I’m not sure how many people know how much I love movies. If I’m flipping through the channels looking for something to watch and I see the stars spinning up over the Paramount logo, or the TriStar pegasus running towards the camera, or the Universal globe, or the MGM lion, that’s it, I’m done for. Whatever the movie is, for good or for bad, I’m watching it. Even if I all I catch is the opening credits with the theme music starting, I may as well be shackled to the chair.
For example, I once won free tickets to the over-long and under-entertaining Four Feathers (I realize the recently departed Mr. Ledger was in it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t suck balls)*. Free tickets. FREE. And 7 hours into the first half of the movie when my friends wanted to leave, I was like, “No, let’s stay. I’m sure it will get better.” And two days later, it did get better when it ended. They must have shot that movie for 37 years for as long as it felt like it was. IMDB says it was only 130 minutes, but I’m pretty sure when I left I was collecting Social Security benefits.
A further example: Dr. T. and the Women. Dr. T and the Women is by far, bar none, the worst movie ever made. And I mean “worst” in every possible way. Everything about it was a horrible eye-sodomizing punch in the brain. The acting, the directing, the story, the music, the free merchandise distributed with the movie. Again, I got free tickets to see this movie, and even when I wanted to firebomb the whole theater before the opening credits were over, I still sat through the whole thing. They were giving out movie t-shirts before the movie, and once the movie was done I stood up, tore the tshirt they gave me into pieces, threw it on the floor, and stormed out of the theater. I hated every minute of that movie. I’ve never been so angry and unhappy in my life. I would gladly relive the horrible three month emasculation that was the breakup with my high-school girlfriend rather than ever watch that movie again.
Many people don’t believe me when I tell them how bad it is. Well, let me try to get you to where I am at this point. Imagine your least favorite movie. Whatever it is, Biodome, Chicago, Blair Witch, whatever, just picture watching it. Now, staple your genitals to a car battery, put your legs in a tree shredder, submerge your head in a bucket of shit, cover your left arm in leeches, and pay a sadist to peel the skin off your right arm. Imagining that? Good. That’s how the first 10 minutes of Dr. T and the Women feels. And I sat through the whole damn thing. I’ve blogged about my hatred of this movie before, if you’re interested, but I feel I must move on.
This is a transitional sentence!
I think there are two reasons why I’m so drawn to movies now. Part of it definitely has to do with the fact that I’m OCD and once I start something, I have trouble thinking clearly until I finish it. The other reason is that as a kid my parents never really took us to the movies. It was sort of a once yearly thing. I think they saw them as a big waste of money. I’m kind of inclined to agree with them, but still, my Netflix queue is 495 movies long, and it would be longer if Netflix allowed me to add any more than 500 movies. Case in point, I have the move “Medicine Man” in my queue which I’m pretty sure was roundly ignored by the entire planet, and yet, since I saw a commercial for it when I was 12, I still want to see it.
So what’s the point of all this? A pathetic attempt at self defense for the oncoming suggestions that I’m metro… because last night I watched The Lake House. Alone. I was flipping through the channels to see if there was anything I could watch before putting on Fast Food Nation, and I came across the Lake House just as the credits were rolling. Not knowing what it was, and OCD kicking in high-style, it took me about 20 minutes to realize I was watching dreck, but by then it was too late.
Lucky for me two of the themes of the movie are architecture and temporal relativity, otherwise I may have been bored out of my mind, and also luckily for me, this movie was really bad, which made it easy to laugh at. The cinematography was ham-handed and hackish at best, culminating in it’s crappiness on a wobbly zoom of Keanu in a reflection of a window and then holds there until he eventually sneezes. If it sounds stupid and confusing and dumb, you’re right, it is. But still, I watched it from beginning to end. From one tortured monologue to the next. Seriously, at points I was expecting the director to trot out holding a sign that says, “Here comes another tired and worn out cliche from chick flicks! Prepare yourself for the banality!” A little counter in the corner counting the cliches would have surely exploded within the first half hour. The movie was really that terrible.
I know some of you out there will want to argue with me. “But ACW, you have to admit, it was a sweet movie.” or “It was a good story, even if it was kind of stupid.” or maybe even, “Hey, my names Sandra Bullock and I was in that and I didn’t think it was that bad. At least, the cash wasn’t. Ch-ching! Ha ha, suckers!”
You are all wrong. The movie was terrible, and every DVD should be broken into a million pieces and stabbed into Richard Gere’s face lest he make another Dr. T and the Women. God how I hate that movie. I guess the fart and necrophilia jokes can wait until tomorrow.
*I think this counts as a “dick” joke.
