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and Camp Nowhere. Both of them are teen-centric / young adult (is that a thing for movies like it is books?) movies that I watched, well, as a teen and and still, 25+ years later, get a kick out of. If I was forced to pick one of the above movies, I’d probably pick Camp Nowhere as being the most entertaining despite it being almost completely unknown.
I have a few that I drag out from time to time. The Frighteners, Hudson Hawk, The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version), but I’m going to spend this evening watching Kelly’s Heroes in honor of Gavin MacLeod.
Star Wars at the Coronet (which was in walking distance of where I lived at the time) when it first opened. I was in 4th grade and it was a sheer, awesome spectacle from the first minute, especially as I was in one of the very front rows.
Second was probably Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I didn’t see first run but caught a few years later in revival, maybe 6th grade. I don’t think I’d ever laughed so hard (the monks whacking themselves in the face with boards damn near killed me).
Third? Maybe The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which I absolutely saw in revival around 5th grade and made me a Ray Harryhausen fan for life.