I went to the movies this one time to see …some movie. I honestly don’t even remember what it was. It wasn’t really that good. It wasn’t walk-out-of-the-theater-and-tweet-angrily-from-the-Chillies-bar-next-door bad but it was bad. What I do remember is the woman sitting next to me during the film. She would audibly react to every thing happening on screen. Some bad guy would enter a room and she would grasp her purse and go ‘oh no!’ The hero would save the girl at the last minute from certain doom and she would pump her fist and cheer him on. When there was a twist to the plot she would put her hands to her face and gasp with surprise. Did I forget to mention this was around 60 years old?
When she started doing this I was kind of a jerk in my mind. My inner film critic was already ripping apart the movie and being in this state of mind I was rolling my eyes as hard as I could over this woman.
“How can she not see how terrible this film is?”
“Is she watching the same movie I am?”
“Does she seriously need to be this overly dramatic at EVERY moment of EVERY minute of this movie!?”
As the movie went on my inner jerk started to lighten up for some unknown reason. It wasn’t the film getting better I assure you. But I started to look at this woman in a different light. She was legitimately enjoying this film from start to finish. And she wasn’t being rude with her reactions either. They were mostly quiet, almost reserved. Only myself and maybe the person in front of her could really hear her. Her reactions were starting to make staying for the remainder of the film more tolerable even. After every scene change or action sequence I would shoot my eyes to the side and see what she would do next. I was starting to like her commentary track for the film and would have loved to see a ‘grandma reacts to bad movies’ DVD extra as an extra feature for the home video release.
At some point it hit me that this woman must enjoy most movies she sees if she was this into the garbage we were currently watching. This got me thinking. It must be quite wonderful to be able to walk into a film with genuine excitement and normally be right about it. That’s like watching The Matrix for the first time over and over again. I’m thinking this could be more than ‘ignorance is bliss’ too. I’ve seen people who weren’t the sharpest knife in the draw go to movies. Those people react when the film says, ‘laugh here, jump here, cry here’. This woman was going past this. She would react to other moments without having to be told by the movie execs behind the scenes telling her to.
An experiment for you all. Think of a bad movie you have seen. Not a “so bad it’s good” film but a truly bad film. Transformers 2, Yogi Bear, Son of Mask, Battlefield Earth, Gigli, etc. There are plenty to choose from. Now imagine enjoying all the moments you hated about that film. Imagine enjoying all the moments between those moments that were just kind of okay. Imagine following the crazy plot or characters all the way through the film cheering them on. These would be quite different films right? For many people I’m betting this is quite difficult. I know I can’t turn the awesome meter on Blade 2 to 100% without some struggle.
This does make me wonder though. If she likes every movie does the truly amazing films go even higher or do the all just sit at the same level? If she can turn The Smurfs into an 8 and Lawrence of Arabia into 18 I want some of what she is having. If this groups them together instead I would silently cry myself to sleep most nights. There needs to be some balance between the good and the bad here. If you live your life at 11 then every thing is really a 5.
How would your life be different if you enjoyed most films you saw? Do you already enjoy most films or know someone who does? I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below or feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @neumaverick.