Like many a cinemaniac, I watch a lot of movies and, much to the confusion of friends and family, I will watch movies that are not only clearly bad, but are not of the so-bad-it’s-good variety.
Why do I do this to myself? Well, if it’s a version of the Robin Hood legend or Treasure Island (see also my post last week), then I gotta see how they treat the story. Some folklore and pop culture just demands it of me. And as someone who has worked on more than a few indie films, many of the films I see are admittedly bad, but definitely indie, so I often learn something there.
There are even much ballyhooed blockbusters that aren’t my ration of rum, but there I think of something screenwriter Gordy Hoffman mentioned at a conference I attended once when poo-pooing Titanic was chic. Titanic was not the sort of film he was writing, but it also made a titanic amount of money, in part by people watching it repeatedly in theaters. His premise was that any film that moves the audience that much is worth studying.
So, while I don’t necessarily recommend you follow my example and keep watching what reveals itself to be a bad film –so many versions of Robin Hood are not worth it– if you find yourself in such a situation, there’s a mode and a mindset you can adopt, especially if you are a storyteller yourself.
For instance, I have never walked out of a film I’ve seen in the cinema (the still above would be the film that tested that the most). In fact, in this day an age, finding yourself watching a subpar film in the theater yourself may be the most relevant example. It’s easy to stop watching a streaming film… and that may well be the best response if you a) know you’re not going to get anything more out of it, b) you have something else to watch (and how can you not these days?), and c) you don’t need to talk to the people who made said film anytime soon and be faced with the uncomfortable conversation of whether they saw it.
Now, you can get a little bit of my approach based on how I broke down my rating system for last year’s “Red Envelope Farewall,” but the dynamic duo behind the screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes (who I have referenced before) have a great nitty-gritty breakdown of how they approach watching bad films. Bear in mind, these are folks who may need to deal with (C) above: they may know or run into the folks who made the film. If you’re a script writer, it’s well worth a listen… as learning how to dissect an unsatisfying film can be instrumental in crafting a story you find satisfying.
I’d like to see a column devoted to films you liked that most everyone else didn’t — and why you think they all got it wrong.
That’s a great idea! I suppose in today’s title parlance, it’d be something like “10 Films People Hate That You Should Give Another Look.”
And I’m not sure people necessarily “got it wrong” so much as someone saw a film not to their taste and decided it was objectively bad. The older I get, the further from film snobbery I find myself. I mean, I do think there are good and bad films, just like there’s well-prepared food and sloppily made or over-processed crap. But sometimes you want some tasty “street food” and sometimes you want an amazing sit-down meal experience. I’m not looking for Oscar Bait ™ performances in a Godzilla flick any more than I need massive explosions in a Jane Austen picture, y’know? I think a lot of people are not honest with themselves or others that we can all enjoy lots of different types of films which are good if they do what they set out to do.
For example, when David Cronenberg’s adaption of Naked Lunch came out, I recall several film critics stating it was not their cup of mugwump, er, not tea, but that it was very, very well made.