Oh my classic movie roundup...

[tsubasahome]

Last night, I forced Lauren to sit down and watch one of my favorite classic movies, I Remember Mama. Robert Osborne says it's the best movie ever made about mothers, probably because in many of the other "mother" movies, the mother character is either abusive and controlling, or ridiculously self-sacrificing and her child is an ungrateful pig, a la Mildred Pierce. I'm also in the middle of rewatching the 1939 version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which is also one of my favorite movies. I have the Peter O'Toole version on my DVR, but I haven't watched it yet. I find it depressing that Robert Donat successfully played a character who lived well into his old age and had a full life, but he himself died young...

I'm sure there are some ridiculously ageist people out there who would laugh at me for saying that a man who died at age 53 died young, but those people are pigs. -_-

Lauren and I also watched the hilariously bad The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and the just plain bad Cannon Movie Tales version of Beauty and the Beast. You know...somebody once said that a hilariously bad movie can never be the worst movie ever, because truly bad movies are boring. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T was bad like the way The Apple was bad. I like entertaining bad movies. Here's a short list of bad movies I've watched recently that are a hoot to watch:

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
The Apple
The Legend of Billie Jean
Promise Her Anything
Die Die My Darling!

And bad movies that aren't even worth watching:

Any Cannon Movie Tales movie that's not Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, or Puss in Boots
Gigli
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li
Pretty much any original Sy-Fy movie
This Woman is Dangerous(bad Joan Crawford movie)
The Damned Don't Cry(another bad Joan Crawford movie)

Perhaps the hilariously bad movies are not truly bad, but mediocre?

Comments

[twotone]

I dunno, I feel like "mediocre" is best reserved for movies that don't try hard enough to be good, but aren't eye-poppingly bad either. Tepid movies, inoffensive movies, movies that can't even generate enough emotion in the audience to merit popcorn-throwing.

I enjoy SyFy original movies that are entertainingly bad (usually due to plot, terrible dialogue, or poor acting), but some are just... mediocre. The acting is bad, but not hilariously so; the dialogue is bad, but not memorable or quotable in its badness. They rarely cause a cathartic "What?! What the HECK was that???" reaction, or horrified amusement. At best, they might make us feel a sort of regret or sympathetic cringing.

I can understand what you're getting at, though. Hilariously bad movies at least have SOME entertainment value, whereas mediocre bad movies (and, I'd argue, bad comedies) don't even give you that.

[tsubasahome.livejournal.com]

Maybe the term I'm looking for is "ambitiously bad".

I remember some SyFy movie that was pretty funny--I think it was called Alien Apocalypse or something, and it featured these giant praying mantis aliens that all sounded like characters from South Park. I don't think it was supposed to be funny.

[twotone]

"Ambitiously bad" is a great way of putting it.