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Assignment #2: Shameful Moviegoing Experiences

Posted by Austin Cinephile

Every week, we will be posting a prompt related to cinephilia, and some of our founding members will contribute a short response. Hopefully you, our dear readers, will feel compelled to respond in our comment section as well. This week’s prompt was:

What movie are you the most reluctant to admit you saw in a theater? Describe and explain.

Michael: TRANSFORMERS (2007) at the Regency Carter Theater in Long Beach, CA, sometime in the Fall of 2007

Let me preface this by first saying that I am not generally ashamed of the films I watch in the theater. I am of the opinion that when you pay between $7 and $15 to watch a movie in the cinema, you better be damn certain the gamble is worth the dough. (My DVD rentals, on the other hand…)

With that said, ordinarily I wouldn’t even consider watching Transformers (2007) in the theater and never for fifteen bucks. But, like so many that got suckered into watching this transforming travesty, my childhood nostalgia for the original cartoon series eventually got the better of me.

Even so, I wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to see Michael Bay’s interpretation of Autobots. I mean he’d probably turn Jazz into some jive-talkin’ wanna-b-boy, right? So, even after people started telling me it was worth watching (wrong!), I held strong. It was a DVD rental for sure. Or so I kept telling myself. Little did I know that after Transformers left first-run theaters with an embarrassingly profitable $300 million plus domestic gross—and just when I thought I was in the clear—it rose again in the dollar theater down the block from me.

This just screams “bad idea”

I broke down; Michael Bay had won. I dragged my then girlfriend—now wife—Cara along and slapped down the $4 for a pair of tickets. What could I do? All the, “You gotta see it in theaters, man,” had finally got to me. And for a $2 a ticket, it had to be worth that, right? Wrong. We sat in the dark, popcorn balancing on the armrest between us, and watched as Michael Bay distorted my childhood memory, like so many shifting robots, into an incomprehensible jumble of rotating metal, nonsensical character motivations, and bad acting.

I knew it! I KNEW IT! How did he ever win? I mean, $2 is a good price for a movie ticket anywhere, but how did I allow myself to get sucked into a bloated blockbuster directed by an even more bloated director. And to top it off with the much detested Shia LaBeouf. Really? It boggles my mind. Is the sweet memory of days past so strong so as to leave me utterly powerless in the face of big-budget branding revamps? Never again. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), hell no, didn’t see it. Because, as the old George W. saying goes “fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.” Right?

So I say once more, never again, Mr. Bay…Now, I wonder when that Nightmare on Elm Street remake comes out?

Daniel: DAREDEVIL (2003) at the Showcase Cinema in Revere, Valentine’s Day, 2003

This is a difficult question for me. For the most part, I embrace my guilty pleasures by trumpeting them as “camp.” Sure, I sometimes go to bad movies. In the year 2009 alone, I would say that I knew The Final Destination, The Haunting in Connecticut, The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard, and (The) Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire were going to be horrible but I went anyway. Nevertheless, it seems that regret and anticipated disappointment are not really the core emotions that this prompt targets.

I would also say that much of my guilty viewing occurs on television. Have I seen every episode of “Jersey Shore?” Very much yes. I also regularly watch “How I Met Your Mother,” a program much too mainstream to be in my taste. Still, I will champion these low-culture products as either camp, as in the first case, or slightly subversive, as in the second (wait for it) case.

I really can’t say I am truly reluctant to admit that I saw anything in the theatre. I regret and condemn, but it is all in the quest for cinema treasure. So I will have to slightly modify this prompt in my case. I am embarrassed to admit to a couple of films, either because my expectations were so high, or because the situation was ridiculous.

If I really have to search through my tragic memory, I would be forced to go way back to the year 2003. I was nearly 15 at the time, and I was dating a blonde of 17 by the name of Brittany. The film was to be released on Valentine’s Day, conveniently a Friday.

It was an innocent time then. I was young, and Ben Affleck was still dating Jennifer Lopez. He used to be cool, a cocky but upright guy who had a special way with the ladies. I looked up to Affleck, and at the time he was probably my favorite actor (hey, show me someone else who can get a lesbian Joey Lauren Adams into bed and I’ll recant my admiration for the schlub).

So, obviously, it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m expected to cook up a date for this beauty. Well, I love cinema, I love Affleck. There’s a new film directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the auteur who previously helmed the dreck-fest known as Simon Birch. So I got in her black Ford Taurus and directed her to the Showcase Cinema in Revere (pronounced: Ra-vee-ah). How romantic! We took our seats and held hands throughout the entire running time of that dreadful movie featuring Jennifer Garner and Colin Farrell: Daredevil.

Unforgettable. That’s what you are.

Stephen: THE PRINCESS DIARIES (2001) at some AMC theatre in Houston, TX in the summer of 2001

When I was fifteen, I spent a few days of the summer in Houston with my parents. We were in town because my father had to attend a law seminar, which meant that my mother and I had a lot of free time during the day. Having exhausted all other options, she and I decided to see a movie.

In case you have forgotten, let me remind you that the movie situation in Houston at that time was rather chilling. Some of the films that had been released in the previous weeks included: Legally Blonde, Jurassic Park 3, America’s Sweethearts, and Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. Two of those films had already disappointed me, and two of them I had no intention of seeing. On this particular Friday, Rush Hour 2 had just come out, but considering that my father also wanted to see that movie, the Tucker-Chan redux was not an option. Which left my mother and me with just one option: Disney’s The Princess Diaries.

Standing there at the box office with this decision before me, I weighed the pros and cons. Obviously, the pro side was going to the movies, which is by default something I enjoy doing, regardless of the film being shown. On the other hand, this was a film clearly targeted toward those young girls who sleep proudly underneath their Disney Princess (TM) bedsheets and that select group of filmgoers who only go to the cinema if there is potential for a Julie Andrews nipple slip. Ultimately, realizing that it was either going to be this movie or the mall, we bought our tickets and went in.

As a fifteen year old male, the last thing I wanted, even in a city in which I didn’t actually live, was to be seen with my mother watching The Princess Diaries. Needless to say, this is not a story I related to my friends once I returned home. But I will say that I secretly appreciated the experience for one reason: at the very least, I was able to discover Anne Hathaway, whose modest stardom I began predicting that very day. I could see she was beautiful, and, perhaps because of the film’s regal trappings, I felt certain that she would most likely turn out to be a very classy lady, which she has.

If only I could go back to this point and beg her not to do Rachel Getting Married.

As for the movie, meh. I spent most of the film being distracted by Hathaway’s looks, remembering Welcome to the Dollhouse every time Heather Matarazzo came onscreen, and scanning the theater to make sure I didn’t recognize anyone who might betray my humiliating predicament.

What about you? If you have something to confess, leave a comment below.