We watch a lot of movies at home. We’re not fussy – between the four of us, we’ll happily watch all sorts of films, from adventure to horror to documentary, foreign language, travelogues, arthouse festival, zombies and rom-coms and combinations of any and all of the above. And so it always takes us by surprise when we start to watch something that turns out to be unwatchable. Often we persevere because we can’t quite believe anything that costs so many millions could be quite as bad as it is. And somehow it feels worse to stop watching a movie after half an hour than it does to put down a book that’s turned out to be rubbish. Weird, isn’t it?
It also feels wrong to be criticising library items, when we are supposed to be all about encouraging people to take home and enjoy DVDs from our collection of (really truly MOSTLY) great titles. However, following on from Donna’s Top 5 list, I thought I’d balance the universe out a bit by listing some of our recent movie fails:
- The Three Musketeers (most recent version, obviously) – lasted 20 minutes, possibly filmed with pre-teen boys as main target audience.
- Transformers 3 – Dark of the Moon – less than 15 minutes, I think. Even the cool transforming bits couldn’t save this one.
- The Green Lantern – nearly half an hour, but only because we couldn’t find the DVD remote. Seriously, Peter Sarsgaard, what were you thinking?
- Pineapple Express (okay, this one was only a ‘fail’ for the middle-aged ones – the two teenagers had already watched it and pronounced it aMAZingly funny).
- Sector 7 – longest monster death scene EVER. This one we actually lasted the whole movie through, but mainly because none of us could figure out how a movie with so much promise (transparent underwater monster! isolated oil rig! scientists! motorcycles!) could be so utterly mesmerisingly awful.
Seen any of these yourself? Agree or disagree? Tell me below, or just use this as a chance to unload YOUR Worst 5 …
18 July 2012 at 2:51 pm
Forrest Gump, Sat through the entire thing, and afterwards walked out of the theatre scratching my head just like everybody else was.
18 July 2012 at 3:09 pm
I walked out of the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. If I’d wanted to see the same jokes over again, I would have re-watched the first one. What’s with sequels?!
18 July 2012 at 3:48 pm
Haven’t seen any of your failures. But we would nominate The Station Agent, especially as it started with promise. We were still waiting for the story to start when the movie ended. We also hated Good Will Hunting, which also started off with promise. And we were most unimpressed with Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong. We watched it all the way through but it didn’t take long for us to understand why some friends walked out of the cinema halfway through.
18 July 2012 at 7:30 pm
it’s amazing how different people’s tastes can be! I loved The Station Agent!
19 July 2012 at 3:44 pm
???? Really -your worst!?
Enjoyed King Kong
Really liked Good Will Hunting
Station Agent has got to be one of my top 10!
18 July 2012 at 5:37 pm
Wow, you guys – leaving a movie theatre is even braver than turning off the TV! I’ve never left a cinema, although I came incredibly close when watching Event Horizon (but that was due to being scared witless rather than being bored).
19 July 2012 at 3:07 pm
i have to admit to walking out a couple of times. Once was Orlando and the other time was Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by numbers. If it is not doing it for you why suffer?
23 July 2012 at 12:58 pm
Hoot! I love both of those movies.
19 July 2012 at 3:41 pm
Nell (Walked out of the Cinema)
EraserHead (What?)
Piano (soooo boring)
Tree of Life (Pretentious of nonsense of such magnitude, I still resent the 20mins of my life I gave to it – waiting for it to start – it doesn’t!)
20 July 2012 at 7:42 pm
I just fall asleep. Someone said to me rather sarcastically the other evening “Gee, you really seemed to enjoy Real Steel”. I did, it was very, um, ‘relaxing’.