Exacty what I was going to suggest. I saw it when I was about 9, and I was bored to tears. I wanted spaceships, so what’s with all the damn monkeys?
But I never forgot it. Years later, I’d seen it on TV, read the book, and come to appreciate what a great movie it is. Then I had a chance to see it in a theater again, so I went. Turned out it was the same theater, and I sat as close to the same seat as I could remember. That became one of the most powerful movie-going experiences of my life.
In gradeschool we went to the cafeteria, sat in metal folding chairs, and were shown 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I don’t remember a thing about it except that it was the absolutely most boring film I was ever forced to watch.
Network?
The Big Chill.
A fine movie if you have nostalgia for your college days.
For a modern kid, it would be incomprehensible.
The four hour cut of Berlin Alexanderplatz? (Bit of a deep cut there…)
The Remains of the Day
A 2hr, 14min movie about a butler with bottled up emotions—a how-to primer on how not to have fun.
The Honorary Consul.
From what I remember, it was Michael Caine and Richard Gere talking calmly in a dark room. About what, I cannot remember, as I fell asleep during it.
If it was boring enough to put me to sleep, it would undoubtedly be doubly-boring for a child.
I rambled through a long post, trying to think of a movie, before I finally came up with this:
Platoon
It’s Oscar-winning, and I personally couldn’t take my eyes off the screen when I saw it; but I think it would be incomprehensible to kids. Even a bright kid who did follow the story wouldn’t “get” it because they wouldn’t be able to put it into historical context, and would lose interest.
To get to Platoon, I meandered through lots of contenders that would legitimately bore kids, but were cheating just a little for one reason or another:
Metropolis (highly acclaimed, but silent)
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Oscar winner, but Russian, with subtitles)
The Philadelphia Story
It Happened One Night.
A lot of films from the Golden Age of Hollywood depend on extinct social mores to make sense, and might be incomprehensible to kids; however, they are “pretty”: voluptuous sets, great characters-- and might be appealing, anyway. Just not sure about them.
Lost in Translation - nothing happens.
I’m sure there are some kids who would not find boring the nudity and simulated sex. Just hazarding a guess here.
Best to go abstract, philosophical, and inaccessible. The less connection to the moment-to-moment experiences that are relatable to a child, the better.
Waiting for Godot. Nothing happens, nothing makes sense, characters are infuriously incapable and wholly ignorant, wasting their sparse time endlessly trying to get a grasp on anything, but are clearly stuck in a repetitive loop acting in anticipation for an event that never (and will never) take place.
Wholly inaccessible to a young child who has little understanding of absurdist futility of life and who only needs to navigate through the concrete realities of the real world (hunger go eat, yummy food, cool new thing, etc).
I’ll second Castaway. What a waste of time. After my wife and I watched it I said to her “I didn’t know it would be in real-time”
I think I was in my mid-teens when Citizen Kane was scheduled to be aired on TV and I was really looking forward to seeing it, based on all the reviews I’d heard/read. I started watching with my parents in the living room. They were such a distraction, making wisecracks and engaging in unrelated conversation, that I adjourned to another room to watch by myself on a small set.
I’m not sure I lasted till the end of the movie, finding it dull. I should probably try seeing it again from the beginning sometime.
Some good ones here. By which I mean, tedious and unending. But… I was taken to see Gandhi when I was in sixth grade and actually found it interesting.
I thought of this one too. But again, it could be risky. A kid might catch on to the repressed romance between Hopkins and Thompson and get drawn in.
Here’s one that did successfully bore me as a child: The Bicycle Thief
This was for a class in early middle school. Adding to the torment, I believe there was a test on it afterward. Maybe we should include that for all of our choices.
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace….I mean, Cosmic Wars: The Gathering Shadow
A real world example from my childhood would be ‘The Conversation’ starring Gene Hackman. I found it on TV on a lazy day, looking for something to do. Found it very slow paced and dull, and midway through I lost track of the plot and had no idea what was going on. I remember thinking at the time, what a boring-ass movie.
But I think I would love the movie as an adult. I just looked it up on IMDB, read the plot synopsis and checked out the actors. Quite a cast- a lot of big or upcoming names of the 70s. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola? I bet it’s a masterpiece of slow-burn suspense. Now I really want to watch this movie. Hey, it’s streaming on Freevee!
I presume you both mean Cast Away. Castaway is a different film.
OTOH, a child might enjoy it on some level if they knew it was the inspiration for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
Wow, that was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Then again, I was fascinated by all things underwater.
The movie where Tom Hanks spends five hours talking to his balls
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU…WILL…ATONE!”
Stranger