Why are there so many crappy movies?  A question addressed, in whole or in part, by Avindair, Missmollygrue, and Conrad Zero in their blogs.

     Now for my .02…including the base I’m starting from.

     I liked Crash (the good one with Mat Dillon and Don Cheadle).  I thought it was a great movie.  I liked Walk the Line.  I know that’s not a popular call, but maybe I’m less jaded by “bad boy rocker” movies because the last one I saw was The Doors, and I liked that.  I liked all the Harry Potter movies. And the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

     But I’m a movie philistine.  I laughed my ass off at Beauty Shop; and I KNOW that’s a crappy movie, because I saw it on an airplane., and it’s featured in those stupid trivia things they run in the theaters before they start showing the commercials that they show before the trailers that they show before the movie.

     When I was a kid (oh here we go again), I went to MAYBE one movie a year.  Movies were expensive, rare and no matter how crappy it was, it was an EVENT.  I saw Ice Pirates in the theater.  What I remember about the movie:

1)      We were somewhere other than at home in the middle of the woods doing boring chores.

2)      There was a lot of action and excitement.

3)      I saw a lot of people from school and church there, and there was a lot of visiting and chatting before and after the movie.

4)      We went to Dairy Queen afterwards (also rare enough to be viewed as a possible sign of the apocalypse) and I had a Peanut Buster parfait and we laughed and joked and talked about the movie, and made fun of some of it.

5)      Robert Urich had washboard abs.

     Truly, an escape from everyday reality.

     I have very fond memories of Ice Pirates.  I have absolutely refused to watch it again because I know it’s a towering, smoldering pile of crap in a hat…and actually seeing it again would spoil it.

     The movie did what it was supposed to do.  It diverted us from our everyday life.  It got us out of the house and into our community.  It gave the whole family a common experience to share.  It was part of a rare and magical extravagance that we just couldn’t afford to do with any kind of frequency.  Because movie-going, or outside entertainment of any kind, was so rare it was almost as if the actual movie didn’t matter that much.

     Now, of course, I am more sophisticated…being all, you know…not nine years old and all…and I see movies a LOT.  Not a month goes by without me seeing a movie in some form or another.  I’ve helped make a couple of films, and I see what goes into it, and I see some of the technical side now.  I notice things like lighting, and camera angles and framing choices.

     And I’m amazed at the massive, massive quantities of crap out there.

     But the crap isn’t exactly crap.  As in, there are multiple kinds of crap;

1)  There’s The General’s Daughter - type crap (TGDTC) that just zeros in on the most horrifying exploitation of the darker side of human nature and then plasters it up on a massive, massive screen and makes you watch it over and over and over again and then hands you a cheat pay-off as though it were the most brilliant thing ever done.  Its art direction, lighting, framing…everything that is used to make something pretty is exploited to the highest degree to make every millisecond of horror and degradation as polished, crystal and “pretty” as possible.  Plotting, internal logic, pacing and pay-off are given no thought at all and it would be generous to call the efforts on those fronts slap-dash.  The point of the movie is to force you to view a very very very graphic and brutal gang-rape over and over and over again, and to make it so visually compelling that you can’t look away.  In my case, I walked out of the theater for a while and took a little mental vacation in the lobby for about twenty minutes…so I was not too numbed and traumatized to notice at the end that the murderer was some extra that got one line in scene two, and for whom there were no clues or set-up throughout the entire fucking alleged “story”.

     This is the one kind of crap that I will not tolerate in my movies.  I will endure a lot of emotional brutality from a movie if there is a reason for it.  Look at Crash.  THAT had pay-off.  It broke your heart over and over again and every single time, it was worth it.

2)  Ice Pirates – type crap (IPTC) fun, silly, over-the-top, but takes itself just a little too seriously.  Could have been more fun if it had remembered that it was supposed to be crap and just sort of embraced it.  Tries just a little too hard to be something it’s not, and ends up being neither here nor there.  This sort of movie make makes me think of something Harlan Ellison has said repeatedly; (and I paraphrase) watching a bad movie is like having bad sex.  If you can ignore those awkward moments when it’s quite obviously fumbling around trying to figure out what to do next, you can enjoy it while it’s happening, but afterwards there’s this sense of unfulfillment and regret.  The successful counter-part to this would be something like “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…which never forgets what it is, where its going and what its doing.

3)  Me, Myslef and Irene – type crap (MMITC) is the kind of movie that doesn’t hook you in, and when they do the fade from the guy crapping on his neighbor’s lawn to the chocolate ice cream coming out of the dispenser, you just decide that life’s too short and hit the delete button on the DVR.  It didn’t get the goofy human angle, before it went to the ridiculously gross and graphic potty humor.  “Something About Mary”, on the other hand, spiked it.

4)  Sweet Home Alabama –type crap.  It’s a genre movie…a romantic comedy, as “zany mad-cap romp”, a “coming of age story”, a “buddy cop movie”…etc. they are the sort of benign, lukewarm crap that is just supposed to pass your time.  It’s supposed to be safe.  A critic can tell you that it’s a romantic comedy, they’ve followed the formula enough that you probably won’t be taking a risk…but they’ve probably had a talented enough script doctor freshen it up that you will get all the way through the evening before you realize you’ve seen this movie a dozen times.

  These movies are not art.  They are entertainment.  And yes, there IS a difference.  Just as the Art that hangs in museums is different than the pictures most people hang on their walls, these movies are not meant to edify, enlighten, break new ground, discover new horizons…human beings can’t do that every day.  Some times most people just need to be diverted from their day.  They need to get out of the house, be with other people, smell the special smell of industrial sludge being pawned off as “butter”.

     Hey, prehistoric man told the same stories over and over and over again, adding little twists and turns, fine-tuning them to encompass new experiences…everything old being new again has been around for a long, long, time, and I don’t think all the blame has to be put on the shoulders of the suits in the entertainment industry.  They have enough burdens on their souls as it is.  Let’s be generous and merciful, people.

     There are more kinds of crap, but the bulk of crappy movies fall into these categories for me.  The first and third kind I absolutely cannot stand, and I wish they’d stop making them.  They are an insult to the audience, in my opinion.  (Although bear in mind these are also movies that I have admittedly not seen the whole movie so if you have a different opinion, you could just put it down to my ignorance.  I’m OK with that)

     Types two and four I have a little more compassion for…in some sense because if you are a flexible and engaged audience, you can let them entertain you.  Yes, you might have to do some work as well, but if you are open and honest, and willing to do a little bit of the work yourself, you can leave the theater with a slightly lighter step than you had when you went in…and there is certainly a place for that.  I’m OK with it.

     Of course, we would prefer to have our entertainment grab us by the nose and pull us, helpless and gasping through the experience, never bursting the bubble, never missing a beat, never letting us go until long after the credits have rolled…and we get that from time-to-time…but it’s rare and bright and brilliant.

     And I’m OK with that too.