Please Take A Moment To Look Around The Theater

I don’t watch that many movies. I mean, I enjoy movies (I also enjoy food, sports, and vagueness) but I just don’t sit down and watch them very often, even the ones I love. It’s funny how we tend to accumulate our favorite movies and display them but hardly ever throw them into the DVD player. Here’s a movie that cracked me up/moved me to tears/taught me invaluable life lessons and as its reward it gets to live out the rest of its plastic-encased years on a Bed Bath and Beyond stand in my den.

I especially don’t watch many Good Movies. You can argue that that label is subjective, but let’s put it like this: In 2007 I opted for I Know Who Killed Me over An Inconvenient Truth, and in 2005 paid money to see House of Wax but not Million Dollar Baby. No regrets, people.

My love for crap movies is something that was born in me and that I’ve painstakingly nurtured over the years. If you’re not a crap movie aficionado, you may not realize that they actually have their own set of parameters that must be adhered to. For example, none of those painful scary movie spoofs count. There’s a special place in hell reserved for humorless parodies.

The main requirement is that a crap movie has to think it’s a real movie. Case in point: There’s a movie coming out that stars Audrina Partridge (the brunette from the Hills with the heavy eyelids and no top lip) as a sorority girl ghost on a murderous rampage. Jujubes for everyone!

I enjoy the whole movie theater experience, but now that tickets cost $10 and the movie will probably be on On Demand in about two months, I find myself thinking twice about whether or not it’s worth it. My one caveat is that I will happily pay full price to spend a couple hours in the dark with Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, or any combination thereof, which is another way of saying that yes, yes I do kiss my pillow and pretend it’s Judd Apatow, thanks for asking.

I love that Dane Cook bit about how couples have that whispered fight when the one who went to buy candy comes back to the theater and it’s dark and he wanders the aisles, blind and lost and receiving no assistance from his partner, who doesn’t notice him. One time I was watching a movie with my boyfriend, who spent about ten hours trying to open a bag of Reeses Pieces quietly, all the while making those tiny but somehow tortuous crinkling sounds. I finally suggested that he just bite the bullet and rip the bag open, and when he did, the bag basically exploded and candy went everywhere. I think that was probably one of the best laughs I’ve ever had at a movie, particularly when he indignantly clutched the last few pieces of candy to his chest, unsure of how to rescue them but unwilling to fully accept defeat. I’ve learned not to judge anyone’s candy-opening techniques, because now I understand that if I mock your technique, and you then alter said technique, resulting in the untimely demise of your candy, you get to take my candy. That’s just how the universe works.

Keeping up with movies, particularly Good Movies, is like keeping up with filing bank statements or other tediousness that we’re raised to think is requisite for maintaining our adult passport. If you don’t do it at least once a week or so, the pile grows, and then finally you just end up shredding all of them. Or suddenly it’s Oscar night and you don’t recognize anyone on the red carpet unless they were in The Wedding Date or How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. Damn you TBS and your perfectly timed rainy Sunday afternoon moviefests!

These days, Twilight seems to be the new Titanic, Brad Pitt continues to be King Midas, Dakota Fanning is all growed up, and they’re making movies out of Where The Wild Things Are and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. What’s next, Goodnight Moon starring Sean Penn? And say what you will about Miley Cyrus, but I think the premise of her movie is genius. It seems like the perfect way to transition (read: keep) her fans from Hannah to Miley, and also a nice way to throw in a little “just be your own bad self” message to her adolescent fans. And, you know, it’s not about vampire sex.

Yesterday I saw that Nicolas Cage movie Knowing, which involved defying a few of my own tenets of film logic: 1. Paying the aforementioned $10 for a movie that’s received the proverbial shrug from critics, 2. willingly watching something slightly scary when I have the most intolerant palate for goosebumps ever, and 3. spending two hours of a beautiful day in a theater. I also think it’s worth mentioning that the family in line ahead of us spent $34 on snacks, but that’s a whole other issue. Despite the fact that Knowing is about (spoiler alert! which you know from the previews!) the end of the world, it was actually pretty entertaining.

When the world really ends it’s going to be a little off-putting to find that we can’t be saved by Bruce Willis and a drill or Jeff Goldblum and a haltingly delivered speech about science. Apparently we’re going to be done in by ice, fire, aliens, or childhood obesity, but without Will Smith, I don’t know how we’re supposed to get out of it. I haven’t even seen that guy in years. Hollywood has so not prepared us.