I’ve been a movie lover since I was a little girl, my maybe because my grandfather was a film projectionist, my cousin owned a movie theater, or my cousins, brother, and I went to the movies every Saturday afternoon. I turned into one of those crazies who stay up past bedtime each March to watch the Academy Awards (and now the surgically enhanced stars parading around in their designer clothes), even though these days you’d think I was old and wise enough to know better. Don’t worry, I’m not, since it’s one of my all-time favorite habits, which I refuse to break (along with cleaning my ears with Q-tips). This is why my DVR is set to tape both the red carpet and awards ceremonies.
What I hate watching, though, are bad movies, because I’m a movie lover who finds them annoyingly frustrating and disappointing. So much so that my husband created the five-minute rule to cut down on my complaining (even though sometimes we don’t follow it, because hope continues to spring eternal). The rule is: we watch for five minutes, and if it’s not good by then, we stop, knowing with 100% certainty it’s never going to improve (even though most people – and critics - swear up and down that we’re wrong).
I hate to hate those crappy movies, but I do, and yet, I get no kick from hating them (although I do get one from champagne and watching ice skaters fall). I’m such a movie-lover, I watch almost everything (except violent movies), because I’m convinced I’ll miss out on the next best thing if I don’t. This means I end up watching (for five minutes) a lot of crappy ones.
Like 17 Again, which I watched last week when I was sick, and which I thought was one terrible, drekky, crappy film, even though both my husband and daughter promised me I’d love it, since they both did. Feh. Or The Hangover, another five-minute failure, even though my sister, son, and many (too many) friends said it was hilarious, and made them laugh non-stop. I hated it so much I had to get up and walk out of the room, away from the TV, where my husband stayed, in violation of his own rule, even though he agreed that it stank after less than five minutes.
I know. I know. No one likes a movie hater, which I admit I often am. Ooh – this definitely explains why I’m never going to be unconditionally loved in my movie-schmoovie lifetime, doesn’t it?
But – in my defense – there are so many movies I love, love, love. Unfortunately (for me), many (O.K. – most) aren’t embraced and adored by my friends (or most of the world), so my favorites often turn out to be so foreign even to those who try to please me by watching them, that I come off as a radical, weird-movie-promoting wackadoodle, which I don’t think I am.
What’s worse than the oddball label is how I have to constantly force myself to bite my tongue when the topic of movies comes up, which it always does, because I’m obsessed with talking about them. Yeah, it’s true: I tend to blurt out a stream of negative opinions about what I call drek (and most people call must-see). But if I don’t, I don’t have much to talk about, like, say, about one of my favorites, the six-hour Italian masterpiece, The Best of Youth, which I love to recommend but rarely succeed in convincing anyone to love or watch, no matter how hard I try.
I should probably stop trying so hard, even though my friends never do. They constantly try to convince me that the movies they love (which, duh, I more often than not end up hating) are absolutely, positively worth seeing. Since I rarely agree, that means I’m rarely in sync, odd woman out – a veritable, cultural poopy pants. Even though it’s no longer 1966, when fitting in mattered (and I made sure I fit in back then, come hell or high water) – it still stings to be out of mainstream America’s popular culture loop. Sigh.
So – for all of those who’ve asked: no, I haven’t seen Avatar (please! blue people? 3-D glasses? Spare me!), Up, The Blind Side, District 9, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious (I read the book about twelve years ago, though), or A Serious Man.
I saw An Education, which I didn’t love, because I’m not a fan of watching older men prey on younger, innocent women, and Julie and Julia, which I adored (plus I followed Julie Powell’s blog when it first appeared, and I read her subsequent book).
I saw Crazy Heart, which I thought was merely eh-only-fair (it was only playing in one out-of-the-way theater in Manchester, CT., so I should’ve known it wouldn’t be all that great). I loved the music (six original songs, no less), but utterly hated the greasy-haired, alcoholic, cigarette-smoking Bad main character. He made me cringe (but my friend swoon). No way, José, I told her, would I have had either sex or a relationship with that loser guy, even though the women in the film (and my friend) seemed to want to jump into dirty, unmade beds with him. I’d run in the opposite direction, I exclaimed, holding my nose as I backed away so I wouldn’t get a migraine from inhaling the boozy, cigarette-smell odor I’m sure he wore like an invisibility cloak. My negative review annoyed my friends, I’m sure, which is probably why they defiantly hooked arms and loudly announced that they adored both the characters and the movie. My husband gave me a CD of the soundtrack for Valentine’s Day – so I made them a copy to make up for not liking the movie they loved.
I thought Invictus was one-note, because it presented the same information over and over, had Matt Damon acting like anything but a famous South African rugby star and contained way, way too much rugby (which I thought was booooring. Thank god I’ll never have to watch that ever again). My husband frowned at my critique (which makes sense, because he cried during parts of the movie), then argued that I should’ve been as moved as he was by the Nelson Mandela story. I told him I was moved by the idea of Nelson Mandela, just not this film version, which I found a weak substitute for my fantasy of the man. I couldn’t figure out how to care about Morgan Freeman as Mandela, whom he portrayed as so he-manly sports-focused. Feminist me hated that Mandela used a guy-centric game to advance his country, even though I’m a rabid UConn basketball fan.
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