How to Make Me Avoid a Movie
This is just another thing where I can display very strange behaviour. It’s one thing that I hardly ever go to the movies because there’s hardly ever any movie playing that I’m not willing to wait to see until it’s out on DVD and I can get it and watch it on my couch at home. But apart from that there’s one way to completely piss me off a movie that does always, always work.
Keep telling me how great it is. Just keep telling me that I must go see this movie, because it’s so fucking incredibly great.
(That goes for people I know personally and all kinds of magazines, TV shows and so on.)
And you know what? If you do that, you hereby reduce the chances that I will really go see that movie (and my interest in that particular movie) to a minimum.
It helps if the movie you are constantly advising me to go see is French. That’s just the cherry on the cake in the quest of making me not want to see any movie.
I’m not a cinema-racist, I even like French movies, I watch French movies, I have French movies. A lot of them. Before I turned 18 I must have seen about 10 Truffaut movies, at least 2 Rohmer movies and several other French movies and liked them.
But thing is that nearly every movie I avoided because everyone kept telling me it was so great I had to see it was French. Or Italian. They make nice movies, yes. I loved ‚Jules & Jim‘ and I always cry during the whole last 15 minutes of ‚Cinema Paradiso‘, but all in all, neither the French nor the Italians make better movies than the rest of the world.
So, this is why haven’t seen ‚8 Femmes‘ up to now, because everybody including my father who NEVER goes to the cinema kept telling me how great a movie it was and that I absolutely must see it. They were practically attempting to drag me into a cinema and chain me to a seat.
This is also part of the reason why I had no interest whatsoever in going to see ‚Good-Bye Lenin‘ when it was playing in the cinemas. Because it was so high-praised and every damn magazine told me I had to see it. Well, I saw it (only a lot later and and on VCD). That movie, honestly, was melancholic and triste right on its way to plain boring. What was that fuzz about? Who told me that movie was a comedy? Because I didn’t laugh. Not once. I didn’t even smirk.
I’m not saying that it was a completely bad movie, it just wasn’t what everyone promised me it would be.
And ‚Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain‘? Nice movie. Very artsy. Lot of nice ideas. Really sweet adorable actress, whose haircut looks so nice on her that you run the risk of having your hair cut like this. Yeah. NOT the greatest movie in the world.
If you have a movie that you saw and loved and you think that I would like it as well, go ahead and say so. Tell me what it is about and why you liked it so much (without telling me spoilers… give me spoilers, you’re dead!) and I might even consider seeing it. I need and read reviews. I’m not deaf to recommendations.
Just don’t tell me what I have to do! Don’t act like this is the only movie worth seeing in the whole wide world! Don’t give me the feeling that not being that interested in this particular movie and therefore deciding not to see it makes me an incredibly dumb, ignorant and foolish person! Let me make my decisions. Because I’m old enough already. And I have seen movies. French ones, too.
So, if there’s a movie playing that you have seen and that left you speechless, tell me about. But be careful how you tell me. Because if I get the feeling that not taking the advice and not going to see it is close to being considered as a capital crime…?
Yeah.
I won’t go.