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Bomb squad: Why we love bad movies and you should too
Don’t hate on bad movies. They’re good for business; they can end franchises no one asked for. And hey, they’re low-key fun
Batman and Robin (1997). Ghost Ship (2002). Dungeons and Dragons (2000). The Human Centipede (2009). Love is in the Air (2023). What do these movies have in common? They all have low IMDb ratings, they got trashed by critics upon release, they show up on lists of The Worst Films Ever Made. But in a twist no one saw coming, they also make it to Reddit and Tumblr discussions about films that are so cringe, they surpass their genre and shine in a realm of their own. “Every second of it is fully entertaining and hilariously bad,” writes Reddit user, Phantom JB93, of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). We’ve suffered through the tale of drift racing in Japan. We agree.
We also watched Irish Wish around Valentine’s Day this year, knowing full well what we were getting into. Lindsay Lohan plays the bride-to-be’s bestie, pining for the groom in Insta-filter Ireland, who gets her wish, with disastrous results. We rolled our eyes as the predictable meet-cute gave way to the wishful thinking, as the blessing turned out to be a curse, as the actors woodenly trudged on. And yet, Irish Wish broke streaming records for the month. All our cringe watching turned Lohan back into a bankable star.
Bad movies can do for viewers what great movies can’t. They can offer smaller delights that are unfettered by the larger story. How would we see Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, and Idris Elba in furry costumes (whiskers, ears and moving tails too), cavort across the screen if not for Cats (2019)? How would we obsess over actor Brandon Flynn if not for Looks That Kill (2020) about a boy who has to wear gauze over his face because he is – wait for it – lethally attractive? Even in Anyone But You (2023), a terrible version of the fakers-who-fall-in-love romcom, there are scenes of Glen Powell shirtless.
Bad movies have power. They can put an end to a franchise no one asked for in the first place. Consider last year’s dud, Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey, an indie horror parody that attempted to introduce the Twisted Childhood Universe. The movie is so noisy, so clumsy, so determined to ignore the magic of AA Milne’s stories, that the entire TCU has been put on hold. Aren’t you glad they figured this out early?
Besides, bad movies are good for business. Viewers are as curious about bad offerings as good ones. So, films that win Razzies, the awards for Hollywood’s worst, often see a bump in ticket sales. Blood and Honey won last year, beating out Shazam! Fury Of The Gods and Expend4bles. And it made a profit. The Razzie nominations for the two other films means we’ll be spared more sequels.
People who devotedly watch bad films aren’t stupid, they’re merely optimistic. Because public opinion is fickle. Today’s en-pointe hit is tomorrow’s badly aged classic. Several films that were panned in their time make for decent viewing years later. Rewatch Beauty and the Beast, which came out in 2017. It’s hard to imagine why it received so much hate when it came out. Sure, Belle’s dress is meh, Emma Watson is engulfed by the sets, the CGI makes you long for old-fashioned animation. But it’s hardly a disaster.
And who knows? Those who hated on dystopian movies today might find themselves living in a similar reality tomorrow. Critics panned Don’t Look Up (2021), saying that it trivialised the possibility of an apocalypse. Someone’s going to have to hold their hands and tell them that this is exactly what it was about: Our indifference to the climate emergency. Leave the World Behind, last year’s movie about a global cyber-attack, got low ratings because viewers felt cheated by the build-up that led nowhere. We’re one IT outage away for that anti-climax to ring true.
Only one genre is exempt from criticism. If Christmas can be camp, there’s no cap on how sappy or corny a Christmas movie can be. Tired plots and bad acting are decorated with red tulle and fairy lights, and no one complains. Because they defrost our cold, dead hearts. Maybe the real plot isn’t in the movie but the fun we had along the way.
From HT Brunch, December 07, 2024
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