There are plenty of worthy movies out there, and there are plenty that fit comfortably in the “enjoyable crap” category. But more and more, I find myself appreciating movies that fail — often in a big way — but have something important going for them. These are not truly great movies, with a minor flaw in them. They are fundamentally flawed, but somewhere within them there is a germ of a good idea, or just one fine scene, one performance, one moment that rescues it from obscurity and makes it compelling. There was an earlier thread of movies we are ashamed we had not watched or had not enjoyed. Here is a category of movie to be ashamed that one liked, but to still see something worthwhile in the whole enterprise.
So my first candidate is Falling Down, with Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Tuesday Weld, and Frederic Forrest. It’s a crude vigilante movie that asks us to applaud a domestic terrorist, that tugs shamelessly at our heartstrings, that gives us explosions as well as a child’s tears, that caricatures the people “D-Fens” kills (or causes to die). Worthless. Exploitative. And yet… I just watched it again on HBO and it captures something about middle class alienation that we rarely see. There are a handful of scenes that, for me, rescue the movie. The Douglas character sitting in traffic at the beginning (the heat and insect buzzing remind me of the train station scene in Once Upon A Time in America), the black character holding up the handwritten sign saying he is “not economically viable”, Douglas watching home movies of his ex-wife and child and seeing his own anger and the fear in their faces, Duvall’s early tender scenes on the phone with Weld. There are too many wrong decisions to make it a decent movie, but enough good ones to make it memorable.
Your choice seems so apt, I’m having trouble coming up with other examples, Chris. Still…
A Perfect World, where Kevin Costner’s this fairly nasty escaped con who picks up a kid along the way. Every scene with Costner and the kid, the whole way through, shimmers with an intense affection and dread; we don’t know how much to trust this guy, his intensity is scary, yet there’s such a strong honest intimacy defined between the man and the boy… it’s really outstanding. And then every other scene is a Keystone-Koppish misfire with director Eastwood and Laura Dern as cops hot on Costner’s trail, and those scenes are astonishingly bad. I remember walking out of the theater thinking I’d seen two films mashed up, one of which I loved, the other I hated. And the latter does infect the former, as in the final scenes the conclusion seems too pat, too easy on the audience SPOILER (letting Costner be more the avenging hero, taking out his aggression on people who hurt kids, when throughout the film we’d been wondering if he’d hurt this kid).
I am tempted to say every movie starring Steve Martin, but I’ll zero in on All of Me and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, both of which live on in my memory as wondrous and funny until I watch them and recall how much mediocre sentimentalism you have to wade through to get to the amazingly funny scenes which do capture something of the physically silly perfection of Martin’s persona. (I’m reading his autobiography right now, so he’s on my mind.)
I guess in each of the cases I’m outlining a potential in the films for smashing up mainstream narrative assumptions… which they seem reluctant to accept or embrace.
An entirely different example: watched objectively, Strange Brew is a scattershot sketch stretched to an hour-and-a-half. SCTV’s Bob and Doug MacKenzie have an adventure at a brewery, where the evil Max von Sydow plots mind control with beer and hockey, and the film mashes up Hamlet and Rollerball, and it’s equally happy to do some silly meta-joking. It often falls flat, and yet I loved every minute of the thing. (Perhaps seeing it for the first time with a clearly drunk Canadian audience–is that redundant?–clarified how to watch the film.)
mike’s choices are too granola. no one is or should be ashamed of liking the movies he names. falling down, however, has very messy, retrograde politics.
that said, all i remember clearly from falling down is that robert duvall’s wife won’t let him eat chicken with the skin on, and at the end he asserts his manhood by telling her to leave the chicken on. this is what i learned from this film, which i watched on scratchy vhs the year before i came to the u.s.: americans eat chicken with the skin on.
Mmm, chicken skin.
Doesn’t After Hours and King of Comedy belong here>? The Life Aquatic? Elephant? Punch Drunk Love? Munich? Barton Fink?
No, they doesn’t. It no sense make your post. Me angry and me punches you.
The category is not fine films which nonetheless have minor flaws (which does not?), but failed films which nonetheless provide some interesting pleasures. To me, ‘Falling Down’ belongs here rather than in ‘enjoyable crap’ (or ‘complete crap’) because it tries to be something bigger, even “better” than just a vigilante movie. It fails but in interesting ways. ‘Transporter’ succeeds admirably at what its attempts and is therefore enjoyable crap.
Okay, failed films–the Onion AV club has run a series of articles by Nathan Rabin called “My Year of Flops” wherein he re-watches old failures, and reassess them as fiascoes, secret successes. I’m cribbing from him, but:
I think Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is often patently unenjoyable, and has filmmaking so crude it seems to have been cobbled together by special-ed students, and its focus on the Green persona is a recipe for excessive, repetitive yelling and annoyance. And yet I think its central unwavering focus on the power of transgression is so distilled, so untainted that I find the film really compelling.
Does that fit the bill? Not too granola? And, by the way, what’s that mean “too granola”?
For me, Spielberg’s 1941 belongs here. In previous posts, I categorized it as “underrated.” But I think it is more accurate to describe it as fatally flawed but somehow compelling. The film, taken as a whole, is a disaster. But there are moments to remember, and moments I anticipate with glee during subsequent viewings. Every scene with Belushi is embarrassingly bad. But every scene with Treat Williams is wonderful–especially the dance contest. Robert Stack crying during Dumbo is funny and touching. And the scenes with Murray Hamilton trapped on the ferris wheel with the Jerry Lewis ventriloquist are absolutely insane. But Jesus that film is a stinkeroo. I think it straddles two categories–this one, and the category I think Michael came up with: “coke film.” Brilliant filmmakers on cocaine make fatally flawed but compelling films. That’s a rule.
mike, too granola is when you “admit” to liking a mid-period steve martin film despite many slack moments in its comedy. edgy and in your face is saying that in parts of mrs. doubtfire the last vestiges of unrestrained robin williams almost break out, and almost make that cheese-fest worth it.
But why granola? What’s wrong with that food product, why link it to my (I buy your criticism) misguided first responses?
Granola-hater. Oatjudicist.
gra·no·la: 1. lumpy 2. boring, 3. makes me have to poop. 4. resembling reynolds’ posts.